Exams Are Over!!

The Exams are over! I'm very glad. How do I think I've done? Well in a nutshell, I think that I was okay with the Database Techniques module. Who knows how Ive done in the Software Engineering module? Advanced Programming may have been a pass but I was too late on discovering a fantastic book from SAMS Publishing called Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days which was loaned to me by a friend. The Networking and Enterprise architecture module might just be a big fat fail. I have had a hard year this year, and I hope I've passed the Quantitative Methods module because I would actually have to leave University if I had to do another seven module year because I struggle with a normal workload. To keep up with everyone is a big challenge, and then they attached a failed first year module onto my work load so this year I have been bodging everything, and after Easter I just cracked and stopped doing anything useful..

On a ligher note I have been thinking a lot about cars. It's funny but in Bradford, you won't ever see a Rover. In fact the closest thing you'll see to a Rover in Bradford is an MG - you won't even see a dog named Rover. If I had a dog, I wouldn't call him Rover, I would call him Leyland, so then he would own Rover. Now where did I know that cat called Austin from? Oh never mind, I digress. Noiw you're probably wondring "Where have all these old British cars gone?" I can tell you they all turned up in Hull. If you go round the University campus, Salmon Grove or Hallgate Road in Cottingham, you'll find then all there. You'll even find the old Austin Metro, but mainly it will be Rover 25's of the 2002-2004 era. This had me thinking. When I look back on my childhood, say from when I was three years old to when I was about seven or eight, all the cars that I remember apart a few were all British, or more to the point, they were mainly all Austins. I remember being at Firecliffe nursery in Bradford (which is now just a family centre) and being taken home in an Austin Metro, being taken to school in an Austin Maestro, and when I was seven, my taxi driver swapped his Peugeot for an Austin Montego in British Racing Green. Personally, I think that was a very very wise switch, as the Peugeot is French, and I'm not the biggest fan of French cars. It's a shame our mass-production of cars has ceased, because it would be nice to look at cars on the road and to say "Yes, that's one of ours". OK I know we still have Vauxhall but they are all just rebadged Opels, which are built in Germany, so that REALLY doesn't count. I get a good feeling when I stop and think for a minute that the Mercedes McLaren SLR was engineered in, yes you guessed it, England's Green and Pleasant Land! So we CAN still build cars! That's probably why why the McLaren SLR isn't a boring Bovarian faceless slug like the rest of Mercedes. I know they aren't engineered in Britain either but given the choice between a Porsche 911 and an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, I would go for the Aston every time, just like Jeremy Clarkson did in the Top Gear Christmas Special in 2005. That was probably the cleverest thing we'll ever see Clarkson do, so if you want to see the episode in question, it is Series 07 Episode 06/

Outcasted by the version of Windows I run

I have just realised that in Chez Student, I am the only person who still runs Windows XP on any of my machines. I have just reinstalled WIndows XP Professional on my Ergo Ensis removing the Windows Media Center/Ubuntu 7.10 setup I had before. My MacBook also runs Windows XP Pro under Parallels and also as a stand-alone OS. Everyone else in this house runs Windows Vista on their laptops, apart from one very sensible housemate that runs Mac OS 10.4.11 on her G4 PowerBook. I like being the only one who runs XP. Personally however, I do like Mac OS 10.5.2, which is the primary OS on my MacBook. I like how you can plug in anything and it will work. I was at my friend's yesterday. I plugged in my Nokia N95 and it worked straightaway as a modem. All I had to do was to enter the phone number to dial onto the 3G/GPRS network, and the APN for the network - an option that Windows doesn't have by default, and then I was online thanks to my new unlimited data plan courtesy of Vodafone. Very impressed

Dual-Monitor Setup

Yesterday, I bought myself a new 19" Widescreen monitor yesterday. I have made a dual-screen setup with my old monitor. It works quite well

Ironically Enough however

If I drove (which I unfortunately can't because of my vision) I would probably have a Golf GTI. I would like to know however why did VW not let Top Gear take the Veyron round their track. I would love to see a lap time for that. Oh and I'm glad to see the Bora has gone! In my opinion it IS Maserati and it should stay that way. OK OK It's really a Citroen but let's just gloss over that. Close your eyes for one moment and just imagine if Ferrari had made the Bora – ah yes that's much better. On the flip-side however VW do make some very nice and affordeable family cars, so keep up the good work.

