Pitying the poor consumer

Earlier this week I was asked to look at a brand new Compaq "delivered to you by HP"(???) C773EA laptop that a friend had bought from PC World for a very reasonable £399. He asked me to investigate why it was "running so slow", something I found quite surprising for such a new machine.

Headline specs are Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83GHz, 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD, 15.4" BrightView screen and Vista Home Premium. For me, the only things missing are a serial port and Bluetooth, both of which could easily be remedied by USB adaptors. A more than reasonable hardware platform that reports a respectable Windows Experience Index of 3.5 (only brought down from 4.5 by the graphics adapter, no surprise on a laptop at this price point). So why should it seem to be so slow?

Looking at Task Manager revealed the answer. Compaq/HP had preloaded this consumer machine with so many auto-starting wizards and software packages that the boot time to reach a usable desktop was in excess of five minutes. Removing AIM6, AOL Toolbar 5.0, EA Link, My HP Games, The Sims Life Stories and a whole host of other HP rubbish immediately restored the machine to the expected snappy performer.

As the machine appeared to have been manufactured in April I was hopeful it would be reasonably up to date and that it might have SP1 already installed. Alas this was not the case. The good citizen in me insisted that the machine should be returned in a fully up to date condition (meaning I know how bad my friend was at updating his last XP laptop).

Running Windows Update revealed I needed to install 30 updates totalling 79.8MB. Although there are no prerequisites for SP1 I wondered if it would show up after these were installed so I went ahead, slowly "configuring updates..." on the way down and on the way back up, without any problem. I ran Windows Update again but still no SP1 was advertised. On the Microsoft website is the answer - "Windows Update will download SP1 when it's available for your PC. (It could take a month or more before SP1 shows up on your PC, so please be patient.)". Wait a month? Not likely!

I ran Windows Update once more and installed a further 4 optional updates of 15.8MB before downloading and running the "five language" standalone package. True to Microsoft's warning, it did take "approximately one hour" for the service pack to apply and again this proceeded with no problems. A final pass installed a further 2 updates of 29.4MB and now all seems good.

The hardware is a pretty good package for the road, not too heavy and it has a built-in webcam that is missing from my business HP laptops. I think I'll have one for myself and force myself to use Vista in production, rather than just in my test environment that is currently the case.

One week later

After seven days with our new mini BabyBelle, I think we have the measure of our new nugget of pressed cheese. In fact, I've even managed to capture her essence in a photo as you can see to the left. Most of the time she's an adorable bundle of fluff but from time to time, especially for the first two hours or so of each day, she's nothing short of a mad and mean destructive bundle of razor-sharp teeth. I think that's what's known in the trade as a training "opportunity" and we've already started saving for when we replace the downstairs carpets.

Settling in doesn't seem to have been too much of a problem to her and we've already got a pretty good routine instilled. Bedtime is shortly before 11pm and only a few minutes of howling precedes solid sleep. Each morning she's been waking up a little later, from 05:45 on the first morning to 07:00 today. And she's certainly been making the most of her rest as she's already a degree bigger than when she arrived. Her ears change everyday and it won't be long before they're both standing to attention all the time.

Travelling in the car has proved to be a little bit of a challenge with short trips to a National Trust park being enough to cause some sickness. Each time she has appeared to be a little more relaxed and she obviously enjoys all the new smells that the woods have to offer. Maybe the trees, stones, snails, shoes and other detritus she's eating is not helping.

Yesterday Belle endured her first trans-Pennine (sleepy and sickness free) journey to meet her adopted grandparents and two new canine friends. The first of these, George, is a large Pointer cross who used to be Cocoa's best mate. He was quite confused by his new acquaintance and Belle was overawed by his size and bark. She did find her own voice for the first time, a sign of things to come.

The second was a young chap called Alfie, a 20 week old Border Collie, and he was much more fun. After a few minutes of polite and respectful sniffing, Belle launched into full speed and volume GSD play mode, giving her opponent, nearly twice her own age, a good and proper kicking. I'm sure they both had a great time and expect they'll be friends for life. However, I also expect Alfie will get a shock when the two of them next meet as Belle will have gained a good size advantage by then.

There's a dog in the house

After many hours and days of deliberating and arguing over a new name for "Vernabell Akiko" we all decided this morning that a Belle would be coming home with us.

As soon as we arrived at her kennel, where she was sleeping with her brother and sister, she clearly knew this was her big day. "Number 31" was the only one keen to return behind bars while her siblings were messing around outside on the grass. She was very clingy with her breeder as we completed the paperwork but then it was time for her to take the car journey to her new home.

Not being so sure of her new travel crate and having never been very far at all in a car (just two trips to the vets), she settled down without too much fuss. Unfortunately the weight of traffic on the M1, the warmth of another sunny day and a big breakfast all came together to result in a little bit of travel sickness. The first of many little accidents I'm sure that we will have to deal with over the coming months.

