almost witty

Appropos of nothing, I ended up upgrading to Windows Vista last night. (well, rather, my new swanky laptop which I got for a ridiculously cheap price arrived).

Straight away ran into a few problems. All the fancy graphics are nice, but don’t actually amount to even a ramp of beans, let alone a hill. The much-vaunted security issues seem positively annoying when you’re trying to set up a new laptop.

The worst issue is that my favourite game in the whole wide world, Civilisation 4, refuses to run on Vista. I’ve tried running patches, installing DirectX, uninstalling and reinstalling and each time various little bugs come up. including that it can’t find the DVD - even though I ran it from the DVD in the first place.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if … half the reason I upgraded was so that Civilisation 4 could run comparatively smoothly on it instead of crashing when my old laptop would overheat.

Have you used/tried Vista in earnest and anger? Would I really be sad if I resorted to trying to dual-boot it just so I could run a game?

Given my recent experiences with new phones and getting rather frustrated by their interfaces, I should be salivating over the forthcoming 3G iPhone. But I won’t be getting one.

Simply because as fancy as all these new touchscreen devices may be, with their huge screens and innovative ways of exploring and clicking, they fail on one very simple thing - you can’t text while you’re on the move. With a phone that has a traditional keypad, it is possible to dial numbers and text people while you’re walking from place to place (or driving!) without having to look at the screen. The trouble with touchscreen phones is that you always have to look at the screen when you’re doing anything - and if you’re walking from place to place (as you do in ol’ London town), that means stopping to look at the screen. And woe betide anyone who stands still on a London pavement - you’ll either get shoved aside, or charity muggers will come up to you.

Shame really - because otherwise it’d look fantastic. But just for the touchscreen factor, I’m selling my HTC TyTN II, and wondering if anyone can sell me a Nokia N95…

Of course, everyone *expects* British Telecom to be slightly inept - it’s the very definition of a UK broadband provider - but to be fair, I’ve had reasonable service from them. Even now, my paid-for net access doesn’t seem to work - yet I can access the Internet through the BT/Fon Wi-Fi community I set up, using my .. erm… paid-for Internet access. Strange…

But that’s not the inept part. When accessing BT’s broadband help service, you’re advised to:

check the broadband service status line on Freephone 0800 169 0199 to see if your area is listed as having a problem.

Call that number - and it gives you the last update for … November 2007. Not exactly up to date!

However, because I can still use the Net via the BT Fon Wi-Fi link, BT do not make THE LIST. I’m sure they’re gutted.

Not just yet, but they may be slowly getting there, if the latest spam comment is to be believed — assuming of course, that it was generated by computer, and not a frustrated lurid wannabe-writer. It reads:

“Only a cousin, but he was sobbingly dutiful as she drank his conservative white saga in obnoxious gulps, embedding the bitter, rationalized buff as she swallowed”

I’m sure there’s a short story in there somewhere. Probably set in a dark alley in Amsterdam or something, mind.

Of course, it’d probably help from a spammers point of view if the spam comment actually connected to a website, or a telephone number, or *something*. Instead of a nonsensical web address…

Let’s face it, while most of Apple’s products have been somewhat cool and nifty, they’ve never actually been particularly useful. Or innovative in terms of functionality, for that matter. MP3 players were around before the iPod came out. Mobile phones were around before the iPhone came out.

But now, Apple have brought out something that - to my mind - no-one else has done yet, and is genuinely useful.

The Apple Time Capsule is a router with a built-in hard drive. Simple as that. Apple sell it as a way of doing automatic backups - but think about it. A router with a built-in hard-drive. In one fell swoop you remove the need for a modem, a router and a network hard drive in one go. I really really want one.

Shame it probably won’t work with PCs.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the Apple Macbook Air. In a world where we’re trying to make things last longer, Apple bring out a product that becomes landfill trash after three years. It’s almost as if Apple is sticking its tongue out at Greenpeace…