Found on The Devils Kitchen

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.

The new XPS M1530 that I recently purchased from Dell was flawless except for 1 small problem. The cover at the back of the LCD did not fit snugly over the LCD bezel on one side.

I called up Dell customer service on 4th of March and spoke to a very nice and helpful lady who asked me to send in pictures of the defect. I did the same day. I also mentioned that I would really not like to be without the laptop and would either prefer an onsite repair or a replacement. I did not hear anything from Dell till today - I received an email informing me that a replacement laptop had been dispatched. Looking at details, it seems that the replacement order was authorised on the 5th of March, the day after I sent in the pictures of the defect.

I have been a Dell customer for the past 3 years - I have bought 2 desktops, an Inspiron laptop and an XPS M170 laptop and have never had any problems with the hardware. The XPS M1530 is a brilliant machine which looks awesome and performs very well. This is the first time ever that I have had to interact with Dell's customer service and the experience been great. Good on you Dell. You have a very satisfied customer.

With the performance of my XPS M170 becoming erratic and the machine not running as fast as before (with the number of programs running concurrently), it was time to upgrade.

Just got a new Dell XPS M1530 (Product Red) the machine arrived, as usual, well before the estimated date of delivery. Installation of all the software took 2 days and I am very pleased with my choice. The laptop looks gorgeous, the display is crisp and not a dead pixel in sight. Although not feather light the machine is not too heavy and definitely portable.

I opted for the 9 cell high wattage battery, which adds an extra bump to the back of the laptop a slightly unsightly tradeoff for increased battery life.

The integrated fingerprint reader works well and elicits great "wows" from the kids!

High bloody time. MPs are paid by what I and the rest of the tax payers give to the Inland Revenue and are there because we elected them to be in office. It is about time that their expenses were investigated and subject to the same public scrutiny that other government spending comes under. It infuriates me to see that some people manage to get away by exploiting every single loophole in a policy, while the rest of us are expected to toe the line as "good citizens".

Expenses being used to build property portfolios, expenses kept "within the family" - I hope that MPs realise that they are spending "public money". I wonder how much more money would be in the NHS budget or allocated to social care of the elderly if public money wasn't being misused.

It is however sad that the investigation will be carried out by the Commons investigations committee. MPs investigating MPs, I wonder whether their would be bias at all??!!

BBC News

Bought a new MP3 player last week. I am very anti Apple/i-Pod products and was never going to get one of those. It was either going to be a Sony or Creative. Sony didn't appeal very much because of the dependence on their own software to encode and transfer tracks (except for the new players). I liked the Zen Stone Plus for its simplicity, the ability to drag and drop tracks, charging via USB and the decent capacity. My main aim is to use it for listening to Podcasts while driving.

I am very happy with the player. The display screen does get greasy and dirty easily but maybe because the player is black this is just more visible.