My new Thinkpad X40 just arrived, so I have many , many happy hours of computer set-up to look forward to, including trying to figure out how to move onto my new laptop the stupid !@#$%-ing programs that only allow themselves to be registered to one computer, oh how I hate them.

I’ve just started the Windows File and Settings Transfer Wizard, a splendid utility that moves all your, well, files and settings to your new computer, which has never been known to work.

On the plus side, the X40 is lovely. Light ‘n’ loaded. And, while the keyboard of the X22 it’s replacing is IBMishly comfortable, the new one feels even better. And, the built-in wifi worked, just like getting a dial tone…

Ah, the Transfer Wizard is done and, guess what? It worked! I take back everything bad I ever said about it, except for the true stuff.

Now I’m watching two hours’ worth of mp3’s flying through the air…

Now, now how to get Thunderbird to recognize the profiles and msg data I moved over from my old laptop. So far, the obvious things haven’t worked. … Ok, edit “profile.ini” and hand-list the profiles you want Thunderbird to notice. Now, how to get the settings moved…Gave up. It’s easier just to enter the mail server’s address…Now to get my old msgs noticed. Hmm. Create a new account in TB. Copy and paste the content of the old folders into the new ones. (Worst that can happen is that I’ll have to reinstall TB. One of the little pleasures of being at the beginning of a rebuild.) The folders are in Documents and Settings/[username]/Application Data/Thunderbird, by the way…Ok, I’m not sure I got it exactly right. Create a new account and notice what name it gives the mail folder. Move the contents of your old folder into that one. Seems to work. But surely there’s a better way to do this. (Insert “Get a Mac” comment here. Thank you.)

Utilities and documents transferred the crude-but-effective way: Drag ‘n’ drop. Soon going to be time to install the Big Gun apps, and then spend hours tweaking and sanding. (One piece of good news: Outlook has left the building.

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Anyone know of a site with really simple, step-by-step directions for adding some javascript to Thunderbird? I don’t need general purpose info about javascript, but I do need handholding to figure out: 1. How you get TB to recognize scripts; 2. The specifics of interacting with TB’s object model. So, a response to #1 would let me run a Hello World script from a button I’ve added to the TB interface, and #2 would get me started with a script that can read selected emails within TB.

Or is this like asking someone for really simple instructions about how to get started etching silicon chips?

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Want to see just how absurd our attempt to regulate the sharing of content has become? Read Rob Pegoraro‘s excellent explanation, in The Washington Post, of TiVo’s recent proposal to the FCC for an exemption to the Broadcast Flag ruling.

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I’ve been trying to find out if the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chipset in the Thinkpad X40 will outperform the Radeon Mobility in my Thinkpad X22. I’ve looked lots of places and blogged the question, but it’s been tough finding any info other than that the Intel chipset uses system memory rather than onboard memory, meaning it can access more, slower memory.

IBM tech support had no info, so I called the account manager for Harvard, since I’m looking at doing the upgrade through my Berkman affiliation. The first person I talked with, Eric G., didn’t have an answer, but he started IM’ing CJ and relaying his comments. After a few minutes, he put me on the phone with the guy directly. And CJ was exactly the right guy. He looked up my model X22 and told me that my Radeon card only has 8MB of onboard memory, so the Intel should do much better. When I said that the system memory was slower, he said that it’s a 333 [insert correct unit] bus, which is not much worse than the 400 [insert correct unit] of modern graphics cards. Also, the X40 has a full megabyte of [something that isn’t RAM]. So, assuming that CJ isn’t making this stuff up, the X40 should outperform the X22 graphically.

I was impressed with Eric’s initiative in hunting down the right person, someone who happens to care enough about tech to have looked into all this. And both Eric and CJ were friendly and unwilling to BS me.

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Because the Kerry speech is so important, I’ve decided to see it the way it’s meant to be seen: On TV. Yes, I’ve come home. And, oh are my feet and back glad.

Sure, I felt guilty skulking out of the Fleet. But not enough to stay. At the Convention I can’t hear what the speakers are saying, and I’ve absorbed so much atmosphere that I’m pooping victory balloons. So, what do I get out of being there for another night?

I’m sure you’ll tell me.

