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?