Moving on with Vista

Well I finally bought a new laptop, to partially replace my aging Toshiba. This is a Fujitsu-Seimens Amilo (don't ask the model number etc - all I know is its got a gig of memory and an 80gb hard drive).

I got it from Makro in Leicester - I know the people there are paid a pittance, and work hard for it, but why do they have to be so bloody rude to the paying customers?

Anyway, this thing has got Microsoft's Vista pre-installed (Home Basic) - I expected all manner of problems and a steeeep learning curve - but, as it happens, it's all been pretty plain sailing.

It's a nice clean interface, and while not everything's where you expect it - the interface is pretty intuitive.
As regards compability issues - well, to my surprise both Money 2004 and Railroad Tycoon 3 installed and ran without a hitch. What didn't - well my old faithful Bricks-2000 didn't (now replaced with a 'gadget'), the Solwise Homepower tool for monitoring the Homeplug network won't run once installed; I know that the Palm Installer will not run under Vista so I've not tried (that could be a real bummer!); and most seriously of all - MusicMatch JukeBox (is it 7 - the last decent stable version) is not compatable, because of IE7 issues.

To replace MMJB I've gone for MediaMonkey, which seems to have enough flexibility to do what I want - the main thing being the MMJB AutoDJ function - which MediaMonkey copes with using Smart Playlists - it does seem to have an issue picking up the MMJB rating tag - which MediaMonkey interpets as a Quality rating, but at least everything's there!

By the way - an update on the Dutch Flyer saga - the tickets never came, the payment wasn't on my credit card statement, so I re-ordered, but this time used Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox) and the order went through, and the tickets came in the post 3 days later. Great service - crap website!