I’ve seen the official excerpts of Kerry’s speech, released by the Democrats. How were these excerpts? Hmm, what’s another word for “boring”? Oh, yeah, I remember: “Bush wins.”

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My motherboard completely melted this morning. One minute I’m computing fine, the next my screen is frozen. On a cold boot, it can’t get past the opening bios welcome screen. I can’t even enter the bios setup page.

Heck, it was almost a year old, so it lasted longer than most of my electronic equipment. And I was in the market to spend a few hundred dollars getting myself back to where I was anyway.

Sigh.

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I’m having trouble finding information, and information I can understand, about the relative performance of the Radeon Mobility (LY) that is in my current Thinkpad X22 and the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 in the Thinkpad X40. All IBM tells me is that the Intel card uses system memory rather than onboard memory, which sounds like it has access to larger amounts of slower memory. (The X22’s CPU is an Intel III M running at 800, and the X40’s is a Pentium M at 1.2.)

All I want to know is: Will PowerPoint animations run faster of slower on the X40? Any one of you know anything about that?

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I started getting the following error message in XP:

JIT Debugging component registration is incorrect.

Please repair the installation of the most recent version of Visual Studio ..Net or Remote Debugging components.

Alternatively, execute the following command as an Administrator to manually repair the JIT Debugging component registration:

“C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS7Debug\vs7jit.exe” /RegServer

The program it wants me to run is not on my machine. So, after a little googling, here’s a partial fix (or: http://tinyurl.com/95zt). This reinstalls the .NET framework, which you need, apparently, if you’re working with VB 6.

This worked well enough that now the error messages I get when I run into Java on the Web are debilitating but not lethal.

Good news with my daughter’s XP desktop: After many hours of work, I think I have it almost entirely free of spyware.

After running all the standard spyware removal programs, I finally installed a spare copy of Norton Firewall I’d found buried in a stack of disks. Duh. Then, I believe I extirpated the last of the malware spawners. The spyware removers were unable to remove it because it was a running process. It would run itself even if I booted into safe mode. So, I foolishly waded into the Task Manager’s process list and weed-whacked until I found the relevant process. (Yes, this can corrupt your system. I assume you make backups more frequently than you make caca.) It was a RUNDLL thing. Killed it and deleted the file in Windows\System32 the spyware removers had discovered. Now, for the first time in months, the spyware removers report no malware.

For now.

(I hadn’t installed a firewall before because my daughter is not an under-the-hood sort of user, and, in my experience, firewalls force us to make decisions based on too little information expressed in too much jargon.)

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I’m sitting here at Da Berkman with Rebecca MacKinnon who is trying to move her site from TypePad to Movable Type. The export of data from one to the other went fine, but TypePad has “type lists” – blogrolls or anything else you want to list, including RSS feeds – that don’t export easily to MT. Anyone know an elegant way of doing it?

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Yesterday, Dan Bricklin took me camera-shopping at his favorite camera store, Newtonville Camera (in, guess where, Newtonville, MA).

My current camera, a Sony DSC-S50 is about 4 years old. It’s 2.1 megapixels and only ASA 100. Worse, I’ve never been impressed by the vividness of the images it takes. So, I’m looking for a camera that I’ll use primarily for family photos, almost always for viewing on screen. The immediate spur for the purchase, however, is that I want to be able to take pictures at the Democratic Convention without having to use a flash. So, here are some of my criteria, in no particular order:

1. ASA of at least 400, and takes good photos indoors without a flash
2. At least 5 megapixels, just in case
3. $400 or so. Much more than that is hard to “justify,” although I’m open to disagreement
4. Excellent image quality — which to me, technically, means that the pictures look real good
5. Even when I owned a filmic SLR, I never changed the lens, so apparently that doesn’t matter to me
6. Even when I owned an SLR, I never manually set the settings, so apparently that doesn’t matter to me
7. I prefer small to big and light to heavy, but it doesn’t matter much. I actually have trouble manipulating the ultra small cameras
8. Has a viewfinder. (You may take it as obvious, but my current camera doesn’t have one.)
9. Prefer longer battery life to shorter. Duh.
10. Prefer less time between pressing the button and the picture being taken
11. At least 3x non-digital zoom
12. Simply owning it will, at long last, make me cool

I am, of course, open to having this list refined, extended or ridiculed.

The current leading contender is the Canon Powershot S500 Elph

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