Paint Shop Pro

As I mentioned in my first lesson, Paint Shop Pro 8 doesn't work properly with Vista. It installs OK but crashes when you try and crop things. So I have installed Paint Shop Pro XI instead. And the patch to make it work with Vista.

So that should work well then. You'd have thunk.

Paint Shop Pro likes to build up a database of pictures on computers, presumably so it can report kiddy-porn to the European Union and the Daily Mirror. Vista likes to protect you from this intrusion in your privacy so that while installing Paint Shop Pro on XP causes a huge crashing of hard drives, on Vista it pauses with a "erm... this isn't quite working properly, look innocent" expression.

That isn't the issue. The problem is the 78 seconds it stands about whistling while it opens up every time after the initial install. "Updating cache settings" it says. Fibber. "Trying to persuade your computer to have a peak at your piccies". Would be more correct. The Corel (makers of PSP XI) web site claims this bug is fixed. Not in the Brave New World of Windows Vista.

OK I can wait a couple of minutes for a program to open; but it is then seriously sluggish. Every task - like mousing over an icon(!) takes an age. Cropping an image takes an age because the lines move way after the command has been issued. It's like working on a satellite link.

The answer? I suspect it has to be XP. The nice people at Corel haven't come up with a solution so what else can I do?

Ubuntu isn't the answer. I am writing this on a laptop with Ubuntu running on it and I really like the operating system, but I have seven years of project files for programs that run on Windows, several of which will not run on Unix.

Or Vista, apparently.