Following a quick exploration of the garden and a scout of the downstairs of the house, Belle collapsed into her first sleep on her new bed. She seems to be quite content with what she's found so far. She even entertained some lunch, with some spectacular encouragement from her new mistress, and is now going to spend much of the afternoon being fussed over as she starts to meet the extended family.

For a little girl of only ten weeks, she's already a fairly sizeable dog as you'll be able to see from the pictures. For those of you who haven't seen the boy recently, he's huge too!

As she only had her second vaccination yesterday, Belle won't be meeting any new canine friends for a week or so. We'll register her with our local vets before then too.

XP SP3 everywhere

Following the yin of my recent road trip to Scandinavia I discovered the yang when I realised Microsoft had finally released Windows XP Service Pack 3. As I am one of the many who have failed to embrace Windows Vista in any meaningful way, I still have a reasonable(!) number of XP machines, both physical and virtual.

Pre-install research revealed few reported problems. I was, however, intrigued to read that MS currently seem to recommend not installing SP3 on HP desktops that have AMD processors, due to an "infinite reboot loop" problem. No doubt this is a fair few machines and apparently MS Update does not check for this before starting the SP3 update. There is a Registry fix but that all seems like a bit of a hack. My hardware estate running Windows is exclusively Intel with my few AMD based machines running Linux of some flavour, so no problems for me there.

I distributed SP3 using WSUS to most machines and used the off-line package to the remaining four, encountering no real problems. One of my machines running Agnitum's Outpost Firewall complained that "C:\WinOS\system32\services.exe" was in use but this was just a symptom of OPF's self-protection which I had forgotten to disable before running the update.

I also took the opportunity to reclaim a fair chunk of disk space on each machine by deleting the uninstall directories left behind after each hotfix. IMHO, this is something MS should really look to address as unnecessarily full system disks are never good news.

Now it's done, all the machines seem to be running happily. The only remaining task is now to slipstream SP3 into the network and CD build media.

A new addition

After my first full day of rattling around in an empty house and the unbearable silence when our postman walked by the front window, I too had come to the conclusion that our family needs a dog.

Had Cocoa stuck to the plan and lived to a riper age - I had expected her to be with us for at least another three years - I would have kept with my view that we should have a pet-owning holiday to allow for some serious travelling with the boy when he would be old enough to appreciate it. However, stick to the plan Cocoa did not and none of us wanted to be dog-free for such a long time.

This evening we all headed over to Derbyshire to meet a prospective family member, at the moment living with four of five her siblings and both her parents. I'm very happy to report that the meeting went well and "Number 31" will be coming home with us on the 23rd. By then she'll be 10 weeks old, fully documented and inoculated and will hopefully have learnt all there is to know about how to be a social and well-mannered dog from her mum.

It was a pleasure to witness the family pack playing together. Her German father and local mother are both very handsome, friendly and playful beasts. All the dogs are clearly very well looked after, much loved and content. The puppies are growing quickly in an idyllic rural environment and are having a wonderful time.

The moniker "Number 31" comes from the tattoo number in her ear and is currently the only reliable way to tell her apart from her sister. Whilst we already have some good ideas, we're taking suggestions for names. If you happen to have a moment of appellative inspiration, please don't hesitate to send it on.

Back to reality :-( and family :-)

Much to our surprise, Antwerp was very busy and lively. Our late night Italian restaurant was quick and good, unfortunately not like the live entertainment in front of the cathedral that I incorrectly identified as a rather well oiled Karaoke singer. The Hilton is situated right in the middle of the action (but be prepared for a long walk to the rooms).

An early start, some last minute photos, a fuel (and bug removal) stop and the car's SatNav writing cheques Russ's right foot simply could not cash, we just missed the 09:20 Eurotunnel and had to wait for next an hour later. A DVD helped us not notice the 35 minute trip under the water and the journey on to King's Cross was not too bad either. I'm currently on the 12:00 National Express service, expected to arrive in Doncaster at 13:39.

Looking back on our week, we're both determined to return to Norway and to see more of its beautiful scenery, especially to the north of where we reached on this trip. It was a pleasure for me to meet Jens and I'm sure he can point me to some equally interesting places to find in Sweden (Jens, I'm not joking!).

Of course, as usual, we did enjoy the place names we came across. Fister, Åsbø (near Gangstø) and Baksidevegen in Norway along with Båstad and the Asia Kock Restaurang in Sweden were all worthy entries. Wankum in Germany was pretty good too but the award for the town that caused most amusement goes back to Norway and Søre Våge - we chose not to visit. :-)

A change of plan

Late last night we decided we were going to skip our scheduled day in Denmark and the Dana Sirena DFDS Esbjerg to Harwich ferry which was booked to take us back to the UK. Instead we decided to follow this route from Sweden, through Denmark, Germany, Holland and Belgium to Antwerp. From here we'll head to Calais and the Eurotunnel to arrive back in Folkestone before our originally planned vessel docks in Essex, so getting home a little bit earlier (we hope).

