The Windows Vista Experience: Stable As A House of Cards

Today when I powered on the laptop it didn't boot. It got through the BIOS stuff, Windows started loading and then it just stopped. Black screen, no detectable activity anywhere. After five minutes or so I turned the power off and on again, which prompted Windows to go through some kind of recovery boot. I don't know how long it took, but when I came back after getting a cup of tea or two it was done and I could log in. Upon which I discovered that I left a CD in the drive when I closed it down on Friday. This is the only thing different from the other days I've shut it down, but even for Windows failing to boot because there's a CD in he drive (and no, it didn't try booting from the CD) is amazingly brittle.

Also, it's started doing an entirely new annoying thing today. Every now and then the window I'm working in will lose input focus. Nothing else gets the focus, and nothing I can find prompts the loss. It just happens.

The Windows Vista Experience: Something Nearly Positive!

After changing from Aero to butt-ugly old-style look, things have gotten a bit faster. At least to the point where I can for the most part type normally. There's still the occasional hiccup where it takes a second or so for the latest bunch of characters to appear, but it's not nearly as often as before.

One note to others who may be in a similar situation, though: the speedup doesn't appear immediately after you change the theme. At first I didn't think it helped at all, but after the next boot things got better. So reboot after the theme change.