My XP machine is creaking a lot these days so I have been thinking about putting my life in my hands and considering moving all my essential apps to Veesta and starting over with the XP machine.

My usual way of doing this is to install all of the essential apps on the new machine and once I know they work OK removing them from the old machine and seeing what’s left. A lot of dross usually. I tried doing this with a few apps yesterday and setup Outlook 2003 on Vista OK as well as Deep Log Analyzer which reads blog log files. DLA installed OK and I pointed it at the log files that the XP DLA looks at (I’ve got a sinking feeling about this. Ed). With both machines running DLA and both up to date having both just imported the log files and displaying the same days data the Veesta DLA actually showed a greater number of unique site visitors, about 5% more. Change subject immediately.

Removed Dreamweaver, SQL Server, Visual Studio Express, Microsoft Expression and a couple of other Microsoft products. Left Outlook 2003 on though. Rebooted and ran Outlook 2003. No can do. Removing the other Microsoft products had obviously screwed up Outlook. Stuck the Office 2003 disk in the drive and let it repair itself, which it did, and Outlook was back OK.

I’ve been checking which of these apps are actually Vista compatible and a lot aren’t. Sony Vegas Studio is, so I will be able to edit videos, but its companion product, DVD Architect Studio, which authors DVD’s isn’t. Annoying. As for Cain and Abel, Vista thinks its a virus. Ad-Aware installed OK and even ran, though whether it ran comprehensively I have no idea. About 30 minutes after installing it Vista did pop up a message that it thought Ad-Aware might be spy-ware. 

What I am dreading is the Treo software and syncing in Vista, and the iPod syncing with iTunes. There is also the issue, which makes me shudder just thinking about it, of the ripped music I have on an external USB drive, and backed up to another external USB drive. So what’s the problem. There are about 80,000 music tracks and there is no chance of those being imported into iTunes successfully, whether on Vista or XP, without a fight.  

Quote of the day

‘What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens’ Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Had another go at connecting up the PS3 to the Internet and this time succeeded.

Rather than use the Easy connection option I went for the Custom option which allows you to enter all of the IP addresses, including Primary and Secondary DNS’s. I was OK with the PS3 IP address, as well as the subnet mask and router IP addresses but not the DNS’s as these are dynamically allocated. Therefore out of the 5 addresses it wanted I left 2 blank.

The trouble with that is that without filling up all 5 addresses you can’t save these settings. Well that is my take on it as with 2 blank I could not find any way to save this data. So gave up and did another Easy setup which took longer this time.

This time it found all its IP addresses, connected to the Internet and proceded to download a second O/S upgrade which installed OK. One of these days one of these system upgrades is going to fail, what happens then? I then fired up the browser and the default home page was loaded OK. Stop. Not much more you can do really. Somehow I got the pointer to the URL field but without a keyboard there’s not much chance of entering a URL with a PS3 controller or a Bluetooth remote control. Experiment over.

Quote of the day

‘All generalizations are dangerous, even this one’ Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

I got the PS3 connected to the Internet yesterday and the first thing it did was upgrade the operating system.

After downloading the upgrade it did warn me that whilst it was installing the upgrade not to switch the PS3 off as it could bust the PS3. So what would happen if you had a power cut? (You’d have a broken PS3, idiot. Ed). After the install it asked me whether I wanted to configure Internet access. Eh, I thought it had already done that? Well, sorta. When it scans and finds a wireless connection you get a chance to confirm the connection you want to connect to and then add your WEP key. Then a message is displayed that it has acquired an IP address at which point it visits a Sony site that it knows about directly via a hard coded IP address and does the download thing.

When you get the chance to finish the Internet setup there was an Easy or Custom option. I went for the former and let it thrash around to its heart content. Started up the browser which had a pre-defined home page which magisterially failed to load. Up pops an error message re a missing DNS server. This is obviously part of the Custom setup that I’ll try later.

Another issue was the pointer stuck in the middle of the screen. Well how does that move then? Haven’t a clue. Played with most of the controllers controls but none of them shifted it. Even tried the Bluetooth remote control but it wasn’t budging. Don’t tell me I need to get a Bluetooth mouse. Poor little thing stuck on a coffee table nowhere near a PC.

Quote of the day

‘I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me’ Dave Barry (1947-)