I am very interested in the Mercedes S-Class with it's radar assisted brakes. This will enable the car to drive itself at the speed of the car in front. It goes faster, you go faster, it goes slower, you go slower. If Mercedes advance much further, then I may be able to drive one day. Please do it, Mercedes. Driving has been my dream since my parents (ironically) bought a Volvo 240 Estate (Wagon if you're American) and I fell in love with the car (I wouldn't drive one today). Please Mercedes, make me a car that I can drive. I have a rating of 6 in my left eye and 3 in my right. If anybody can get me legally driving on the roads, the Germans can. I'm counting on you!

.......... after I Bitched about Volkswagen :-s

Unanswered (And probably unasked) questions about Volkswagen

1. Why the heck won't you let the Stig take a Veyron round the Top Gear track and grab a time – I mean come on!!!! When the Bugatti Veyron was created in 2005 it was the fastest road car available – it's not like it's going to be a crap time or anything!! Come on VW Please don't annoy me!
   
2. Why is the Lupo so girly?
   
3. A mid-engine van? Give me a break!
   
4. Why do your 2001 minibuses sound like they are going to blow up every time you reverse?
   
5. Whilst on the subject of minibuses – what the flip is with that ANNOYING park assist – A more subtle sound please????
   
6. Is the Veyron pregnant? Why so bulbous?
   
7. The Bora is a 1970's mid-engine Italian Supercar from Maserati which looks very nice – I'd buy one any day – not your rebadged Skoda Octavia!
   
8. Why is the Golf so expensive? What do you think makes it so special?
   
9. The Beetle was crap the first time around so what makes you think it won't be this time?
   
10. I'm sorry but why do you make the older Passats look like Audi's. BE ORIGINAL PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fixing Computers

On Sunday I was out fixing Denise's computer. I needed to make Lego Star Wars work on Windows Vista and then install an Epson C60 printer. I made Lego Star Wars work by setting the compatibility mode to XP and running the game as Administrator. This works – but if you want to quit mid-game and restart the computer blue-screens and restarts. The printer installed easily enough. I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and the printer installed itself the minute it was plugged in. It even can detect ink levels. It was nice to be on the job again fixing computers. I've not done this since I fixed My Mum's Friend's Daughter's PC last summer. At least here Denise has Broadband Internet so it was done very quickly.

A follow-up on ZoomText

I rung up Ai Squared in America a few days ago and asked if I could install ZoomText on Windows x64. Unfortunately they said that they don't support Windows x64. I asked if they had any plans to support it and they said no.
I'm very disappointed with Windows!

64-bit Windows discriminates

After a stress-free Easter vacation with only my MacBook to use as my main computer, I am now back in Hull where my Vista workstation is. Coming back and installing The Sims 2 I found that the graphics were unsatisfactory. The card crashed on Need for Speed Carbon, and Zoomtext is being er, well, Zoomtext really. Unlike Zoom on the Mac, Zoomtext offers very jerky screen magnification. NOT what I needed really. I decided the time was ripe for a new graphics card. I decided on the purchase of an nVidia GeForce 8500GT. This card (apart from the uber-noisy fan) is a good card. I can now see every single strand of hair on my Sims' heads (well I can if I zoom right in on their hair), and the graphics in NFS Carbon are as smooth as the engine of the Alfa Romeo Brera that I drive on the game. There was still one problem however. Windows Media Center decided to struggle with videos, causing Jeremy Clarkson to pause for a long time in his Merc SLR, and then suddenly go at about 1,000MPH - out of sync with the sound of the car's engine. Also, ZoomText's performance was very very poor. I decided then to throw another sexty quid at my computer on upgrading it from 2 to 4GB of RAM. The reason it cost so much is because i bought 3 1GB modules to match the original 1GB module I installed when I built the machine. Also, I could not lay my hands on a single 2GB stick for love nor money. I decided to buy three 1GB modules and install them in a dual-channel configuration so that I would recieve a performance hit. Unfortunately as I am running 32-bit Windows, it will acknowlledge my full 4GB of RAM but it won't address it. System Information tells me that I have 4GB installed but I only have 3GB available. I was looking at upgrading to 64-bit Windows because of this, and that's where the problems started. ZoomText 9.1 will not work with 64-bit Windows, and neither will Dolphoin's Lunar magnifier. I'm sorry but just because I'm visually impaired doesn;t mean that I shouldn't be able to use 64-bit Windows. PC is completely garbage if you are disabled. Mac OS X 10.5 is completely 64-bit but I have absolutely no problems either running 32-bit software or even magnifying the screen. I am sorry dear readers but once again I'm outraged.

