Tummy Grumbling

[howeird]

Must be time for lunch.
Did a lot of software installing last night, and also ordered Vista-compatible upgrades for Photoshop and Pagemaker (now called InDesign, WTF?) for a whopping $200 each. That's for the upgrade versions, I would never be able to afford either of them if I had to pay full price. Maybe I should buy Adobe stock, it's cheaper.

Having a heck of a time getting Vista to let me use the updated bluetooth drivers which allow my Motorola phone to connect with their software. It insists on using the generic drivers, which see my devices just fine but don't pass the info to the apps.

My fried drive took three Roxio buy-by-download programs with it. A call to support got me the links to download them again, and the reminder to burn them to CD. Good thing I registered them. Funny thing is the only reason I did is I have an account on their site from working for them.

Tonight I'll do more software installing, and PhotoShop some pix for a friend who has been waiting patiently for a couple of weeks for my machine to be up to it.

One nasty which carried over from XP - Yahoo Messenger locks up the PC when I try to load the webcam. It was doing that before any of my computer woes. I have Skype and three other apps which have no trouble with the webcam, and I'm pretty sure from the symptoms that Yahoo's servers and network are just too slow, and I'm seeing a network handshaking problem.

Looks like I will be changing my home phone from VoIP with Vonage to a land line. I may try Comcast VoIP first, but it depends on whether it means buying a new router. Vonage connections have been poor, with people telling me that through the course of a phone call the volume fades to the point where they can't hear me at all. This is with two different phones, so the problem is probably the carrier. Only way to tell for sure is change carriers. I'll miss the low price, but them's the breaks.

Off to consume mass quantities...

Comments

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

InDesign isn't an upgrade, per se, but a new product that was meant to close the gap with Quark XPress after Adobe let Pagemaker wither on the vine. They eventually updated Pagemaker as well, but it's effectively EOL with Vista.

That said, despite the silly name, it's a damn fine program and the learning curve between Pagemaker and InDesign isn't very steep. Your old Pagemaker files should convert to InDesign just fine, though the leading of text may alter somewhat.

The bluetooth issue you describe kind of sounds like what happens when you use unsigned drivers, it defaults to the in-box signed drivers even if the unsigned ones work better. Not sure if that's what's actually happening, but that is what happens in that case.

As for YIM, are you using the new version for Vista?

[howeird]

Yup on the InDesign info - i actually had CS2, but it did not do a good job of importing my custom made business card template from Pagemaker, and it was slow, so I shelved it. The margins and guides didn't match. Other than that it was pretty intuitive. With a quad processor and 4GB RAM I should be okay with CS3.

The BT drivers I'm using are Broadcomm's Widcomm driver update, signed and certified for Vista. But I think what happened is I made the mistake of plugging in the BT adapter to see what Vista would do with it (I was impatient to use my BT mouse). I've removed the adapter, uninstalled all the drivers and re-installed the Broadcomm stuff, and when I get home I'll try plugging the adapter in again.

YIM for Vista? Of course not. That would be cheating. :-)

[howeird]

Looking at YM's pages, their Vista version is not out yet, but the one I'm using (8.1) is Vista compatible. I don't think it's an OS problem, since the same lockup happend in XP - I think Yahoo has trouble with the Logitech webcam drivers, and connecting to the server. Webcam is broadcast through their chat server, not directly from the PC.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I get those and other programs at vastly-reduced academic prices by virtue of usually having a music class going at the local community college.

[howeird]

Now she reminds me!
Yeah, come to think of it that's how I got CS2 in the first place. I think the upgrade was about $100 each. But tuition was $150, so it wasn't much of a savings.