I walk in this morning and log into my pretty user interface. I am greeted with a pacifying Windows Vista sound, and though I hear some unusual thrashing coming from my hard drive, I think relatively nothing of it. As is my usual routine, I start up iTunes and Outlook, getting ready to quickly knock out some emails and to settle into my daily routine by listening to the calming sounds of Don Peris's guitar.

I'm half-way through my first email response, when hark! BSD (blue screen of death) hell descends on me: my computer locks up, a blank blue screen rears it's ugly head, and my computer shuts itself off.

Great. My email is gone, and now I have to wait for the stupid thing to boot back up. My morning ritual has been defiled, and my already stressful day has received a sharp pinch.

The computer boots up without complaints, and I log in again, somewhat more cautiously going about my routine. I literally reach for my mouse to hit the Send button on the email I have finally composed, when BSD comes back with a vengeance. You can imagine the strength of will it took not to embed my mouse into the ceiling tile above me.

Repeat this scenario no less than FOUR TIMES. I finally am able to boot up long enough to check the system event log. Lo and behold, the USB drive I have been using as a ReadyBoost device has been throwing no less than 753 drive errors. Vista has taken my perfectly good $40 1GB USB drive and has destroyed it. I can't even get it to format on a different (XP) machine. It is now a worthless piece of plastic.

Sure. I'm upset that Windows has overestimated the ability of USB drives to be used to hold paging files. But I'm even more upset that my computer actually registered the fact that my drive was throwing errors, and yet PROCEEDED TO USE IT as RAM.

Perhaps as an isolated incident this would be an acceptable "oversight." And as a programmer, I understand the frustrations that change inevitably brings with constantly changing technologies. What I don't understand is how Microsoft spent 5 years to develop an Operating System less stable than Windows 95, and then forced all of their partners (like Dell) to sell their new machines with Vista pre-installed. What are we as consumers supposed to do? Just wait two years for Microsoft to get its act together before purchasing a new machine? I am a private contractor who develops ASP.NET applications which require Microsoft's shiny new resource hogging VS2005. Two years is not an option for this developer.

Microsoft, I am ashamed that I recently spent my tax return on purchasing a new PC laptop which came pre-installed with Vista. I am embarrassed for having defended you all these years to the Macintosh community. I hereby declare never to develop another ASP.NET web project. I hereby declare that my next computer (which unfortunately will be several years from now) will run Linux or Macintosh. You have lost another customer due to your foibles.

This is Bryan Tarpley, formally reputed to be a private ASP.NET gun-for-hire, signing off. Can you say PHP? I can. All day long.