After the excitement of the Oresund and Great Belt crossings we headed across Denmark to Kolding. Lunch was nice and the town was pretty. Then it was a fairly quick trip down Denmark and to the Autobahns of Germany. The roads down past Hamburg were speed-limited to 120kph (only from 6am to 8pm) and were busy with traffic. However, the Germans kindly vend 100 octane fuel to help you whizz along their well-maintained roads and to make the most of any gaps.

Towards Bremen the traffic got a little bit lighter and we managed to get the car up to 226kph. Eventually we stopped in Münster for a quick look around and a cup of coffee. Then it was back out on quieter roads and our fastest run of the day. Near Marl a well-timed surge saw us at 160mph indicated, 246kph (or 153mph) according to our Road Angel. This was still not at the limiter but unfortunately a Porsche Carrera was in our way doing only ~140mph - pussy!

We're staying right in the middle of Antwerp which seems like a huge city in comparison to where we've been this week. A quick bite to eat and sleep is now the order of the day so we have half a chance of waking up in the morning.

Just one day in Sweden

We all slept long enough this morning to miss breakfast and didn't head out into the bright sunshine until 11am. Gothenburg centre is vibrant and it was easy to wander around and to grab some lunch before extracting the car for the next leg of our journey.

Today's plan was to take advantage of the wide and quiet Swedish motorways to travel via the Königsegg factory. The route planning was good but unfortunately it seems Königseggs are about as common as moose in Sweden - we didn't even get a sniff. Even the brazen "hello, we're from England, can we have a look round?" ploy failed to work.

As we had some time to spare we decided to stop at Helsingborg for a drink and the promise of our first view of Denmark across the water. We did see the Danish coast and the city centre was lovely. The place had a really nice feel about it and the fortification that overlooks the town was an unexpected bonus.

The trip into Malmö was easy too and we dropped Jens off at his friend's before teatime. We've ended up in the Hilton with a room on the 19th floor and a view of the bridge that will take us over to Denmark in the morning.

Ciao Norway, Ay'up Sweden

Not so much sightseeing today as we needed to make some significant progress towards Sweden. Our route first took us to Gjøvik to have a quick look at the Olympic ice arena that was built inside a mountain. We managed to sneak in and had access-all-areas until Russ tried to walk along the roof gantry. All in all, very impressive.

We headed on towards the border and took a brief stop in Fredrikstad. The old town was pleasant enough but the charging for parking and to look at the museum of the town felt too much like a rip off.

At the border Russ was very keen to get pictures of "the motor" with the expected Norway and Sweden signs, although as it turns out these were hard to find. We entered Sweden, came back to Norway and then once more over the toll bridge completed our international excursion.

Despite Jens' promises of better roads once we were in his native land, much of the promised motorway down to Gothenburg is yet to be built. Although Sweden's speed cameras look like they're from this century compared to their Norwegian counterparts, they were still reasonably plentiful so keeping our average speed in check.

After checking into the Radisson SAS in Göteborg (very nice) we headed out to the bright lights of the big city for dinner. Whilst Norway has the better scenery in terms of the landscape at least, it has to be noted that Sweden does do somewhat better in the young lady department. :-)

Heading inland and East

Today's route was spectacular to say the least. After calling at the tourist information centre in Sogndal to stock up on paper maps, we headed to the Nigardsbreen glacier in the Jostedal national park. Unfortunately the snow was too deep and the ice was too thin for us to actually make it right up to the ice flow (we did try really hard) but we were plenty close enough to be amazed. We only saw a tiny part of the Jostedalsbreen glacier but the trek up

After drying out as best we could, we headed over route 55 towards Lom. This road, closed to traffic from 8pm to 8am because its so icy at night, took us up to above 1400m and into vast and breathtaking snow-covered landscapes. The little Evo X did a great job of steering us through the narrow roads surrounded by 3m high snow walls. None of the mountain restaurants were yet open (apparently the season starts on Friday) but we had no trouble getting through

We had a late lunch in Lom and I was amazed to see example after example of Ford cars from the 1970s. A MkII Granada and a MkIII Cortina were both in fantastic condition. And we'd already seen a MkI Cortina as we arrived in Stavanger on Sunday. Quite how these beasts have survived all this time in this salty and snowy land is a mystery. Lom must be a university town as there were lots of students cruising around with our car getting more than a few stares. The second hand value of any red Transit-like van must be huge in Norway as it seems everyone needs to have one.

