Return of the ThinkPad Beep

I recently installed Windows Vista, and guess what was one of the first things to happen? I was typing along merrily, when suddenly a heart-wrenching beep! sounded in my ears.

Yes, it was the infamous ThinkPad beep. How anyone ever thought this was a good idea is beyond me. Now that I finally have Vista, I can show you what the process looks like in this OS. Thankfully, it’s very similar to how it works in XP.

 

Notice that the above images look terrible with tons of JPEG artifacts? That’s Microsoft Paint for ya. No image format optimization. I should’ve switched it to PNG when I’d had the chance. 

Upgrading to Vista has also given me an opportunity to try Internet Explorer 7. Unfortunately, I must honestly say that I’m impressed. It’s a pretty darn good browser. I even figured out its keyboard shortcuts, which make no sense. Alt + D for the Address bar. Ctrl + E for the search box. In Firefox, these are Ctrl + L (for Location bar) and Ctrl + K (don’t ask me why).

Luckily, I switched to Firefox in the 6.0 days, having used FF since it was first released. Thus, I’m hooked and will be downloading it shortly. Of course, FFox has other advantages I’ll be happy to return to. For instance, the far-superior Find function (Ctrl + F) and the Download Manager. And it’s a lot smoother overall, too. For example, I can start typing a location in one tab, switch to another tab for reference, and switch back, and the location I started typing will still be there. (No go in IE.)

Does anyone know how Google Desktop Search works with Vista’s built-in search? Do they conflict? Slow down the computer? Which is better?

As a Google guy myself, I have to get G Desktop Search just to see how it runs. But long-term, and for friends and family, what’s my recommendation?