I had a bid in an auction for the domain webtraveloffers.com, but the auction ended whilst my system was still going through one of it’s interminable Vista upgrade attempts! I assumed that I would have lost the auction at the last minute, but amazingly, I got it, for the minimum bid price of $69!

Now I have to decide what to do with it lol. As mentioned before, I want to tie it in with My Travel Extras & link between the two sites somehow, offering travel offers from one, followed by holiday extras from the other. I think it could be a big job, but using Datafeedr may help to get it going.

Was half way through writing this blog when my Internet went off!!!! I’ve decided to dump Tiscali (another post about that experience to follow soon) & get Sky+HD  )  & it was obviously switched whilst I was typing….all is back on now & now it’s time to get going…..

It’s been a hectic time, changing my web host, my OS, my ISP, digital TV supplier etc. I’m hoping things have all settled down now & I can find some new motivation to kick on!!

I wrote the other day about my attempts to upgrade my XP installation to Vista. After trying 4 times & having the upgrade fail for an “unknown reason” each time, I decided that using my clean dual boot installation & re-installing the packages I need to use, was the best way forward. Any older software that won’t run under Vista, will still be in my XP installation.

So, I got all my e-mails transferred over to Outlook under Vista & installed Dreamweaver etc. Things seemed ok, apart from a couple of troublesome e-mail accounts that won’t connect to their server, so I thought I’d give Bit Defender Total Security 2009 a go, as I have a 6 month free offer from PC Advisor. What a nightmare that turned out to be!!!!!

After installing this package, Outlook came to a full stop & I kept having to close it down. I’m not sure whether it was the anti-spam that was crashing Outlook, or just the combination of 2 bloated Microsoft products running together, but I removed Bit Defender & installed the FREE Comodo Internet Security package instead.

However, Outlook is still not running properly now and after 3 days of this, I’ve really had enough! If Microsoft thinks I’ll be going through all this again for Windows 7, they’ve got another think coming!!!!

Spent 4 hours the other day, trying to upgrade my PC from XP to Vista! I already have a dual boot system & run XP 99% of the time, but as I have a dual core system, with 4Gb RAM (XP can only use 3 of it) and XP is reaching the end of its support cycle, I thought I’d jump into using Vista full time & keep my XP system as the backup instead. So, being good, I backed up my system and set the Vista upgrade going.

All seemed to be going well…..the upgrade path is supposed to leave all my programs & files intact, which is why it takes so long. In fact, I had to leave it going when I went out that evening! Unfortunately, when I came back there was a “read memory” error at 75% and I had to roll back the whole installation – AAAAGGGHHH!

So, I’m once again back on XP & debating whether to bother again. I ran a memory diagnostic which revealed no memory errors, but as I often get this error message when I shut down Internet Explorer, I’m wondering if it’s an error in XP rather than the Vista upgrade.

I really cannot cope with going through a clean installation followed by rew-installing all my software, so I’m back to the inbetween club for now…..if I feel brave, I may go for the Vista upgrade again – who knows, I may get it done just as Windows 7 comes out!!!!!