I was really looking forward to Visual Studio SP1 and .NET framework SP1 release and resisted installing all... the betas!

However, I am really disappointed with the quality of the the installation experience. I have tried the ISO download, the full download and the bootstrapper installer. Nothing worked. I have run installation with and without running the preparation tool first. Every single install terminated with a fatal error. The log files did shed some light on the problem, but searching only revealed cryptic references to a corrupted registry key related to the installation of .NET Framework 2.0 SP2.

I would love to install SP1 on my main development machine especially for the ADO.NET features and Dynamic Data, however, I cannot sit through another futile installation attempt.

I think I can wait for either the next version or Visual Studio or for the next time I rebuild my PC and do a clean install of the SP1.

BTW, Vista's complete PC backup and restore saved my bacon twice today, rolling back my machine to its state before the "install" of VS 2008 SP1.

Having navigated for years without a Satellite Navigation system in my car, I have finally got one. I was interested in getting a TomTom Go 720 (£193) but having already got an HTC S620 WM6 Smartphone there were other options.

I finally settled for:

BlueNEXT 51 channel GPS receiver for £24 this was a bargain and had great reviews on Amazon

S620 car charger £4

Co-Pilot Live 7 software for windows mobile £72

Total cost of about - £100. Even with a Western Europe map upgrade for Co-Pilot, the total will come to less than £150.

The GPS receiver is excellent and works well indoors or outdoors. The Co-Pilot software is great and so far has proved great for navigating within the city as well as on motorways.

I opted for Co-Pilot in preference to TomTom 6 Navigator software as the HTC does not have a touch screen but has a querty keyboard and TomTom requires hacks for the keyboard to work with the navigation software. Co-Pilot however, works with the HTC keyboard out of the box and is pretty simple to use.

Co-Pilot central (the desktop companion software) is just a little bit flaky on Windows Vista, but nothing I cannot live with.

For the in-car cradle, I made one from bending a coat-hanger - light, airy, free and work a treat. The HTC sits in the cradle hanging off the central airconditioning grille in the dashboard.

I encountered error 51E while installing an update to Windows Live Photo Gallery through Vista's update. Unfortunately there was no download from Microsoft to install this offline. This was the first time I had encountered this error code on windows update. Searching the web revealed others had encountered 51E but during installation of Vista SP1.

The solution

1. Disable Carbonite
2. Disable Avast on-access scanner.
3. Use windows update to install the update - successfully!
4. Re-enable Avast and Carbonite.

Just disabling Carbonite (as suggested by some for the Vista SP1 error) did not work, neither did just disabling Avast.

Hoping this helps someone else with the same problem.