On the flip-side however now I can do something about it. Hopefully I will start third year in September and my third year project is a screen reader/magnifier, and I want to try and haveit run on Windows x64. I feel I have my work cut out for me. the fact that I am visually impaired means that as long as I choose to use Windows, I can only ever utilize 3GB of my RAM. Thanks Micro$oft. I don't suppose you'll give me a £20 refund for that 1GB module that will never be used :-(

What happenned to useful software bundles for new PCs

While I've been at home I've had to use the recovery programs to restore both my mum's Medion Titanium PC that she bought from Aldi in April 2002 and my old Advent 7083 laptop which I passed on to my mum. The Medion PC, which originally cost £699 for just the base unit, and which was specified with a Pentium 4 2.0GHz CPU, 256MB DDR RAM, a Seagate 80GB HDD, a Sony 24x10x32 CD-Writer, DVD-ROM drive and an nVidia GeForce MX 460 graphics card with Dual VGA, came preinstalled with a healthy software bundle, of which none was bloatware. The PC came preinstalled with Microsoft Works Suite 2002, which at the time was an impressive software package, because the UK release included:
- Microsoft Works 6.0 - a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office, which included a word processor, spreadsheet application, a database program, a calendar and Works Portfolio which kept your files together in a Microsoft Binder-esque sort of way.
- Microsoft Word 2002 - The full version of Microsoft Word from Office XP. This came with a plug-in so that Word would be integrated into the Microsoft Works Task Launcher
- Microsoft Encarta 2002 Standard - the 2002 version of the world's best selling encyclopaedia.
- Microsoft Money 2002 - a very good money management program that can import statements from online banks and help you keep track of your chequebook, and your income and expenditure.
- Microsoft Picture-It! Photo 2002 - a simple photo editing package which let you enhance photos and make them into calendars, greeting cards, postcards or other publications.
- Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 - A program that enabled you to look at maps of The UK and Western Europe. You can use AutoRoute to plan jouneys, using either the quickest or shortest route, and it would give you information about the journey, such as a schedule, the cost (including the cost of petrol, etc) and points of interest along the way. Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 comes with Pocket Streets 2002 which you can install on to your Microsoft Windows CE based PDA. You could then import maps into Pocket Streets from AutoRoute.

Also included on the Medion PC was a full version of Nero Burning ROM 5.5 and Cyberlink PowerCinema. Apart from AntiVirus software, this PC came with everything you need right out of the box to start being productive. You could buy the base-unit, but if you bought the monitor, printer, scanner and digital camera, you had a complete set up for under £1,000 which is very useful to anybody looking for a computer bundle.

The Advent laptop on the other hand came with very little useful software preinstalled. On booting up for the first time, the Advent laptop comes with Microsoft Works 8.5, Napster (now fully legal), NTI CD and DVD Maker 3, Intervideo WinDVD, an AOL demo and Windows Media Player 10. When I used the Advent, my first time with NTI CD and DVD Maker resulted in a coster (a corrupt CD), so that had to go. I replaced it with Nero 7.0 Premium, and Microsoft Works was replaced by Microsoft Office 2003 Professional.

Nowadays if you buy a new PC, you will have a lot of trialware that will not work after thirty days unless you pay for it. It has become common practice for new machines to come preinstalled with Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - a sixty day trial. It would be nice to see computers come with fully featured productivity software that won't run out, and that isn't bloatware - and why do AOL insist on installing their demos onto every new PC. Most of us don't use AOL, and we're not going to start just because there's an icon on the desktop saying AOL 9.0 trial. I live in Hull were AOL demos are completely redundant because we can only use KC Broadband in Hull.

