My friend Richard Taylor muses on his blog "It looks like Windows Vista could become the Windows ME of the 21st century". Well, there is a certain similarity; I paid a few pounds for a ME upgrade to 98 which I never used, and I've paid a few pounds for a Vista upgrade to XP MCE which I haven't used. I certainly see no compelling reason to move.
I've written about why, although digital technology is converging, digital products should diverge. I've recently become interested in the Nokia N800 web-tablet. It's a small (think PSP) touch screen based computer which looks ideal as a portable web browser. It has bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, but no cellular connectivity; it is not a phone. A recent blog posting, "maybe your phone doesn't need to be smart" covers some of the good reasons why a bluetooth cell phone plus an N800 could be a really good combination.
My own analysis is that I want my cell phone to be small enough to carry with me at all times - in the pocket of my jeans. This means the phone must be small (thinner than my current Nokia 6822 which can unfold to reveal a qwerty keyboard); robust; work well as a phone(!); and have some non-phone functions (i-net, diary, ...) but it doesn't need to be very good at those things. The 6822 works just fine with the Google Mail Java app for instance. Ultimately, of course, the size of the phone will limit the screen size which ends up limiting its usefulness. I think carrying a second, larger device, with more functionality sounds just.
Of course, today the N800 seems to be lacking a key application, a diary which syncs with other things (Outlook, Google Calender). But I'm sure this will get fixed soon.
The Christmas break has been like the curate's egg as far as the new PC goes.
I successfully wrote my first DVDs - I discovered that my DVD player seems to read both +R and -R sucessfully.
However, I had more fun when it came to burning a CD from an ISO. This has caused me fun and games over the years; I do it infrequently and used to forget how to do it. Surely it's easy with Nero, I thought. But Nero didn't like trying to use a .cue file; it seemed like there was something missing from Nero, or whatever. I tried updating on-line and that didn't work - indeed Nero complained that it couldn't connect to the internet properly. (Subsequently I have decided that this was due to some behaviour of the Bullguard anti-malware. See below). So, I downloaded the newest Nero from the Nero website and installed it. The new version worked just fine but what should have been a really straighforward process took ages.
Then came the real problem. I was trying to add a collection of UK contour maps into my Garmin Mapsource installation. This requires editing the registry. To cut a very long story short, I ended up deciding that I'd messed things up so badly I'd better put the PC back into its delivery state and start again.
The recover procedure worked pretty well. I've now backed up the key recovery files onto DVDs, so I'm safer than I was. It's taken about a day to get things back to a pretty much full installation. I'm just missing my Garmin installation, which I've decided to leave until last. Nero caused some issues. The orginal installation worked fine but there does seem to be some problem with Nero and Bullguard; I ended up disabling the firewall while Nero was installing and then all went well.
In conclusion. Firstly, be very careful editting the registry (but you knew that). Secondly, Nero and Bullguard have a problem with their relationship. Thirdly, I was impressed by the reinstallation process that Medion supplied.
The reason I've not reviewed my passport holder thoroughly is that I have just bought a new PC. It's not just a PC, it's a "Multimedia Internet Entertainment PC". Actually, its a Medion 8818, which is a E6300 (core duo) powered machine with 1 Gbyte of RAM, a Lightscribe DVD writer, a DVD reader, TV tuner, some 256 Mbyte video card with HDI, DVI and VGA out. I also bought a new 19" monitor. Yes, Aldi did well out of me on Sunday. (For those of you not in the know, Aldi is a low-end supermarket chain that sometimes does amazing offers on expensive goods).
Anyhow, I've been busy clearing of the viruses that came installed (e.g. MS Office 60-day trial) and installing the essentials of life (Google Earth, Google Pack, Firefox, ...). However, I have a problem; when I sync my Palm to my new PC I get the blue screen of death! I've now spent about three or four hours looking into this problem - which has pissed me off no end as part of the reason for buying a ready built PC is so I didn't have to debug something I'd built. Anyhow, Microsoft pointed the finger at an NVidia driver problem (there is an obscure problem with the interaction between power management software, threading in the NVidia driver and dual core processors). I tried NVidia's new drivers and their suggestions without luck. Then I looked on the Palm site. Palm doesn't support Windows Media Centre. I don't know why, I don't care, but problem over as far as I am concerned. I was thinking of returning the PC but I think I'll have to ask Santa for a new PDA instead.
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