Click on the picture above for a complete guide to Windows Vista

Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows Vista, has finally arrived.
From here on in, if you’re going to purchase a new PC computer, Windows Vista will be the operating system your computer will come loaded with. For those PC users who have are currently running Windows XP, lucky you — Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP through til April 2009, with security updates available til April 2014.
So there’s no great need to rush out and by the latest iteration of the world’s most popular operating system (currently resident on more than 98% of the world’s computers).
Now, there are those who take take umbrage with Vista’s bloatware, and there are those who are so far outside the computer loop (i.e. those people who are still running Windows 95 / 98 / ME / 2000) that the issue of which operating system they are running is of little consequence.
For the rest of us, though, Window Vista portends the future of computing and democratic communication, wherein your computer becomes a hub that does everything from answering your phone and taking messages, to providing you with information on which food items you’re running short of in your refrigerator and your cupboards, and everything in between.
Computers as the broadcast engine for personal video and corporate broadcast television onto your HDTV, and high-end streaming audio into every audio device in your home. Computers as seamless integrated machines that are invested in every part of your home and in your life.
A quarter of century on, we’re still at the beginning of a communications revolution, a revolution that will give voice to the many, and a democratic future of involvement in the everyday decisions which impact on our lives.
Maybe not in this generation … but soon, very soon.

Even though, according to esteemed, but seemingly addled, U of Calgary Political Science professor Michael Keren “bloggers are lonely people who live in a make-believe world” (such shallow analysis of the role of independent voices in the blogosphere, one might think, designed to act as a disincentive to bloggers to continue our posting written and multimedia materials), VanRamblings has decided to begin posting daily — most likely, shorter articles than previously — for the next while. Take that, Dr. Keren (hey, you wanna pay for our therapy?).
First up today, we’ll point you to an article in the Vancouver Courier about Shallom Ly (pictured above), a Vancouver-based fashionista who publishes a weblog (or blog, if you will) called Stylefinds, a subjective, local (if you’re living in Vancouver) and quite readable shopping and lifestyle guide.
Next up, you’ll notice if you look down a bit, and to the right that there are two other new blogs in VanRamblings’ blogroll — local photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward’s “A Thousand Words”, gorgeously conceived and updated daily; and the Vancouver Housing Market Blog, which offers an anonymous and engaging take on the local real estate development scene (all the while causing much consternation among various government agencies, and all those involved in one way or another in the real estate development market).
Well, that’s it for today. Who knows what we’ll come up with for tomorrow?

Long thought to be a particularly insecure web browser, Internet Explorer has finally gotten the makeover long promised by Microsoft.
This past Tuesday, Bill Gates and company made their next generation browser available to the public, and although some critics are not thrilled, other critics are taking a wait and see attitude.
With Firefox’s dramatic inroads into the browser market this past year (now installed on 25% of user’s computers as their primary browser) Microsoft had to do something. And they have.
So, what’s the big whoop about Internet Explorer 7?
Well, there’s tabbed browsing for a start, with an interface that seems to this observer to be a tad friendlier than Firefox’s much earlier entry into the realm of tabbed browsing. There’s the new Zoom feature (just like Opera, the favourite next generation browser of many VanRamblings’ readers). Readily accessible zooming allows old fogeys (like me) to zoom in and out of a page and not have to strain to read the often tiny print on a web page.
There’s also a whole bunch of other new features, including security protection (with a built-in phishing filter and a one-click browser history delete facility). Mention should be made, too, of IE7’s much enhanced search feature, which now includes Google, Yahoo and AOL.
Internet Explorer 7 is now available for download, so you may want to become the first person on your block to download IE7 (caveat emptor).
Note: A reader takes VanRamblings to task for not mentioning that IE7 is in beta version, and as such is itself insecure. Thanks to Sara for helping to keep VanRamblings on the straight and narrow (and by the way, IE6 or IE7, VanRamblings’ rendering in either Microsoft product sucks. We recommend either Firefox 1.5 — long our default browser — or Opera 8.5). The final version of Internet Explorer 7 is set to be released in June 2006.
Update … users report that Internet Explorer 7 is riddled with bugs: Now, Sara isn’t saying I told you so, although she might. Web maven and master of all he surveys — that would be VanRamblings’ webmaster, Michael Klassen — passes along this timely ZDNet article detailing the many, many bugs that early adopters of IE7 have found, ranging from a denial of service vulnerability to a conflict with McAfee security software, and so much more.

Click on Enter above. There’s a ‘wonderful’ story to be told.