Apple know how to equip their computers with good software. Every new Mac comes preinstalled with the latest version of their iLife suite, which includes iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and .Mac Photo Gallery. iLife '08 can be bought on it's own or it will come preinstalled on new Macs. Mac OS X Leopard comes preinstalled with a DVD player and decoder and Disk Utility, which will work with hard disks as well as burning data CDs and DVDs. iTunes will let you burn audo CDs, and iDVD will let you burn movie DVDs, and as i've found out, it does so very well. I was able to burn two one-hour long DivX Videos to DVD using iDVD's Professional Quality encoder, and they played back flawlessly in my parents' set-top Toshiba DVD/Video Recorder. The only thing that lets Macs down when it comes to preinstalled software is the fact that a full Office suite isn't included. There are thirty-day trial versions of iWork '08 and Microsoft Office 2004 included but none-of these are full versions.

On retrospect, I think that the reason you have such a poor and bloaty selection of software included with PCs is that people don't seem to want software bundles anymore. They complain about how sluggish new PCs are because of this software. I do think Aldi/Medion had the right idea though because all of the bundled software can have uses in modern home-life, from writing letters and e-mails to homework assignments and coursework, to editing photos and making multimedia presentations and slideshows, the 2002 Medion PC had it all. Even the new Medion machines don't come with half as good a software bundle. Come on PC manufacturers, give us something we'll like! or we'll all make like I did and buy Macs! oh yes and please please please, don't bundle Windows Vista with machines that are specified any less than Dual-Core 2.4GHz with 4GB of DDR-3 RAM because it just won't work fast enough because it is so sluggish!

A nearly concise review about my MacBook – oh and yet another hard drive

As of Yesterday I have had my Apple MacBook for a week. I say a week, but it's more like a week tomorrow. The reason for this is that I had to take my MacBook in last Saturday to change it as the number 6 key was playing up. They changed the machine without a hitch, and just put my hard drive into the new machine so that I could keep my data. All very well and good but I think that upset OSX a little bit, so yesterday I reformatted my MacBook's HDD and reinstalled Leopard. It is very simple to do. All you need to do is back up all your important data, insert 'MacBook install Disk 1', and select Install OSX and Applications. The MacBook will reboot and you will be brought into the installer, where you select your language, and the disk you want to install Leopard to. You witll be then prompted to select 'Erase and Insta'' for a clean install. Once you've done that, OSX checks the installation media before it does anything so that it is sure the media is clean. Once the installation CD is deemed okay, it goes onto install Mac OS X. Your MacBook will reboot and you will be asked for Disk 2i once it's rebooted. Insert the disk and click OK and setup will continue. Once it's finished, you will see the Leopard Welcome movie (You only ever see this when you start up your MacBook for the first time, or when you clean-install Leopard). You will be then taken through the initial setting up phase that you will have seen when you first bought your MacBook. If there is a wireless network connection available, your MacBook will prompt you to log on to it. If you are authorized to do so, log on to the wireless network, and enter your Apple ID (this will be the same as your iTunes account information). You should then see a screen with your contact details, check this is correct and click next. Next you will be asked to setup a user account. This will entail you typing in a username and a password, and either selecting a user icon, or taking a photo of yourself using the inbuilt iSight camera. Once you've done this, you will be asked to subscribe to .Mac, or to activate your current subscription. If you have a .Mac subscription, activate this now. If you don't, and would like to set one up, you can do this for one year for £70, or you can do as I did and hit Skip. You will then be asked if you would like a free trial of .Mac. Make your choice and click Next. Set up will now tell you that your Mac is ready to use. Click Done and you will be taken to Leopard's desktop. Just to clarify if you bought your MacBook with iLife '08 on it, it will be reinstalled. Ass will the iWork free trial, and the Microsoft Office 2004 free trial.

