I have another weekend driving holiday planned in the next few weeks and my fiancee has requested Family Guy episodes on the iPod for the trip. Now that I know how to do it, I figure I better get started because there are a lot of episodes.

This time I decided to try Vrata's suggestion of DVDFab instead of the Videora software I used last time. What follows is a very quick summary of my experience with DVDFab.

Benefits:

• Does not require separate DVD ripping software.
• Supports optionally embedding subtitles into the video stream.
• GUI is very clean and easy to follow.
• Hasn't crashed yet on Vista x64.

Disappointments:

• Still insists on running as Administrator.
• The Platinum version for iPod conversion costs about US$50.

In all other ways DVDFab is similar to Videora. Similar conversion times, same resulting file sizes. Support for multiple devices' resolutions and bit rates.

If you think you'll be converting quite a lot of DVDs to an iPod compatible format, DVDFab is probably worth the price and you can try the fully-functional 30-day trial yourself to be sure.

I have just spend two weeks on holiday and before I left I wanted to transfer some of my DVDs to my iPod Video to keep my fiancee and I entertained whilst traveling to our destination. Unfortunately I didn't really think about this soon enough and didn't have time to get it organised. Now that I'm back home though I've been able to look into it further.

The biggest problem I found with converting DVDs to an iPod suitable format is that the movie studios don't seem to want to allow it. This results in either a complicated list of steps involving multiple tricky applications or purchasing an all-on-one solution from a questionable overseas company. Luckily though, Hanselman recently updated his Tools List for Windows, which included a link to Videora Converters, a suite of video transcoding programs available for free. If Hanselman recommends it and I don't have to provide payment details, it's worth a try.

I downloaded their iPod converter and started following their slightly outdated guide for converting DVDs. I grabbed my Futurama box set and put the first disc in. The first stage involves using the getting-harder-to-find DVD Decrypter to rip and decrypt the appropriate video and audio stream without all the extra DVD menu junk. Thankfully I'm familiar with DVD Decrypter and even more so that it works fine as non-admin in Vista 64-bit.

The second stage involves installing and running the Videora software, selecting the file that DVD Decrypter produced and waiting for it to convert the MPEG-2 data to Apple's particular MPEG-4 format. This took less than 10 minutes on my Core 2 Duo to convert a 22-minute animated episode into a 137MB MP4 file. When complete, the video played well in the PC QuickTime player and after using iTunes to transfer it to my iPod it played great there too.

Sadly, while the Videora software is free and written in .NET too, it suffers from two major problems. Firstly, it is so filled with advertising in the program itself that it's hard to see where to start and I began to wonder if I'd just voluntarily installed malware. Secondly, the software is designed to run as an Administrator, trying to write configuration data to Program Files, and under Vista, even as an admin, it crashes hard on exit.

Ultimately, if you want some favourite DVD movies or episodes on your iPod, this is probably the easiest way.

About twelve months ago I bought a new car and installed some basic necessities: alarm, central locking, and a better-than-factory stereo. For the stereo I picked up the now superceded Pioneer DEH-P4850MP "CD Tuner". I chose this model because it had good features for the price bracket and Pioneer seemed to have the best iPod support at the time.

Pioneer's iPod integration came in the form of the CD-IB100 II interface adaptor, a small module with the iPod dock connector on one end of cable and the Pioneer proprietary P-Bus connector found on most Pioneer car stereos. With a quick specialist installation, I had my iPod 30GB Video ready to crank.

For playing the music collection on my ipod through the car speaker system the Pioneer setup is great. For seeing and controlling what I'm listening too, there is definitely room for improvement.

The head unit has a 16-character alphanumerical display that scrolls artist and title information from audio discs with CD-TEXT. The iPod has full ID3v2 artist, album, title and all sorts of other information for each song. Combined the Pioneer equipments works together with the iPod to present the first eight characters only. I have it set to show artist because eight letters of a song title are quite useless but William Hung, William Orbit, and William Shatner are indistinguishable on the display.

The head unit also allows (forces) you to navigate the songs on your iPod via the stereo controls or the stereo's remote. You can navigate by artist, album, song, genre and even iTunes play list but after every press of the next or previous button, there is a delay while the iPod seeks to the first song in your selection and starts playing it. When you're listening to Bruce Dickinson and want to switch to Nick Cave it is very painful waiting for each of the artists in between to start playing before you can push the skip button again. The Pioneer iPod adapter is a great example of electronic hardware engineers developing end-user software.

