Category Archives: IT

The day I ran home from the bus stop…

Steve Jobs

The day, 11 years ago, when I ran home from the bus stop because my parent’s had bought a new iMac.

To many people that may sound ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as queuing up overnight for a new video game or trying to be first in line to pick up the new iPhone 5 maybe…. (I bought mine in a civilised fashion, from the store a month later)…

It’s something I wanted to talk about as it’s something clearly etched on my memory. Something that, on the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death, is something worth talking about.

That occasion filled me with so much excitement and joy as an 11 year old boy and was something that continued to enthuse me and interest me so much every day and continues to do so.

That of course wasn’t the first time I’d come in contact with Mac – my Dad used them before that at his work and we had an LC 475 if I remember. We used to play Spectre on that – great little game.

As I type this up on my 2006 MacBook which is still going strong (just about) I’d like to thank Steve for what he did with Apple, and ultimately for getting me excited about computers in the first place and I guess if this hadn’t all happened I wouldn’t be where I am now… working for a successful IT company.

Long may it last.

RIP Steve. Thank you.

HP – You don’t make life easy!

HP TouchSmart TM2

So, I am the new owner of HP’s TouchSmart TM2 Tablet PC.

As I work at an educational institution we have a license agreement for Windows 7 Enterprise – as the Tablet came with Home Premium it had to come off. (Premium also won’t allow you to join the computer to a Domain, which we use).

So  after attempting to upgrade from Home Premium to Enterprise and failing I had to go about doing a clean install. This was fairly straight forward and was completed without any problems.

It was when I came to installing drivers that I had some trouble and will now grumble. First of all according to the HP Update web site (here) the software and drivers listed here was all the software available. After then digging around and Googling lots I came across the Touch Smart site which then brought me back to the HP drivers site again – but this time for the TX2-1055ee model. Which then had more software, such as the finger print DigitalPersona Personal software. The mind boggles!

I’ve now discovered that the previous software installed when I got the tablet was moved to a ‘Windows.old’ folder on the C:\ drive so I can now see what hasn’t been installed yet. I believe a lot of the software may not be compatible with Windows 7 Enterprise edition 64bit. But we’ll see.

I will update this shortly for your information and reading pleasure.

Update 1: Having found a Forum post – it seems I overlooked the obvious; there’s a folder on the C:\ drive called ‘SwSetup’ with all drivers and previously pre-loaded software. So I’m going through that now!

Dropbox – what an amazing piece of software!

I know a million and one people have written about Dropbox, but I really do think it’s great. I am using it to manage my NVQ work at the minute – so I have it all in one place and can edit it from more than one location.

It keeps everything synchronized which is wonderful.

The free option is free (obviously) but the paid options offer more space – there is also the option to get an upgrade which gives you access to unlimited previous versions or backups of files.

I highly recommend it.

Web site: http://www.dropbox.com