Now for my review of the MacBook and OSX leopard:

As a Windows user I found it surprisingly easy to move over to OSX. However, I did find the dock confusing at first as some programs live on it if they're open or not. The way to tell if a program oin the dock is open is to check if it has a white dot underneath it (or a black shortcut like arrow on Tiger). On OSX, things seem more logical than Windows, and it all just works. Program installation is easy on OSX. Most programs come on a .DMG file, which when opened, mounts a virtual disk image on the desktop. You open it and it brings up a picture of the program, and the Applications folder, and you just need to drag it onto that image, and it will install itself. For those programs that don't have shortcut to the Applications folder on their disk image however, just open the Applications folder and drag it into there manually. If a program is going to do anything to the system settings, it will ask you for your sudo password.

I bought Parallels Desktop 3.0 and installed Windows XP so that I can run Visual Studio 2008. I hate having to run Windows on a Mac, but then again I do need it for the course. Its better running on Parallels though as Zoom will work with Windows and as it's built into OSX, it doesn't slow the system down like ZoomText 9.1. I am getting to grips with Voice Over because I want blind people to start using Macs as they're cheaper to buy than JAWS itself, let alone a laptop to run it on. I think that Macs are more a people's machine. You can tell all over that Mac OSX was built by humans, for humans. I like it very much and I'm starting to prefer it over my Windows machine.

In other news I bought a Western Digital Elements Go 500GB External hard disk today. The reason being is that I want to take my entire music collections and some videos with me when I travel. I am going home next week as its Easter, and I quite fancy having my music collection and all my Top Gear videos there with me. It works on Windows and OS X 10.3 and above, so I will be able to enjoy all my digital content on my MacBook.

It's been too long

Hello everybody. First of all, I would like to apologize for my posting on the 7th/8th of February.
It's been a while since I blogged on here but I'm back now. It's been a bit of an eventful month. On the first of this month, Vodafone renewed my contract and I now own a shiny new Sony Ericsson K850i. What do I think of this handset? Well what can I say.
On opening the box, I was greeted by the sight of my new phone. I carefully took that out of the box, and lifted the cardboard back to reveal the battery, charger headphones, instruction manuals and the installation CD. I followed the instructions to insert the battery and my Vodafone SIM card. The reason I followed the instructions is because instead of using a slide-off back cover to access the battery, this phone uses a flap on the bottom of the phone, similar to that of Sony CyberShot digital cameras. Pushing the flap up and then pulling it out reveals a slot for the battery, a 512MB M2 Micro Memory card which has already been installed, and a SIM card slot. To insert the battery, i had to lift up an orange catch, which was fiddly. Inserting the SIM card was easy; you just push it into the slot until it clicks into place. I removed the 512MB memory card and inserted the 2GB card that I had in my K800. I must admit that I do rather like the fact that the phone will take both M2 and SDHC memory cards, which means I can use my current memory card now and upgrade at a later date to a 4GB or 8GB card that will be cheap.

Powering up the phone went without a hitch, with the setup wizard helping me to set the date and time, and copy contacts I may have on my SIM card. In no time, I was at the main screen. Making calls is a pleasure with clear call quality. The screen is also a pleasure to look at as it is bright and has a high contrast which can be seen in just about lighting. The screen will alter it's brightness to suit the lighting conditions, so if you are using the phone in bright daylight, the screen will be very bright, whereas if you are using it in the dark, it will be slightly dimmer so as not dazzle you.

I do have one minor qualm with the phone however. When you are on the phone,, if you press it to your cheek then you are likely to invoke the touch sensitive buttons which can be a bit annoying at times. On the Vodafone branded version, the right soft key is set to Vodafone Live and that cannot be changed. this means that quite often I'm finding myself connecting to Vodafone Live when I don't necessarily want to. Also, for some people the keypad can be confusing as the D-pad is set around 2 and 5. This can take some getting used to but most should adapt pretty quickly to this arrangement.

This phone's Piece De Resistance is it's CyberShot 5 megapixel camera with a Xenon flash. I took it out to an ISA party that was happenning that night and took several pictures with it. This produces crystal-clear sharp shots - as long as you do not touch the back of the phone while you are taking the photo. Doing so produces very dark results.