Thankfully, while the iPod's built in controls are disabled when connected to the stereo it is really easy to disconnect it to queue songs the normal way or to take the iPod with you when you leave the car. The iPod also does a great job of remembering the current position in the current song when you turn the car off or disconnect the iPod.

Ultimately I'm happy with the system and have created five basic mood-oriented random play lists to minimise navigation pain. My fiancee isn't as happy though as most of the music is mine and while I like to listen to some more obscure stuff, she prefers mainstream songs.

Last week, after coveting my friend's GPS Pocket PC for some time, I purchased the new TomTom One XL car navigation unit. I had used my friend's GPS Pocket PC a few times and liked the Tom Tom software it had and the large screen of the One XL closed the deal.

I was very pleased to find that the One XL is self-installable with an elegant windscreen mount and separate car 12v power adaptor. The TomTom Home PC software installed and functioned surprisingly trouble free on my non-admin Vista x64 PC and connected to the One XL over USB just as easily.

Over the past week of use, I have only managed to crash the device twice (pretty good from my experience with iPods and mobile phones) and there is very little about the TomTom hardware and software combination that I can take issue with. It even connected to my "unlisted" Samsung mobile over Bluetooth to download updates.

My biggest problem with the One XL, which I presume will extend to most GPS devices sold in Australia, is the poor data. TomTom offer subscription services on top the initial purchase of the GPS device. Services like live traffic jam and road work updates, safety (ie speed/red light) camera locations, new Points Of Interest, and TomTom Buddies (a system for locating your TomTom using friends on the map). None of these "PLUS" services are offered in Australia.

Either the local organisations responsible for geographic data in Australia are useless at providing updated information or they try to resell this information at such an expensive price that TomTom can't justify the costs to the smaller Australia customer base. Neither situation would surprise me.

The Bakewell bridge and Glover Avenue have been out of service since October 2006 but are still valid routes in the One XL. Portrush Road, one of few Adelaide roads to have speed limits in the TomTom, still has 25km/h zones that have not existed since the major road upgrades finished over two years ago. The McDonald's and Pizza Hut near my home, that have existed for much longer than two years aren't in the standard POI set while other McDonalds's and Pizza Hut outlets are.

There are the minor afore mentioned issues with the Tom Tom itself too. Automatic time synchronisation assumes Eastern Standard Time instead of Adelaide's Central Standard Time (you'd think a GPS would know I was in South Australia). A planned route recently suggested I perform a U-Turn in the middle of an intersection: a maneuver legal in Queensland but not in South Australia.

Also, as part of the live traffic updates, the TomTom Home software allows the user to enter their own problem traffic areas they want to avoid, however just because Australia can't receive feeds from TomTom, the software won't allow the user to add their own either.

Ultimately though, while there are many issues to consider, the unit really helps with finding parking or getting somewhere new at night when street names are hard to read. I feel much more confident taking long drives to the middle of nowhere too knowing I can easily find my way back or give someone my longitude and latitude coordinates. I have no regrets about the purchase but I am reminded once again that online/data services in Australia still suck.

A new HP Compaq 6710b business notebook arrived at work the other day. It was very shiny, had plenty of grunt, and was preloaded with Vista... apparently. Somehow, during the excitement, the notebook was turned on for the first time and then the lid was closed again before Windows had started. We didn't want to go through the initial setup just then, we had more important things to do.

Later, the time finally came to setup the new notebook and install and configure all the usual goodies. Unfortunately, just after the BIOS POST and before Vista started loading, we were greeted with an Vista boot loader error message: "\windows\system32\winload.exe could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt". All other options in Windows Boot Manager lead to the same result and no amount rebooting was going to help.

The answer to this problem, as described on the Boot Loader error screen, is to boot from the Windows installation disc. However HP like many OEMs today, do not ship any CDs with the hardware. To get the recovery disc you would normally burn them after setting up Windows for the first time (Catch-22) or order them from HP (takes about three business days).

Next idea: to be able burn the recovery discs after setting up Windows, HP must, like other brand notebooks, have the recovery images on the hard drive in a hidden partition. I downloaded the user guide from the HP website to find out how to use the recovery images on the hard drive. Option 1, run the HDD based recovery tool from the Start Menu (uh...) or Option 2, press F11 while booting to start the recovery tool without Windows. Excellent.

