I’ve taken the plunge and have started using my new Dell box with Vista 64bit RC2.

Hopefully I’ll get access to Vista RTM in the next week or so, then I can either install everything again, or just upgrade.

So far most things are working fine. There was a small hiccup this morning when I arranged for the IP address to be swapped over to the new box, but that seems to be resolved now.

Problems I have noticed so far are:

• Our print server doesn’t have 64bit printer drivers, so I’ve had to use a workaround I read about in the beta newsgroup - Create a local printer with a local port and set the port name to be the printer share name. This did the trick.
• VMware Server refused to install. I’ve downloaded the beta of Virtual PC 2007 and installed that instead.
• Symantec AntiVirus won’t install on Vista 64bit. I even arranged to get hold of their beta of the next version, but it doesn’t work. Hopefully they’ll come out with a new beta that does work soon. I also tried the beta of Microsoft OneCare, but that doesn’t support 64bit either :-( I’ll just have to rely on Vista’s inbuilt security for now (and be careful with email attachments)
• I can charge my iPAQ with the USB cable, but the current release of Windows Mobile Device Center doesn’t allow it to connect properly. I gather they’re overdue for a newer release so maybe that will be fixed then.

At the moment, I quite like the Sidebar, but it would be nice to have a weather forecast gadget along the lines of the Firefox ForecastFox extension.

Otherwise relatively smooth sailing so far.

I caught up with the news last night that Rev. Rod Dyson is the new Moderator-Elect for the Uniting Church in South Australia.. Yay :-) He takes over as Moderator next November.

Another famous person I can say that I know!

Vista build 6000.16386 is RTM. Now to wait and see how long it take to be publicly available!

I bet lots of people wished that it was 16384 - a lot more geeky.

This is a tool that generates the SQL for both the database schema and also to insert the data of a database.

Windows Defender is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software.