“Vista is a four letter word.”

That was the comment recently from the head of an Inland Empire non-profit group who has spent the first part of this year looking for old files and sitting online waiting for tech support to pick up the phone and assist him.

He had used Windows 2000 and had not upgraded when XP came out. Now he has Vista and he finds himself between the computer equivalent of a rock and a hard place. Vista doesn’t work and he can’t go back to 2000. The trick for him is to ask Microsoft for the reload disks. They have to give them to him, but they won’t send them if he doesn’t ask for them.

As Yosarian said, “That’s some catch, that Catch 22.”

I wrote of this problem some months ago when Microsoft first came out with their new operating system. I felt, at the time, that my beloved Apple people would have their new OS X operating system up and running, bug free, when it hit the market.

Such is not the case.

Leopard, the new operating system out of Cupertino, is turning out to be a nightmare. Where the Mac programs have been noted for being bug free and virus protected, the bug new program is just not there.

I should have known there was a problem when Apple refused to send out a review copy. If I wanted it, I was told, I could buy it just like everybody else. Movie critics have learned that when a film is not available for review, it is a sure sign of a loser. I hate to say it but Mr. Jobs must be working on stuffing and mincemeat pie. His turkey has arrived.

Let’s start with the obvious. The new system does not recognize the old OS 9 documents. When the first OS X programs came out, we were told that OS 9 would not work but it would remain in the computer as a separate start up system called Classic.

Now, all of the documents that you and I have written in the old system can no longer be retrieved. We had better have backed them up and printed them out somewhere.

Then there is the e-mail problem.

I have been happy to use AOL for better than a dozen years now. It has served me well. Suddenly nothing works any more. After some time online to tech support, I talked to a nice lady named Ann who told me that is wasn’t just my incompetence, everyone has trouble. As soon as I began to tell her my problems, she interrupted to ask if I was on Leopard.

How did she know?

Well, when we finally got things up and running, a seen message appeared to warn me about the problems (“issues” is the euphemism they use) that AOL subscribers are having with Leopard.

First is the Welcome screen. It no longer works.

You can go to www.aol.com for news and entertainment updates, or just ignore the whole thing. Do you really care about what stupidity Britney Spears got into today? Do not try the new AOL desktop Beta test. They are available to you online but they don’t work. If anything, they will tie up or freeze up your computer even worse.

Some people cannot read their e-mail now on Mac OS X. If so, Mac users can use the Safari function to go around to http://mail.aol.com.

In my case, I can open my mail but the screen will not enlarge. Pictures and fancy artwork press releases that I get cannot be seen in full.

The preferences function does not work in the AOL menu. AOL says you can go to Keyword: Preferences, but I can’t get that to work for me. I keep my password in the preference file. Now I have to type it in every time I sign on. Actually that’s better for security. I should be grateful.

One other problem is attachments. If you have ever sent files or pictures as an attachment, now the little icon is gone. AOL recommends that you drag and drop your file onto the attachment window. This works for me and doesn’t take any more time.

If these tips don’t help go to http://help.aol.com/help/product/macaol/.

AOL promises me that they are working with Apple and they hope to have everything fixed by the end of March. That’s all well and good, but I also lost my entire collection of phone numbers and contacts in my Palm Desktop, along with my calendar.

Meanwhile, my friend with the Vista problem is trying to get the reload disks in order to start fresh.

Good luck to him, and to all of us. I hope.