F11, F11, F11, F11,... doesn't work. POST screen lists others but not F11. Googling suggests that the HP boot-time recovery tool is not a BIOS feature but a boot loader on the recovery partition and the active partition is set wrong if F11 doesn't work. Ok, what is the easiest way to change the active partition on a non-booting PC?

We booted from a Windows XP install disc to use the Windows Recovery Console. XP install couldn't detect a hard drive in the notebook and refused to go any further. We created a bootable floppy with a USB floppy drive on an XP machine and copied diskpart.exe to it. Diskpart requires the full Win32 environment to work. We created a bootable Windows ME boot floppy but FDISK is unusable on drives larger than 137GB.

Lastly, we waited for the Ultimate Boot CD to download from a very slow mirror and we got Ranish Partition Manager running on the notebook. Ranish showed the notebook's hard drive correctly as a 160GB drive. It also showed that there was a single 40GB active partition formatted as NTFS and the rest of the drive was unpartitioned. Bugger.

We are now waiting for the recovery discs to arrive in the post from HP. I'm guessing that the guys at HP who setup the initial Vista image for this notebook range forgot to leave the recovery partition intact. Just goes to show though, shut down your PC properly.

I've always maintained an interest in the current PC hardware scene. I like to keep abreast of the performance, prices, and problems with the various components available. I've built many PCs for myself, my friends, my employer, and even registered a business and sold a few to the public.

Understandably people often ask for my opinion when they are looking to buy a PC for themselves. I'm very very slowly coming to the realisation that I need to stop "helping" these people. Most of the time I have recommended components or systems that I have personally owned but even then their experience isn't necessarily the same as mine and then I feel responsible when it doesn't work out.

I have stopped operating my personal business and now I pay retail for all my hardware instead of going to wholesalers. I have also stopped building my own PCs and my last three purchases have been big name, off the shelf computers. It just isn't worth my time anymore to save a few bucks wherever I can.

From now on, my advice to myself, and to anyone else who asks, is to spend more. Looking for a new computer, LCD monitor, or video card? Spend more. Not everyone can afford it, it's not going to give you the best grunt for your money, but it sure has saved me a lot of time messing around. It's also a lot more affordable than buying the cheap option only to discover it sucks and you need to buy the expensive model too.

I write this as the Queen's Birthday long-weekend in Adelaide comes to a close. My fiancee has been busy redesigning the front yard and I have been busy with all things technical as I usually do.

On all three days of this weekend - Saturday, Sunday, and the public holiday Monday - my fiancee has been to the local Bunnings Warehouse home improvement store to purchase tools, plants, and pavers for the garden. They were open 9am to 5pm all three days.

Today, the public holiday Monday, I discovered that it would be really helpful if I had a wireless USB adapter to ease the repair of a friend's PC from the comfort of my home office. Unfortunately, I live in South Australia, where we have legislation known as the Shop Trading Hours Act.

This Act, allows home improvement and furniture stores, among others, to be open on public holidays but it denies this same right to electronics and computer stores. This also has the absurd side-effect that Harvey Norman stores open for the sale of furniture and bedding but close access to the computers and communications section of the building.

Why is the consumer allowed to build a garden shed or install a new light fitting on a holy day or a public holiday but not permitted to install a new hard drive or fit surround sound speakers in their lounge? A March 2007 review of the Shop Trading Hours was heavily in favour of maintaining these ridiculous constraints despite the increasingly 24x7 nature of today's lifestyle.

Each business should have the option to open for trading if and when they choose. This decision should be based on the demand for their goods and services on certain days and times, the affordability of staff wages at weekend and holiday penalty rates, the personal beliefs of the owners, and anything else that may impact the profitability of the type of business in question.

Likewise, the devout consumer will prefer to spend Sundays and holidays at their place of worship or having quality time with their family while those without religious concerns or family commitments and wanting to get the most of their busy schedule can shop for items they need.

I bought a LinkSys WAG54Gv2 ADSL wireless modem a couple of years ago. It had a good price and listed many features but I've suffered with unreliable WiFi since and eventually added a standalone access point to my home network.

The local broadband community has a lot of complaints about the LinkSys modem too and the original v1 wasn't any better. For a company advertised as "A Division of Cisco", I was hoping for much more and I wasn't the only one.

