At first glace is looks pretty, well, pretty. The windows have a sort of smoked glass look to them, the task bar is a glossy black, and the start menu is no longer as useless as MSN search. Unfortunately, first impressions do not stick; the Aero blur behind windows is poorley done, it looks like all it’s doing is taking a screenshot, shrinking it to a tenth it’s size, and stretching it out again, an effect photoshop junkies will know all too well. It’s blocky, grainy, and seems to turn white things grey. There are also these weird diagonal lines that go across the ‘glass’ that seem to have no real ‘meaning’, they’re just kinda there to confuse you when you move windows. As if windows weren’t normally bad enough, when you make them full screen, the semi-transparency seems to go away, the titlebar just goes blackish. Why? I have no friggin idea.

I also have a problem with the new Start Menu, it’s better than XP’s no doubt, but really not by much. It’s got that same ‘poor mans blur’ behind it, which I can honestly say I just find anoying. The “All Programs” list goes in the same  box that the default apps go in, and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get back to the default list thing. Even after 2 days the Recent Programs list was filled with, umm, bad links from spyware, yes, spyware, after 2 days! There is one icon at the top of the start menu that changes to reflect the icon of the item that you are hovering over, but it lags, so it really doesn’t help. You still can’t ever find what you’re looking for in the control panel, and even if you could, there are very few useful options anyway, like, no ‘Turn off this cruddy Aero” button. Blech.

And of course, even with a shiny new face, it’s still Windows. Internet Explorer still sucks, Viruses are still counted in the millions and bugs in the ten thousands, anti-virus programs still suck (grandads prevents me from getting on hulu), it’s still slow, it still bluescreens, and, through it all, people still love it. So y’know what, The best version of Windows ever made (which, of course, is saying very little), is STILL Windows 95, hence why I use a mac.