The journey down to Lillehammer was a bit of a drag with the E6 speed limit constantly dropping down to 70kpmh or 50kmph from its unrestricted speed of only 80kmph anyway. Heavy lorries slowed progress and overtaking was not easily achieved. However, we arrived at around 7pm and found a hotel with no problems.

After a rather pleasant tea in the hotel we headed out to look at the Olympic Park. Russ and Jens wimped out when we realised there was a farmer's field that had to be circumnavigated but it seems I'm made of sterner stuff. The ski jump arena was open and deserted. Climbing to the top of the terraced seating was a mission indeed (I can only assume the air was thin as clearly my own fitness cannot be questioned) but was well worth the effort.

On the way back down we cruelly took some photos of a car we had encountered on the way up. A young girl was puzzling what to do with her Golf that only had one front wheel on the ground after a rather ambitious manoeuvre over a rather large drop. We had tried to help although to no avail and we did laugh when she said she needed to "go and tell the owner, he'll be so mad". :-)

We're planning to leave Norway tomorrow for the wider roads of Sweden and to make some more ground towards the South.

Bergen to Sogndal

We had a look around Bergen, taking in the fish market and the old harbour-front buildings, before heading up on the funicular to Fløyen to take pictures. Then off to Sogndal via two more ferries along this route.

The evening was spent drinking beer, trying to forget about everything else that happened today. As ever, the Norwegians made the perfect hosts and a good night was had by all.

It's just not fair

Terrible, terrible news. Cocoa had been to the vets a couple of times in the last ten days as she was crying while resting from what we thought was probably arthritis. More crying and some sickness over the weekend meant another trip this morning and an x-ray image was taken. This showed a massive tumour in her spine and she was never brought round from her anaesthetic.

Worse still, I am away from home so all this happened on the end of a phone line, I wish I could hug my wife right now. Cocoa's death has come so suddenly and unexpectedly.

Cocoa was 11 years old last October and had been a part of our family since 1998. She was the kindest, most faithful and honest soul I've ever had the pleasure to know, much more than just a dog despite how silly that sounds. Her early demise is so desperately unfair. This life just sucks.

Fjord hunting

Our first day of the roadtrip proper. After retieving Jens' late-arriving bag from the airport, a trip to the "Coop Obs!" Hypermarked for supplies and trying to understand octane levels in Norwegian petrol (it's not like it is at home!), under clear skies we caught the ferry from Stavanger to Tau (see today's route). From there we headed south to Høllesli, the base camp for the climb to Preikestolen aka the Pulpit Rock. The walk up was arduous and we now understand what constitutes a paved path in these parts - something steeper than 1:1 with jagged boulders as far as the eye can see. The effort was more than rewarded when we got to the top with the fjords being every bit as good as on the postcards.

After rehydrating with some premium Norwegian pilsner and a few bottles of water, we headed North again to Hjelmelandsvågen for the ferry to Nesvik, then on to Sand for the next ferry to Ropeid and ultimately to Utbjoa where we found the ferries only came but once or twice a day. So it was back down ~12 miles of single track road to Isvik to head back over the the E39. The 8km Bomlafjord tunnel from Sveio to Føyno was spectacular, descending straight down to 260m below the water and then straight back up again. And the final ferry from Sandvikvåg to Halhjem was very rapid, meaning we arrived in Bergen city centre for midnight.

One more for the road

Here we are in Stavanger, Norway, at the start of yet another week of driving to unfamiliar and unpronounceable places with nothing but (two) SatNav systems to guide us.

Russ travelled to Donny on Friday evening and we got over to Sheffield for the Evo's first service before 9am. Stew et al kindly provided coffee and breakfast before we headed back home for lunch and the ensuing two hour journey to Newcastle was very easy. We even had time to stop at the Angel of the North to take some snaps before heading through the Tyne Tunnel to the DFDS ferry terminal.

On the way up we called the Mitsubishi dealership that had just supplied our latest chariot to enquire what we could do about masking the headlights for driving on the right. Unfortunately, as the car is so new (so the kits available on the ferry will likely not work) and there is no electrical option to repoint the lights, the suggestion was to park the car at night facing a wall and to use electrical tape for a bit of refractive DIY. Not quite the stylish and fiendishly clever solution we expected for such an expensive car.

The Queen of Scandinavia carried across the millpond-like North Sea in 19 hours or so and border formalities at both ends were almost non-existent. People watching in the bar was great fun, especially the terrible she-male pianist/singer that by the power of only sound did "its" best to get everyone to go to bed.

The hotel in Stavanger is very pleasant and the weather is fine and warm. We're going to head out to the old town to see what's there, although most things do not open on Sundays. After some tea we'll head over to the airport to meet Jens who's travelling a torturous route via Stockholm and Oslo, before we head out in earnest tomorrow morning.

We quite liked the direct approach taken by the coiffeurs in Norway - hence the picture.