The Epson DX8450 is still painfull in that it doesn’t feed paper too well and the HP PSC2355 has completely given up the ghost, well it’s got a permanent carriage jam problem.

The cost of print catridges is so much I’m going to look at getting a laser printer that has very expensive cartridges but that do last for years with my kind of usage. If I get a laser without the scanning and copying functionality they are relatively cheap but that does mean that I will need to keep the old Epson connected so that it can do that stuff. Now which laser do I get?

On Linkedin I belong to a load of testing groups and I get email whenever someone posts a question. So many of these questions are banal beyond belief and some are just downright begging letters for others to brain dump testing knowledge on some hapless group members. I know it’s supposed to be a forum for people to share knowledge but jeez it’s so one way.

I’m starting to look into getting a new PC with Windows 7. I have installed 7 Ultimate on an old laptop but it runs like a dog and hasn’t got the hardware necessary to do the XP virtualisation thing. I might get some more memory for it. My old XP PC also runs out of steam soon enough after starting anything and the power supply fan starts up in a vain attempt at letting the processor do something. That PC also needs more memory and a bigger power supply. The Vista PC also needs more memory, currently with only 2 gig. When I start VM’s soon enough that PC’s power supplies fan starts up, so that PC also needs more memory. This could get expensive.

I downloaded the beta version of Windows 7 yesterday and installed it onto a new VM under VMWare and it does look a bit like Vista, a sort of cut down simplified version.

Just starting 7 is hardly a test of it though. What I need to do is use it in anger. Give it net access, set up email, newsgroups, install iTunes, rip and sync some music, download some iPhone apps and see if I can get 7 and iTunes to sync with the iPhone (Are you crazy? This is beta software. Ed). Good point. Not sure if I can be bothered with testing Windows 7 as that’s my day job.

After the shambles of Vista a lot of people seem to like the idea of Windows 7. Maybe their getting nervous having not bought in to Vista and realising that XP is a bit long in the tooth and maybe they’re getting left behind a bit so have decided to ‘like’ Windows 7. But if it’s so similar to Vista, which they disliked……….

Our local HMV, which was originally a rekud shop a long time back now includes console and PC games and appears to be selling games more than anything else. I can see in a couple of years time someone’ll spin off the games part into a HMV Games outlet or something like that. They do seem to be selling a lot of games and to a very broad spectrum of people. Seems that games no longer have a geeky reputation going by the people that appear to be buying them these days. Or maybe they just work better.

I was bought a soccer PS3 games at Christmas but there was no way I was playing that. I tried returning it to the shop where it was bought and to get it changed and that wasn’t easy but finally managed to get it swapped for Midnight Club Los Angeles. I has a quick go in arcade mode and the graphics are terrific, I was able to recognise places that I’d been to and even a house I stayed in.