So Microsoft have released Vista. Is it me, has it been greeted with a certain amount of apathy? I mean, who's really bothered? XP kinda works. In fact Windows 98 kind-of worked.

I think it all went wrong for me when we lost the DOS prompt. I know, I know, old man talking... but the thing was, it was more fun back in those days. It's too easy now, in a sort of hard way. Using DOS, you knew you were up against it... when you got something to work it was an achievement. Nowadays, you get something to work under Windows and you think, well I should bloomin' well hope so. Not the same.

And, I suppose, really, deep down inside, the problem is, Muggles can use Windows. I liked it when my knowledge of strange commands set me apart from my fellow man. "Run 'chkdsk'" I'd say and people would be in awe and want to know what this magic meant. Ah the good old days.

More to the point people would pay you handsomely to know all that rubbish. Being a computer programmer may have been nerdy and sad, but it was well paid nerdy and sad. Once I'd morphed into a 'Software Engineer', strangely things changed.

Anyone for a return to MS-DOS then? Think how fast it would run. Come on, you know you want to...