More on the new laptop

Well, I can’t say things are running smoothly at the moment.

The good news:

• It turned up in a timely fashion
• It is as speciified
• My MS Office Pro 2007 also turned up promptly, reduced by £150 for having a smashed case (the innards are licence sticker are all intact)
• It’s all very pretty
• I’ve transferred all my Office files from the old machine to the new one, albeit with a bit of poking about.

Now the bad news:

• Re-installing all the software is going to take ages. Why Vista comes with a package that only transfers files and settings and not the actual program files, I do not know.
• My new computer refuses stubbornly to talk to my HP LaserJet 1150. My HP PSC 2110 it has no problems with (at least with printing, I’ve not tried scanning yet). I haven’t tried to get them to talk wirelessly yet – one thing at a time.

Expect more updates on this as I go along.

UPDATE

I now have the laptop successfully talking to both printers via the wireless network and it only took me three and half hours to achieve. Here are the solutions I employed (neither of which are described in official documentation):

• To get the HP LaserJet 1150 to talk to the laptop via a USB cable (which is a prerequisite of getting them to talk to each other via the wireless network) I located file INFCACHE.1 in C:\windows\inf.
  Then right click, select Properties->Security->Edit and give your account full control.
  Delete INFCACHE.1 (or rename it INFCACHE.1.BAK if you are nervous about doing that sort of thing).
  Reboot your PC (as one forum contributor commented, surely Vista was supposed to have put an end to this sort of thing?).
  Plug in your printer and Bob’s your mum’s brother. This solution came from the Microsoft forums.
• To get the printers working over the wireless network (assuming your laptop is already talking to your router) via a Belkin F1UP0001 wireless USB printer hub, I used a combination of this document and something I noticed when trawling through the Belkin print server web management tool.
  The first thing you will notice is that the Belkin XP software and drivers do not work with Vista at all and they don’t have an up-to-date driver on their site. Consequently, there will be no port available for your printer.
  Once you’ve installed your printers via USB, go to Control Panel and open the printer folder for your printer.
  Right click on your printer (the one that is Printer 1 on your print server) and select Run As Administrator->Properties.
  Select the Ports->Add Port.
  Ensure that “Standard TCP/IP Port” is selected and then click New Port->Next.
  Enter the IP address of your F1UP0001 in the dialogue box and click Next.
  Windows will attempt to detect the print server and will fail – this is normal.
  Ensure that “Standard – Generic Network Card” is selected and click Next.
  Windows will then complete the installation. You will notice that your printer has a new port in the list of the available ports and this is the one you should select for your printer.       

  Now repeat this process for the printer that is Printer 2 on your hub. This will create two identical ports. But for this port you must make one additional alteration after you have completed all the above stages.
  Right click on your printer (the one that is Printer 2 on your print server) and select Run As Administrator->Properties.
  Select the Ports tab. Highlight the second port that you created (the one that you allocated to Printer 2) and hit Configure Port. Change the Port Number under Raw Settings to 9101 and save the settings. It turns out that Printer 2 uses a different port to Printer 1.
  Once again, Bob is your relative.

I’ve now got to find out what has happened to my Skype chat archives and get them installed. Skype itself is working and my new PC is happy to talk to my headset.

Still to achieve:

• install AVG, Feedreader, Outlook Express (I’ve always used OE for my private email to keep it completely separate from work stuff), Homesite 5.5, Filezilla, HMRC Employer software, PDFCreator, iTunes, PaintShopPro and GRICdial.
• on the hardware side, I have to see if the laptop will talk to my camera and to the Buffalo DriveStation external harddrive.

FURTHER UPDATE

The transfer of Skype chat history is relatively straight-forward. Just follow the instructions here. The target directory is AppData/Skype.

And who knew that Outlook Express was dead? All hail Windows Mail. The transfer was simple and automatic, although I’d like to have known a bit more about it in advance.

FeedReader wasn’t quite so easy. Thankfully I only have a small number of feeds as I had to migrate them manually. But I’ve consolidated the list a little and taken the opportunity to upgrade to the latest release of FeedReader, which seems much improved.

AVG is waiting on a licence upgrade so that both old and new laptops are covered.

FileZilla also had to have settings migrated manually, but that wasn’t too onerous. This has also seen a signifcant upgrade.

SATURDAY UPDATE

Still working my way through the installation of all the things I like to be just so. This morning I’ve got the del.icio.us toolbar, PDF Creator (although it warns that there are compatibility issues with Vista that are going to be fixed in a future release) and Paint Shop Pro 7, all of which went smoothly. Are we there yet? (Answer: no, but we’re getting there).

SUNDAY UPDATE

I’ve not had so much time to dedicate to this today. My main discovery is that the HP PSC 2110 that I thought had installed wonderfully is only partially supported by Vista. “Advanced features” are not supported. Such advanced features include (wait for it) scanning and printing multiple copies of documents. So it looks like I’m in the market for a new multifunction machine, preferably one that will work wirelessly so that I don’t have to hook up to do scanning. Any suggestions?

MONDAY UPDATE

On the multifunction machine front, I rather like the look of the Canon PIXMA MP600R. Anyone used/using one of these machines?

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that my LaserJet 1150 will only print multiple copies of anything if the collate function is switched off. I will try and find a workaround for this, but honestly…

(LATER) Easily fixed by going to Control Panel->Printers->LaserJet 1150->Run As Administrator->Properties->Device Properties and when you get there, scroll all the way down and disable both Job Storage and Mopier Mode.

No, I don’t know either, but I read it in a forum and it works. OK?