Most common - unknown problem of Windows. - As part of "Energy Saving" your network card will turn itself off, and you'll lose connection to the Internet!
To prevent that from happening in Windows XP:

1. Go to "My Computer" icon, that hopefully is on your "desktop".
Otherwise find "My Computer" under the Start Menu.
2. Right click, select "Properties" (at bottom of list)
3. Select Hardware (in Tab at top)
4. Click on Device Manager Button
5. Click on "+" next to Network Adapter(s)
6. Double click on your network card
7. Select "Power Management" Tab at top right
8. Uncheck (the default is checked)
"Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
9. Click "OK" button at bottom.
10. Quit "Device Manager", Close "System Properties"

If that Device (your Ethernet Network Adapter) is turned off cause you stepped away from the computer or got caught up in a phone call, you'll lose your Internet Connectivity.

In fact Google Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power and you'll see EVERY
manufacturer of Network Adapters recommends unchecking the energy saving settings.

Windows Vista SP1 RC :

That program is now available here. Will try it out on the Vista Home Premium installed on my MacPro and report back.

FOLLOWUP: It's installed with less grief than the XP SP3, but the installation took way too long,
(over an hour), with too many reboots (3 ?), and zero useful information while processing, cycling through "Stage 3", "Stage 1", "Stage 2" multiple times. I wonder how much information is sent back to Microsoft.

Comcast and Tivo:
At the end of November 2007, Comcast announced that its DVRs withTiVo would now be available to the general public. A month later, apparently only one person has had it installed. His story here. I can believe his grief, if you telephone 1-800-COMCAST and ask them about Tivo, nobody has been trained on it, and they don't know what you're talking about.

New Software for the PC in my MacPro

I've been adding software to the Windows XP PC in my MacPro
============

1. Windows XP SP3 RC1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=75ed934c-8423-4386-ad98-36b124a720aa&displaylang=en
For a Intel Macintosh one needs to add a key to the Registry for the Installer to work
You need to create a regkey (STRING VALUE) (REG_SZ) called BootDir under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
and set it to C:\ This solves a problem
Otherwise you get an out of disk space error when the Installer looks at the BootCamp partition and the Install fails.
=======================

2. and a new Firefox I like Firefox 3.0b3
http://mozilla-firefox.en.malavida.com/d4139-free-download-linux

I like that you can save your tabs between sessions.
Check for updates daily.

Bye Bye Moviebeam - An ill considered business to give consumers less and charge more has now totally failed. All 1800 remaining subscribers now lose. February 14, 2006 I detailed what a poor proposition Moviebeam was. How do I get a job saving these folks from themselves?

MS Windows Vista - So I boot into my Hard Drive with MS Windows Vista for the first time in 2 weeks, and Microsoft has 200 Megs of updates, security patches etc to download, requiring a reboot. This doesnt even include the soon to appear Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Then my Kaspersky AntiVirus latest update also wants a reboot.
Also due soon, Windows XP Service Pack 3, which allegedly speeds up XP enough that you wouldn't want to use Vista, which I hardly do anyway.

Will Steve Jobs retaliate?:
7 years ago when the head of ATI let slip that their newest graphic
cards would be included with soon to be released high-end Macintosh
computers Steve Jobs went ballistic for them leaking that. He
retaliated by starting to use NVidia Graphics cards.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=117

Now, with AT&T's CEO leaking that new iPhones next year will have
3G built in, I would imagine Steve is rather upset.
1. For the leak.
2. Because it could hurt current sales.

I expect Steve is now speeding up work on a CDMA phone.

To not violate contracts with AT&T, the similar phone will be
an "Apple Phone" and not an "iPhone", since AT&T has
exclusivity for 4 1/2 more years with the iPhone.

GPS or I'll wait some more for an iPhone:
iPhones came down $200 in price, but GPS devices have dropped more than
half this Christmas shopping season; a careful shopper can find what was $649
last year for under $300 now. I just won't use Amazon, their customer
support is now in India.

I took the money I was saving for an iPhone, and decided that as
long as its screen is less than 640 x 480 resolution, its not TRUE
Internet; and have ordered a Garmin GPS with Bluetooth, which costs
less and likely will be used more. I'm also contributing Holiday gift dollars
towards one son to buying himself a Garmin GPS unit at Black Friday prices.
Like Apple, Garmin's stock price has doubled in the past year. Apparently some
of the GPS sale prices are units that don't have the latest "2008" maps, but
Garmin provides a free update if that's the case.

If iPhone 2, possibly out early 2008, supports 3G for faster Internet connectivity,
AT&T likely will charge $40/month for data, as they do for 3G Smartphones,
rather than the $20/month data currently for iPhones.

My Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) experiences : Luckily Amazon was wrong about its predicted Nov 3 - 7 arrival. As it shipped from Dallas, it took just 2 days for USPS to get it to Houston. I was fortunate the DVD wasn't damaged as it fell out of the flimsy cardboard box Apple used for it. Trivially simple and painless to install. Put the DVD in, click install, reboot, select English as language, accept the License agreement, and off it went, with nary a problem. When it finished, only a few minor issues. I had to "install" the drivers for my LaserJet 3800n which the Macintosh no longer knew was there, and bootup is slower, likely because of the beta McAfee VirusScan I'm running. Time Machine defaulted to wanting to backup every Macintosh volume it could see, rather than just the boot volume, so after I realized that and adjusted preferences it worked fine, but it is slower than slow. I'll have to try disconnecting from Internet and turning off VirusScan and see if that helps, or I can go back to doing a backup by restoring the Boot disk to another Hard Disk. Disappointing Apple still doesn't provide a HD optimization utility. As for BootCamp, the setup file is dated April 2007, so nothing new there. Selecting "Startup disk" no longer sees my Vista volume, but it can be selected at Bootup. New drivers are provided on the Leopard DVD for XP and Vista, and there I have 2 major issues. The drivers for my NVidia 7300 didn't install and crapped out in both XP and Vista, so it required a side trip to nvidia.com to get their Sept. 2007 drivers which worked fine. Apple a year later still hasn't provided a PC driver for its own external iSight webcam. One review said the Macintosh could now write to PC hard disks, and I did not find that to be the case for NTFS formatted volumes. Ethernet must be working better because any browser now seems to run faster under Leopard than before.

