Aside from the annoying facts that I can’t play old computer games or use my almost-new printer, Vista is terribly annoying when it comes to web sites laced with Active X.

Being a technical idiot, I don’t know the details of why Active X is needed to run a web site- I rarely come across it in U.S. web sites, but most Korean web sites have several applications that are needed to run the site. It is disturbing because I have no idea what I’m downloading to my computer; all I know is that I have to have that application to run the site. [A lot of Korean sites don’t run on Firefox either- but I guess that’s another story.]

Most of the Korean government sites (which I have to access to process my taxes or issue electronic documents) and bank sites have several plugins/applications requirements. More annoying than the installation of these programs is that once they are installed, the window closes and you have to start all over again from the beginning.

I thought I had it bad until I saw my mother going through the same problem. She was using Internet banking to send us some money, but after she went through the long process of inputing personal information and account data, she had to install some stupid plugin which “rebooted” the site and made her do the whole thing all over again.

I’m sure that these sites, as well as Vista, have such features to make them harder to hack, but the trouble in trying to access the core information/function of the site has become a tedious process and waste of time for regular users such as myself.