It's been about a year since I've bought a Windows PC, and things always change.

I often help people buy their computers and equipment, and today I had the opportunity to help someone setup their new Vista Laptop. Now, I'm no expert, but wasn't Vista supposed to be easy to setup? Wasn't that the idea?

Here's the play by play.

Power On.

Toshiba BIOS.

Weird Toshiba What language are you? Win 2K looking Wizard.

English.

Continue.

All of the sudden it goes into this bizarre Default Factory Restoration Procedure for like half an hour. I have absolutely no clue what's going on (and I know my PCs) it's writing the hard drive back onto itself? There's no CD it's reading from, it's literally just sitting their wasting electricity. After that's done, it does another odd CV key generation of some sort for a couple minutes, and finally reboots.

Toshiba BIOS.

Annoying and ugly console telling me Windows is getting ready to run for the first time. Sure. 5 minutes.

Reboot.

Toshiba BIOS.

Loading progress bar in quasi-GUIness.

Finally I see the chubby white cursor for Windows Vista. Black screen otherwise, waiting.

A few Toshiba BIOS's later, I get the Vista Welcome. Language, Country, Username password, and then more waiting. Somehow Vista still hasn't finished installing it's Files, and needs to force me into watching and endless looping slideshow of what Vista's new features are. That's great Microsoft, would you hurry up the progress bar?

Reboot.

Toshiba BIOS.

Boot up, login. Good. Time to get started.

Windows alerts me UAC is off. I'll turn it on. Whoa nelly all of the sudden my screen flickers, changes resolutions a couple of times, even gives me a blinking console windows for a split second, then returns back to Windows Desktop, but only to start Shutting Down. A little notice next time Micosoft?

Toshiba BIOS.

Boot up, login. Uh oh, a weird Installer is covering everything up with it's giantness. Please wait in very unVista like hard fonts face me. Waiting fr 10 minutes, nothing has happened but blinking HDD lights. Fine. Ctrl alt Delete. It's been an hour of nothing so far and I already have to give it the three finger salute.

Task Manager, end weird task. Oh! Bye Windows! It decides to Shut Down again. Fine.

Toshiba BIOS.

Boot up, login.

Finally I get the privilege of running Windows Update, and then rebooting again.

Toshiba BIOS.

Boot up, login.

Install Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, and a couple of other programs. Anti-Virus? Of course you need to reboot!

Toshiba BIOS.

Boot up, login.

Finally, I can start downloading Firefox.

Total Reboots: 8.

Now, I'm not talking about Upgrade here people. I'm talking about Open Box, turn on new computer. How hard is this? Really? What were the Toshiba people thinking when they came up with this? Now, I hate to be an Apple Fanboy, (ok I love being the Apple Fanboy) but I left WestWorld Computers with my MacBook on Day 1, and by the time I got to the Whitemud Freeway, I was already in Mac OS X playing with Safari and iPhoto. Now, for those unfamiliar with Edmonton, that's about 5 minutes.

Honestly, I was expecting Vista to be more streamlined, less of this insane setup processes and whatnot. I'm afraid I am mistaken. I guess I won't be out of work setting up PCs after all.

(No, I'm not making this up.)

EDIT: Just to add to this, Futureshop wanted to do this whole process (basically standing and waiting) for my client for $200 (CAD). Yes, that's right two hundred dollars. Good thing I do it for $30.