For me, it is important that I can synchronize my phone with my computer. This is made easy by Sony Ericsson PC Suite. The new version of the software sports an intuitive interface which makes it easy to do such tasks as browse the phone's memory and (if one is installed) the phone's memory card. Synchronising was just a case of hitting Synchronize on the left hand side, selecting what I wanted to sync, and then hitting the Synchronize button in the right pane. I'm not too keen on the installer for Sony Ericsson PC Suite 3.x because it installs the drivers for every SE phone at install-time and this on Window Vista machines like my desktop can take a long time.

Bettery life on this phone is good if you don't plan to overly use any of the more power-hungry features like Bluetooth, GPRS and the Xenon flash. I get about two days charge from this phone, which is generally left switched on (apart from when I lose my charger).

Overall this is a good phone, and now that most of the bugs have been fixed, I can make a recommendation on this phone. To this end, I will give it a 4/5 rating.

In other news, I have been hard at work with my computer equipment. This month has seen my Ergo Ensis laptop have it's RAM doubled from 1GB to 2GB. This was done in a futile attempt to make Windows run faster when Office 2007 or Visual Studio 2008 is running, especially with ZoomText 9.1 in use. I had wanted to use Windows Vista with my laptop as it is a good operating system with lots of good features. However, the laptop had other ideas, so I recycled my Windows XP Media Center Edition license and installed XP MCE 2005 on my laptop, and dual-booted it with Ubuntu 7,10, an OS which I like more and more as I use it. Not two weeks later, my desktop computer also recieved an upgrade in the form of a Samsung 500GB S-ATA drive. This was because my 320GB HDD is starting to become full, as is my 160GB HDD. I need more space for all those episodes of Top Gear, The Simpsons and Family Guy, er I mean all that work and all the development environments I need to do that work (Visual Studio 2008 in't exactly lightweight). Because S-ATA is a serial interface, much like USB, Windows Vista thinks now that I would like to eject the hard disk on which it is installed! Duh!!!!! Well don there Microsoft! At least it won't let me actually eject it because when I try to do so (just out of curiosity, honest) it tells me that it can't stop it right now as it's in use.

In other news, I have finally bought a Macbook! The reason is because even with the RAM upgrade, my poor Ensis cannot keep up with my computing requirements with ZoomText being a RAM hog. I made the purchase at KRCS, an authorized Mac seller, which is just opposite Princes Quay in Hull. The person behind the counter was very friendly and he helped me choose a Macbook and even doubled the memory in it. The specs of my new Macbook are as follows:

2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2GB DDR-RAM 667MHz
120GB HDD
13" Widescreen (1280x800 resolution)
Duperdrive (8x DVD burner)
Bluetooth
AirPort Extreme (802.11b/g/n wireless)
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I love my Mac because things just work. I love the screen magnification that comes as part of Universal Access. I take my hat off to Apple for including assisting technologies as part of their operating system which in itself is a fantastic system. If you want to learn more about how Apple helps disabled users use their software then please click here. I am going to use this Macbok for a while and see how I like it, and if I am pleased with it, then I will make a recommendation to the university to have the YorLinc who deals with assessments of needs for disabled students to recommend Macbooks and iMacs.

How to stop a Microsoft employee in their tracks

I have been to a few Microsoft talks now where they show off shiny new things like Silverlight and Surface and suchlike. Each time I have seen this new technology I have asked "So how would a blind person use this technology? I usually receive some sort of reply which is a mutter about how they don't deal with accessibility issues in the UK. They don't very much deal with it in the US either!! I'm sorry I know I sound miserable but if Microsoft Surface had made it, a tactile version would have been the best thing for a blind person because they would finally be able to experience the full advantage of a graphical user interface, and not an audio version of it, which takes a long while to work your way around. They would be able to point and click on things, draw vector-based images (and even Bitmap images) and this would help blind people to appreciate the full potential of a PC. Braille displays are here but at the moment, they are expensive one-line text-based devices. Come on people! Instead of wasting time ripping us off with stubborn product activations and DRM that stops us putting our favourite tracks onto any MP3 player of our choice, why don't we move the development of tactile displays on because this would be something that could really take off in the Blind community!

