More W7

Seems I'm a bit out of touch with RAM prices. Yesterday I posted that having found my old XP box was manfully struggling along on 512mb of RAM, that it would be a sinmple and cheap issue to resolve.

Well, simple yes. Installing a RAM module is a piece of cake. Cheap? Well I suppose it's all relative. Last time I bought any memory it was dirt cheap - a gigabyte cost me next to nothing. Hunting around though, I've struggled to find a gig of the type I need for less than about £25 plus P&P. Still, it's a price worth paying. It's always said the first and easiest way way to speed up anythrow more RAM at it. This old HP Pavilion will only take 2 gig max, so I'm going for another 1 gig stick to start with which should make it run a bit more slickly.

Elsewhere on the W7 front, there are mixed things to report. W7 is supposed to make it easier for PC's on the same network to talk to each other and share files. Well, it is easier than it was trying to connect an XP PC and a Vista PC together, but it's still not entirely straightforward. At various times today I've had my network flagged as "unidentified", a duplication of my external drive in the network explorer screen and a message saying my old XP box could find my printer (which is connected to the old Vista box) and then promptly saying "do I want to print a test page!"

Elswehere, Windows Live Messenger (which I don't use but the kids flog to death) has got both machines in a tiz. It installs fine, but you can't login - the system suggests a network problem, but everything else that's connecting to the 'net does so faultlessly. The in-built firewall clearly is allowing the programe to send and receive traffic, so I've no idea waht's going on there.

Also, I've had a hard time installing my Microsoft Lifecam (web cam). That's now sorted, but it's intersesting that these latter two problems are with Microsft programs/hardware......

On the messeneger front, I think I might ditch Live Messenger and give Trillian a go