As I mentioned earlier, my new computer came with Vista pre-installed - and I’ve been slowly working on it to get used to it (and test) while I plan the move over to it.

It’s a good test machine, but a bit anemic for development (but FAST - the Athlon 64X2 is far faster than my current system), and pathetic for games. so I’m in no hurry to move permanently.

But in the initial setup, I did find I followed a pattern - so here’s a few items in case they help you with your new computer:

• First, I partitioned the disks (or tried to - see this article for details). I like keeping my operating system and data separate, and so split the drive into at two partitions (maybe more later).
• I installed FireFox. I felt a bit silly doing it, but the fact is I’m used to FF, and even if Internet Explorer becomes the most wonderful browser on the planet, I’m used to a particular way of browsing. ‘Nuff said.
• I installed UltraVNC. This is an incredibly useful tool if you’re working on two computers. Set one up as the server, one up as the viewer, and you have a window into the other computer. Do things remotely, send files over, etc. You can do just about anything there as if you were on the other computer (weird to watch too, as a phantom mouse goes to work on your screen!) Although there were a few gotchas with it (the dialog asking for permission to run system programs in Vista couldn’t be handled remotely, and the Aero glass display turned off when UltraVNC was run), the process was overall successful.

This is just a ‘first view’ basics list - but it gives you and idea of how to start with your new system, as a few tools can make the transfer a bit easier.

More on Vista for a programmer: it’s rather annoying, since Vista has dropped support for the .HLP (help file) that we’ve had since the 80s.

With the older help format not running, all your favorite programs are ‘help less’ for now (sorry, it’s late when I wrote this).

It will run HTML Help, and since we’ve had that for close to a decade, it’s quite reasonable that the old one is being phased out.

Of course, I’m a programmer: no one expects me to be reasonable.

Instead, I have to take my perfectly fine code (which all runs well, by the way), and add new code to manage the change to HTML help.

And I need a new editor: I was using a Help tool from a decade ago, but it doesn’t create help files in the HTML Help format. And I don’t feel like spending the better part of a thousand dollars for RoboHelp or similar tools.

So I’m digging into Microsoft’s free HTML Help tool (the basic compiler that creates HTML Help), available on their site, and learning more about the internals of HTML Help than I ever expected (or wanted) to know.

And this is only a problem for me: non-programmers can add the old style of Help by following the Microsoft update. But since I have to test on the basic setup, I can’t install it!

And in fact I wonder how many computer users will notice it - after all, help is usually not a priority for computer users.

And it’s not a priority for programmers too (the HTML Help tool IS showing its age), so maybe it’s just as well Microsoft is closing off one avenue.

I just wish they didn’t make it a ‘do it or else’ situation - I really wanted to do other programming this summer…

As I mentioned earlier, I picked up a new computer, primarily to get Vista installed (my personal ’summer of code’ is to make sure all my Windows products work under Vista).

And my first thoughts on Vista are mixed, to say the least.

This is the first desktop computer I’ve ever bought with the Operating system installed. It’s a quick setup, but I actually like doing a OS install, so I missed that.

One thing I like to do is prepare the hard drive first. For years now, I’ve split a hard drive into smaller partitions, and put the OS on the first partition. This had the benefit of making for smaller drives (good if you need to defrag, or repair the files after a crash), and I’ve grown accustomed to pulling out Partition Magic with a new computer purchase.

Not this time: apparently Vista uses a slightly tweaked NTFS format, one that older versions of Partition Magic can’t handle. This also applies to Ghost (a disk drive backup tool), another favorite I had planned to use.

And although Vista now comes with a drive ’shrinker’ like Partition Magic, Vista places files all over the drive, and some can’t be moved to make room - which means I can’t shrink it as much as I expected: my 500 gig partition could only reduced to about 220 gig, even after I turned off shadowing, swap file, and any system program I could think of that wrote to the disk.

Vista also comes with a disk backup tool as well - but the advantage of Ghost and Partition Magic was that you could run them from the boot up, handy for managing problems without going into Windows first.

The only solution I found (aside from buying the latest of these tools)? Wipe the hard drive, set up as ‘old style’ NTFS, and then put everything back.

However, Vista doesn’t come on a disk anymore, but a recovery partition - and THAT apparently only wipes the drive back to factory original state!

It’s an odd thing, but quite in keeping with Microsoft’s ethos (these tweaks to the NTFS apparently make it more difficult to install Linux). But I think given Microsoft’s battle to maintain market share, they should be making things more open, not less.

Bu then, I’m not worth 40 billion dollars - and I’m not going to get that way talking about openness.

Stay tuned for more Vista observations.

I bought a computer this weekend from Office Depot. Not a high end one, but one I’m quite satisfied with - so much so I was going to recommend it to my readers, since the deal is on for another 2 weeks.

And of course if I’m going to link to the site, why not use a commission link? So I logged into Linkshare, went to Office Depot, and applied - only to read this:

This merchant has established certain criteria for affiliates applying to their program. Unfortunately, your site does not meet one or more of these criteria. For more specific approval information, please refer to the merchant’s application criteria.

Now, they can phrase it as politely as they wish, but the fact is this: they don’t consider me ‘good’ enough to belong to their group. And apparently, while I can work for free, my goodwill is not worth actual cash.

And I realized something else - even as impersonal and businesslike as all this is, it STILL annoys me.

And I bet it annoys other people.

And more importantly, Office Depot lost a glowing testimonial.

Because instead of my planned post, going into detail on my purchase, all the effort I went into picking it and why it was the ‘best’ for what I wanted, now I don’t feel like sending Office Depot the business.

Instead, I’m now posting about online snubs, and how filtering whether a poster is good enough is a risky proposition for any business.

Because while it won’t affect my shopping habits, at least in my case they traded a positive post for a negative one.

And they are also stating that my readership isn’t worth advertising to as well.

In the end, filtering out people is bad business. Quite frankly, I would accept everyone into an affiliate program for just this reason - because annoying people is worse than having useless affiliate members not doing much business for you.

Especially if you’re using a third party site like Linkshare or Commission Junction (where the managing is handled for you), it’s really a no-brainer to accept everybody and anybody.

After all, even if my not-quite-good-enough can get you a sale, it IS a sale, right?

It’s that time of year for me - time to renew the insurance…

And despite the popularity of online insurance brokers, there’s one small problem - I’m in Canada.

It’s odd, but most of the places that help online appear to be American - yet we need insurance as well!

So I was pleased to find a site online that did insurance (and a variety of types) - Kanetix.

It’s an online form that promises to give you quotes. And so to try it out, I went through and filled out the forms. A fair bit of detail is needed (for instance, I actually don’t know how far I am from the nearest fire hydrant, so I took a guess), but I persevered and finally got to the end. Following that you are sent to a summary page that gives you quotes, and then offers to contact them for you.

And besides home insurance, they also offer other forms (such as vehicle, life, and travel), so it’s more of a one stop shop for insurance in general. I did note that when I asked about Business insurance it told me it’s wasn’t available in my province, so you may not be able to get all things in all places, depending on availability.

And a big concern - you aren’t giving away private information. I didn’t even have to give out my home address (it did require my postal code, however). This is important, because I can’t see filling out any online form that asked personal details. Security matters - so it was good to see they didn’t require anything.

All in all, the experience was fast - and potentially profitable. I have two bigs, with possible savings of $50-$150 (!). Well worth the time spent. Unfortunately, it’s probably too late for me this year to switch over, but I will be definitely be looking into this again next year.

Now if only I had seen this a week ago…