Apple has released OS X 10.5 : I've made a clone of my Macintosh Hard Drive, and checked both drives for "permissions" preparatory to installing Leopard. Amazon says my Leopard shipped, and is due Nov. 3.

Epson biodegradeable inkjet printers: I have a color inkjet printer as it's an excellent poor man's Xerox.

My Epson Stylus CX6400 had a terminally clogged printer head (soaking overnight in either
alcohol or Windex didn't help) so I bought a nice new HP Photosmart C5280 at Office Depot,
as they swapped my still NIB leftover Epson ink cartridges for HP ones. Now I fear it'll be
months till HP has a working OS X 10.5 driver.

No iPhone for me (at the moment) :
I can't put my own ringtones on it.
After the iPhone 1.1.1 update, the phone only works with ringtones bought through the Apple iTunes store or the original Built in Ones.
What if you have a public domain sound file thats not available through iTunes and you'd like to use as a ringtone? You're out of luck at the moment.
Example sounds:
Flint phone (works great on my Sony-Ericsson Walkman phone), now with a 4 Gig Memory Card
Star-Trek Warning sound (Red Alert)

Macintosh AntiVirus ? Apple is about to introduce a new version of OS X, version 10.5,
rumored for later in October 2007. Last update broke the then available major antivirus products. Fearing a repeat, I wasn't anxious to pay to renew my Norton AntiVirus 10.0, given Symantecs' failure to promise me a technology upgrade if needed with 10.5

Luckily McAfee has just released a free beta of its VirusScan, version 8.6; which it promises to be compatible with OS X 10.5. So that is what I now run with my OS X 10.4.10

Add a nice feature to Windows XP: Wouldn't it nice to be able to right click on a folder and have one of the options be "Print Listing of Contents"? Turns out Microsoft didn't include that feature but has instructions for you to add it as an always available option. Just go here.

I lost my Cingular phone:
The other day, I lost my (going on 2 year old) Sony-Ericsson w600i
(a swivel model, that had started to sometimes turn itself off when swivled) I called my cell number, and the person that answered declined to return it "I just bought it" they said.

I went to my local ATT store, and was issued (for free) (after providing the PIN for my cell number, and showing a Drivers License for ID) a new SIM, which of course deactivated the old SIM, and made the lost phone dead and useless. Luckily my account has International Calling deactivated. The new SIM was put in an old Sony T616 which is working fine until I get a new phone. That took all of 2 minutes. Checking my account online no calls seem to have been made with the lost phone.

I had backed up my address book to my Macintosh (in case I get an iPhone), so it took just a couple of more minutes to sync the T616 to my Macintosh and restore my address book.

I called 611 and was able (in exchange for another 2 year committment)
to get a FREE Sony W300i; and its already been shipped from Fort Worth.

The W300i will use the same car charger and USB cable I already have,
and adding a $20 Memory card my new W300i will allow it to hold 4 times as many songs for its "Walkman" features as the W600i had. Only downside is the low resolution camera, 0.3 megapixel), but I always have a Sony W100 - 8 Megapixel camera with me.

Or the W300i might be sold on Ebay and provide about $140 towards an iPhone purchase.

Followup: 9/24 - I could be getting my new phone delivered today if AT&T had sent it UPS or FedEx ground. 1 day from Forth Worth to Houston. NOPE - They sent it (at Extra Cost) 2 Day FedEx, so it had to be shipped by FedEx to Memphis first.

Make your Firefox even better: Two great additions to Firefox -

1. Adblock Plus Blocks banner ads and pop-ins etc Makes browsing fast again.

2. IE Tab - Run Internet Explorer web pages inside Firefox.

Check out other possibilities to enhance Firefox here. Also make sure
you're running the latest Firefox. As of today, it's 2.0.0.6

Many ways to save Money on a iPhone:

1. The $200 Apple Price drop

2. Save another $100 by buying a 4 Gig Model

3. Save $50 by buying a refurb.

4. Save $50 by using the Telesales code.

5. Save ~$150 or more by getting your upgrade phone after 18 months in
contract, and then reselling NIB on eBay.

6. Save 10% with a new AT&T credit card.

7. Save $50 to $100 by selling your old phone on Ebay.

Bell South not integrated/merged into AT&T yet ! : Despite years of SPAM from AT&T about their referral program, now that I have referred a customer (my cousin in Florida)
who is switching from MCI to AT&T (so she may get dsl); I find I don't get a referral credit or payment, because Bell South territory doesn't count.

I told my cousin that despite what she has been told, she's not getting AT&T service, because Bell
South isn't merged yet. Indeed the AT&T web pages revert to Bell South web pages after she enters her Florida phone number, and she'd get a bellsouth.net email address.

Which company is nicer to its employees?

Apple employees get a FREE iphone. Story here.

AT&T employees can get 10% off an iPhone. Story here.

An excellent recommendation for OS X on the Macintosh: The Houston Chronicle's technology writer wrote an article with all the things he'd recommend you do to make Microsft Windows Vista usable. Read it all and it could be easy to conclude Vista should be avoided.
Story here.