I demand more RAM ..... or Vista gets it

Recently, Windows Vista has been running shockingly slow on my Ensis laptop, and I think I need to give it the boot because it has started getting into the habit of flicking the screen off at will. It has done this the last couple of times I have used the laptop. I am thinking of recycling my old Windows Media Center Edition license and installing it on my laptop, then I'm going to dual-boot XP with Ubuntu. If I can acquire more RAM, let's say 2GB, I will consider going back to Vista but for now, I can't actually use it. It's a shame really as I am going to miss Spotlight –er, I meant the search box on the Start menu.

I am thinking that I would like to find part time employment and buy a Macbook because they have impressed me no end. Every Macbook comes set up ready for a visually impaired person to use, thanks to Universal Access, which has been around for twenty four years. All you need to do is hit Apple+Alt+8 on your Macbook and suddenly everything becomes larger, and hopefully clearer. To turn up the magnification level, press Apple, Alt and the '+' key, and to turn the magnification level down, press Apple, Alt and the '-' key. I think Apple have done a very good job with accessibility and I take my hat off to them.

I would like to see the RNIB start to recommend Apple iMacs and MacBooks as well as Windows based Screen reader/magnifier software because it is a much cheaper and in a lot of ways superior alternative to having to buy a new Windows machine, and pay the same amount that you paid for the PC in accessibility software. You can buy a half-decent Windows Vista based PC today for around about £300-400, yet Jaws 9.1 costs around £600 for a full license! Why?

Revising Amongst Friends

I feel that I am slightly more confident about my exams because I've been at my friend's house since eleven this morning revising. I hope I do well because I really want to make a good go of this degree – I have realised how much it means to me

Windows AnyTime Upgrade – Not such a great idea

You may remember me telling you about when I upgraded my Windows Vista Business installation on my desktop PC to Windows Vista Ultimate. I did this using Windows AnyTime Upgrade to save money. The problem is that if I want to reinstall Windows Vista, I can't do a clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate because the Windows AnyTime Upgrade license will not let you do that. If I had a BitLocker™ ready PC, I would not be able to use BitLocker™ because it requires you clean install Windows Vista Ultimate with two clean hard disk partitions. Also, I have found that Windows Movie Maker will not let me import video, and that that I can't save projects from within Windows DVD maker. I wonder if it's because these were added on (or upgraded in the case of Windows Movie Maker) during the Windows Vista AnyTime Upgrade. Also, because I have to install over the top of Windows Vista Business edition, this will make the total recovery process about ninety minutes to two hours longer. Using up time which I can ill afford. I really hope that Microsoft will sort this problem out because if not I will probably just go ahead and waste the bank's money on a boxed OEM copy of Vista Ultimate using my eight-month old PC as an OEM container.

Don't get me wrong there is no problem with the actual operating system. It's just Microsoft's licenses are too restrictive, I mean we could clean install any upgrade OS. I remember doing it with a version of Windows 98 RTM. I just started setup from the bootdisk and when asked to validate my upgrade, I just inserted my Windows 95 OSR2 disk, and the upgrade took place. It was the same with Microsoft Office for Windows 95, in fact it was even easier because all I had to do was insert Disk 1 from the Microsoft Office 4.2 installation floppy disk set to validate the upgrade, whilst leaving the Office 95 Professional CD in the drive! Why can't we have that in Vista? Please sort it out Microsoft!!!

And that concludes my ranting for this week. Please tune in next week where I will be probably ranting about exams, Bill Gates again or something similar. Just kidding!

The Switch-over to Vista, Part 2

Ash Technologies have released a Beta Windows Vista driver for their Opti Verso. This and the fact that I can now run Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City under Windows Vista has prompted me to switch over to Vista on my laptop. I started at 9.50 this evening and it is now coming up to five past four in the morning. It has taken me a while to work out how to get the volume keys working on Vista but I managed to download some drivers for the Asus A3F, on which my Ergo Ensis 211 is based. I installed the ATK utility and Power4 Gear Extreme for Windows Vista and Hey Presto it worked.

