Probably unfortunate given what I do for a living, but there you go. Actually, I’ve always wondered if it’s a useful trait - I’m not usually a proponent of technology for technologies sake - if I can solve a problem without getting high-tech, that’s my preferred option.

I may just be feeling paranoid, but it seems that the bytes have been ganging up on me recently - I have a growing number of niggling problems that refuse to go away. The odd challenge can be quite enjoyable, as long as the implication of not fixing it is not too severe - but you soon start to realise how much we have grown to depend on email / google / multimap / skype and all the other trimmings when you can’t get them.

And worse, it almost makes me feel physically ill when I start to feel I’m not able to keep it all running - when things go wrong faster than I fix them; when the silicon is ruling me rather than vice versa. Is judgement day coming?

Having decided to give Vista a chance, how is it repaying me? My machine has started bluescreening two or three times a day at the most infuriating times (like when you’re blogging about it). I’m going to live with it for a bit longer rather than doing anything rash - ongoing.

The lighthouse webcam crashed earlier in the week - usually gets sorted by turning the power off then on again, but from inside the lantern there was no sign of life outside - meaning a second trip with more keys, tools etc. Turns out it was a blown fuse so nothing major - fixed.

I’ve replaced the firewall in my modem / router with a mini-ITX box running IPCop - the idea was to secure my network a bit better while allowing certain individuals more access to growing numbers of devices I’m hosting - but it absolutely refuses to let OpenVPN work as advertised, and I’ve loved that application when I’ve used it in the past - ongoing. While fiddling I did muck something up with the blue network meaning it wouldn’t grant dhcp leases to wireless devices - fixed (phew). Postscript - OpenVPN is now working perfectly - turned out it was a problem within the network and not with ipcop - zerina is a great plugin that makes managing OpenVPN a doddle.

My Acer easyStore NAS is pretty much up and running now, but I still have a niggle where every time I restart my laptop the backup application can’t then see the drive - you have to remove protection then re-protect to run a backup, meaning you have to do it manually every time - that wasn’t the idea but I haven’t been bored enough to try and get some more support after the last time - ongoing.

Do things like dodgy starter solenoids on my truck count as computer problems? Still adding to my irritation though - hopefully this week I’ll crack more issues than arise and get back to a tolerable level of ’silicon rage’.

Of course I’m my own worst enemy - I will not leave well alone, and have to keep fiddling or trying to improve things. But the moral of this story (if there is one) - don’t let the machines grind you down!

It must be coming on six years ago that I took a deep breath and fired up my first Windows XP machine You see, I’m from Norfolk and we fear change.

I’ve probably used every flavour of Windows way back to Windows 3.0 which went onto good old 286 machines with a couple of floppy disks. I still have a couple of machines that run 98 and Me - they’re doing what they need to and wouldn’t support anything higher, so why bother upgrading?

I’ve always thought Windows a bit frivolous, but as the power of modern machines increases exponentially, I think even these spangly 3d transparent gui interfaces have a hard job using up all available resource, and being one who uses a machine for far too much of the working day, I wouldn’t be without it now. I’m not a good enough typist to survive with a command line interface alone, but I like to think I still could if I needed to (I’m proud to say I use vi regularly!)

I won’t get into the Windows vs. Mac debate, or even Windows vs. Linux - suffice it to say I’ve spent time on most modern desktop environments, and given the choice I still revert to Windows. Servers, well that’s a different matter…

Back to the main story - It was about time to get myself a new working environment, so once again I took a deep breath, and this time volunteered to move into modern times and chose a machine with Windows Vista Business installed.

For reference I’ve been a big fan of XP since that day six years ago - although I will point out that the first thing I do is switch the theme to ‘classic’. I’ve had my share of blue screens, but on the whole I’ve found it as bearable as you could hope for, and I’ve never really hankered for anything else.

So I’ve been using Vista for a few days now… and I’m pleased to report that I’ve had no major issues. I’ve not had to hit F1 yet or otherwise ask for help - everything seems fairly familiar and intuitive. I think I’m a fan of the new interface to Windows Explorer, which from recollection of how OS-X does it seems more like Finder than the old XP Explorer - a crumbtrail instead of an address bar allows you to jump back several levels at a single click.

I’m currently finding it a bit hard to navigate around networks though - ‘My Network Places’ seems to have subtly chaged and it’s catching me out. Similarly, ‘My Documents’ has morphed into just ‘Documents’ - these are just little navigation niggles I’m sure I’ll adjust to as time progresses.

So far I’ve stuck with the default Aero theme, and I’m faintly amused by the ‘glass’ effect, but might try switching back to classic just to be stubborn. And I’m not overly bitten by the widget bug yet, although I do like the big analogue clock on the Desktop.

Here’s hoping I end up as happy with Vista as I have been with XP - I suppose I can always downgrade if I have to.