As a result I usually steer friends toward something like the D-Link DSL-G604T, a modem that I've installed many times with reliable results. Recently though, a close friend, finally moving from dial-up to broadband, purchased a LinkSys WAG54Gv3 against my advice. I guess the price, the Cisco brand association and the feature list were more convincing than my protests.

Last night I helped install the new modem and configure a Notebook, a Wii, and an iPaq (sounds like the beginning of a joke) to connect to it wirelessly. A fourth player, a wired HP desktop PC, was used to initially configure the modem and couldn't have been easier. WiFi however, as it turned out, actually was a joke.

On all three devices, IP addresses were not being issued by the modem if WEP encryption was enabled but WAP and also no-encryption were fine. The fact that I tried WEP first is entirely another blog post but can be summarised as such: better than no encryption, combined with MAC filter, LinkSys overheat with WAP, and minimal possible damage from an attack.

DHCP over WiFi has been a recurring issue in my experience and it is very disappointing. It is incredibly fundamental and there seems to be an amazing lack of thought put into getting this functionality right. The WAG54Gv3 is new to the market and doesn't have too much feedback yet, but so far it looks like it could be LinkSys' third strike.

I've said before that buying the more expensive product in the first place would probably solve all this messing around, but where should the line be drawn? An entry level Cisco 857 ADSL modem router will easily set you back AU$700, that's double the price of almost every other option.

Scott Hanselman recently posted about troubles with external hard drives and large files. However, while file systems and compatibility between multiple OSes is quite a problem on it's own (and one I'll still need to solve for myself soon), I've been wrestling with a different large file issue.

Several months ago I purchased (separately) a Samsung 40GB 2.5" PATA hard drive and a USB external hard drive enclosure to suit for quite a low price from eBay. Most of my data trafficking between home and work consisted of Office documents, source code, and other assorted small files. All was well.

Since then, I have needed to transfer Virtual PC images, MSDN DVD images, and server backups and I have had no success. Without any error messages during the copy process I was finding that files over ~400MB copied to the external drive were corrupt. They had the same length as the original but a command line FC /B or an FCIV revealed that random bytes were different.

Extensive Googling suggested motherboard USB power issues, cable quality problems, hard drive faults, and write-caching settings as potential causes. I methodically checked each possibility by using different machines, PCI USB controllers, new cables, a different 2.5" hard drive, and playing around in Device Manager. Nothing helped.

A few weeks ago, my local computer store had a special on Western Digital Passport Portable Drives. The Western Digital brand has always been good to me and I figured I could try one and have someone to complain to if it didn't work. I bought one and since then I've been moving all sorts of large files around (including 16GB Windows backups) without any problems.

That's just one more time for me, learning the hard way to stop buying cheap components and instead to just fork out for the quality brands up front. It's like washing a spoon under a running tap: occasionally you forget what happened last time and you get wet. So if you're getting corrupt files on an hard drive in an external enclosure, just cough up the cash and buy something better.

I recently purchased a HP dc7700 SFF PC for my home office and installed Windows Vista Business x64. I regularly use Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 x64 on this system for bringing work home with me and for doing personal development projects. I have also been testing the Orcas Beta 1 Virtual PC image that Microsoft has made available. Based on my experiences with Windows XP 32-bit, I figured 2GB of memory would be sufficient for my new machine.

I've since discovered though that Vista x64 and SQL x64 are very memory hungry and I usually have to close several applications just to free the 1GB required by the Orcas VPC. Not being happy with the performance hit from paging, I started looking into installing more memory. Jeff Atwood had posted about the 4GB problem only a few weeks earlier and was one of the motivators for choosing a 64-bit OS and the dc7700 has the Intel Q965 Express chipset and four DDR2 slots, both of which support a maximum of 4GB. However I could not find any reliable documentation that suggested whether the BIOS in the dc7700 supported the memory remapping feature that would allow Vista x64 to utilise all the RAM.

Thankfully, I have an awesome contact in the HP reseller channel who was able get my query passed along to the right people and get confirmation on whether it would work or not. I was a little impatient and I had already ordered the new RAM before the answer came back. The new memory modules arrived today and I am pleased to say, as was promised by my HP guy, if you own a HP dc7700 like mine, you can install a full 4GB in the system and Vista x64 will happily see the whole lot. Well, it actually only reports 4031MB but I'm not going to complain about 65MB... yet.