As for my Opti Verso, I tested that and for a thirty second glance at the software I do believe it is as responsive as the XP version (version 1.12) was. I am glad that Ash Technologies have given us a chance to sample a Vista beta driver, because I was losing hope of ever being able to install Windows Vista on my laptop.

If you have an Ergo Ensis 211 laptop that you are thinking of upgrading to Vista, please be aware that Ergo still do not officially support Windows Vista on this particular notebook for some stupid reason. If you run Windows Update when you have installed Vista and connected to the Internet it should work automatically though.

I do have a couple more programs to reinstall on this machine but apart from that it is good to go with me as I start in earnest, my revision for my exams.

Grand Theft Auto III, GTA Vice City and Windows Vista

So far, I have been enjoying my upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate. Indeed, you have the nice shiny new Aero Flip 3D, a whole host of new security features and program indexing that actually works and really can speed up your PC if you leave it running unattended for an afternoon. I had all these features in Windows Vista Business. The one thing that I didn't have however is the Windows Media Center, which was sorely missed because Hauppauge's WinTV software is, shall we say, a bit performance shy. If I was going to stick with Vista I needed Media Center for the watching of TV. For Christmas I did just that. I upgraded my Windows Vista to Ultimate so that I could take advantage of Windows Media Center, and when I get a device compatible with it, BitLocker. I used the Anytime Upgrade feature from Windows Vista Business, which after taking all of my money guided me through the effortless installation of Vista Ultimate. Once everything was set up, I set about setting up Windows Media Center, which has been improved Windows XP Media Center 2005, which was also very good. One thing I have noticed is that when on freeview, you can switch channels very quickly like you can on a normal freeview set-top box. Also in Media Center, you can pause live TV (I think you could do that in XP but I never tried it). You can even rewind it as far as half an hour. I like this feature as I can pause Top Gear when I want another cuppa. What I like most, specifically about Vista Ultimate is that it comes with it's own DVD decoder. This is good news as my once faithful PowerDVD 6.0 will not work with Windows Vista, and I can't afford to go out buying PowerDVD 7.

Up until about thirty minutes ago, this came with, in my opinion anyway, a substantial price tag. The thing is that I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto a lot. The logical thing to do would be to install Grand Theft Auto under Windows Vista, go to Start > Games and launch GTA. That IS the idea but like most things in life it isn't as simple as it would first appear. As part of windows Vista's new security system they have included something called User Account Control. This prompts you to confirm you want to do anything slightly administrative on the computer. This is quite good for blocking out those little nasties we all seem to pick up. Unfortunately, in reality it's more of a pain for an avid computer user than traction control is to The Stig (another Top Gear reference). Because of this Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City will not run as they are not recognised by Windows UAC as safe programs, and because they are in Program Files, Windows will not let either of them run. Thanks to my friend Tim, we have been able to make both GTAIII and GTA Vice City run on my Vista box.

1. Firstly, you need to go to the directory where the game is installed. Usually this will be something like "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games". There you will see either a folder for GTAIII or Grand Theft Auto Vice City, or both, depending on which games you have installed. Right-click on the folder and go to Share...
   
2. Click on Advanced Sharing, and when asked, click Continue
   
3. Tick the box labelled Share This Folder, then click on Permissions
   
4. Give everyone Full Access to this folder by checking the box labelled Allow under Full Control
   
5. Click OK on all the boxes, and close the Windows Explorer window
   
6. Next go to Start > All Programs > Rockstar Games >Whichever GTA you installed
   
7. Right click on Grand Theft Auto and select Properties
   
8. Go to the Compatability tab and check the box labelled "Run This Program in Compatability mode for:" and select Windows 98 / Windows Me from the drop down list box.
   
9. Click OK, and run the game
   

Hopefully, all should be well but if not, check for updates for the games by going to www.rockstargames.com and selecting the version of GTA you wish to update. If you are running GTAIII you will need to patch it to version 1.1. You can patch it by clicking here and downloading the patch from Rockstar's Web-site.

Please note that if you are on a network you must ensure that you are not running the game with No CD patches enabled as this will enable other people to play the game. Be careful when sharing files and folders as you can cause your system to be exposed to viruses. Make sure your firewall is turned on and updated, and that you have up-to-date antivirus software.