I have an Acer C314 Tablet PC, with a 2.0GHz Pentium M processor, 1.5GB of RAM, a 100GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Business.

It’s been a thoroughly reliable performer for me (well, after two trips back to the mothership to have the keyboard replaced).

I’ve documented its recent performance here. I’m in no hurry to send it away, but I’m curious: Is there anyone who’s dying for a portable PC like this at a bargain price? If so, let me know. Conditions: You have to know what this computer is all about. You have to be enthusiastic about Tablet technology (because you can do better with newer machines that don’t include Tablet features). You have to understand that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ultralight. (And yet I dragged it all over Europe without complaining. Go figure.)

If you’re interested, drop me a line and let’s talk. (Update: I can’t give it away, but I’ll make a very fair deal for someone who can convince me they’ll give it a good home.) If you’re not interested, hey, I could use this notebook for another year and not be unhappy.

(Curious to see whether the ASCII converter I used to scramble my e-mail address really works. Guess I’ll find out soon enough. Update: Doesn’t work. Link replaced.)

Update: No more e-mails, please. I’ve made a decision. Read the details here.

This is truly one of the best error messages I’ve ever seen:

My favorite part is the second exclamation point, which really lets me know that this is an important message.

It should come as no surprise that the driver in question is unsigned and very, very flaky.

If you use Windows Vista, you might have seen an odd error message informing you that “COM Surrogate has stopped working.” There are multiple causes for this error, but in my case and that of at least one other person I spoke with this week, the solution is as simple as upgrading Nero 7 (as of today, the current build is 7.9.6.0). You can download the update, but I was impressed by Nero’s self-updating module. Open the Nero StartSmart program and choose Nero Product Setup from the top of the Tools group. The Update tab is the first one in the Product Setup window.

Not using Nero? Have you installed the DivX software program? Same problem, and again the solution is as simple as updating the software to the latest version.

If neither of those programs is the culprit, read the longer list of possible solutions put together by the How-To Geek. (And if you haven’t seen the Geek’s site, go and visit. You’ll find some crisp writing and relevant stuff, like this collection of Windows Vista How-Tos.)

Lightsaber sound effects, nanotechnology, built-in reproductive capabilities. The Onion has the details.

(via Barb Bowman) 

Special bonus snark: How Steve’s Reality Distortion Field has become contaminated!

Update 2-July: Survey is now closed. Thanks, everyone! 

If you’re a regular or occasional reader of this site, help me out by taking a few minutes to fill out a short survey.

Most of the questions are the sort you’re familiar with if you’ve ever filled one of these out, designed to give potential advertisers a clue as to the demographics of the people who visit here. In addition, I convinced Federated Media to let me add five questions that are specific to this site. Those results will help me determine what you want me to write about.

As an incentive, I’ve got five copies of Windows Vista Inside Out or Windows XP Inside Out (retail value $35 or more) to give away to a randomly selected group of respondents. To qualify for that drawing, leave your (real) e-mail address in the box next to Question 19. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, just leave that box blank.

Thanks for your help.

Update: The link to the “thank you” page that should appear after you click Submit is pointing to an internal address instead of an external URL. It appears the survey is being submitted correctly, but I’ve sent a note to the folks at FM asking them to look into this issue and fix that link.

Update 2: Link to the “thank you” page is now working properly. I’m assured that all previously submitted surveys arrived safe and sound, so if you got the error page at the end there’s no need to fill in the survey again.

No wonder I can’t keep up. Seriously, I would imagine most of these are internal and/or not relevant to what I do, but there are literally dozens and probably hundreds of Microsoft employees who are writing interesting stuff. I’m sure I’m missing a whole bunch of smart people.

Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog Directory is a great starting point, but it’s far from complete. Which Microsoft bloggers do you read? Are there any great sources of inside Windows information flying low under the radar in Redmond? Leave links and tantalizing clues in the comments section, please.

If you’ve been trying to figure out what the final episode of The Sopranos was all about, read this thought-provoking deconstruction.

As I noted in the previous post, I’ve been tearing my hair out for nearly two weeks now trying to debug a problem with the WordPress 2.2 upgrade that caused many administrative tasks to fail with an error that tells me “You don’t have permission to do that.”

I found lots of other people (here and here and here, for example) having similar problems, and none of the fixes/workarounds they suggested had any effect.

This morning I stumbled upon the cause and the solution. The cause is a snippet of script code that I used in the sidebar for this site, allowing a third-party ad network (Text Link Ads) to serve up ads. When that code was included in the sidebar, the error occurred. When I removed it, the errors went away. As it turns out, the Text Link Ads people have some alternatives to offer, one of which is a WordPress plugin with matching theme widget. When I switched to that option instead, the error messages vanished.

So, if you’re using WordPress 2.2+ and you’re experiencing the “You don’t have permission to do that” error, look for any third-party script code in your template. It could well be the culprit.

We now return to normal posting. Thank goodness.

Well, it’s been an interesting week. I upgraded this site to WordPress 2.2 last week and since then pretty much nothing has worked right.

The latest hassle is that all comments were immediately flagged as spam, without notifying me. I just retrieved about 30 of them from the spam catcher.

I think/hope it’s all fixed now.

Meanwhile, if there are any WordPress experts out there, I’d love to know why just about every administrative task I try (like editing a template in the Theme Editor) is failing with a “You don’t have permission to do that” error. It’s happening to a lot of other people as well, based on the forums at WordPress.org, and no one seems to have an answer. File permissions are correct. This is a squeaky clean installation. I’ve disabled all plugins. Still no joy.

Ugh.

PS: Thanks to Jake for letting me know comments weren’t working. I just thought it was a quiet week.

Update: The WordPress bug is described here and here and here. This comment is a perfect description of what’s happening to me. However, the recommended fix (and this variant) do nothing to solve the problem. And just to reiterate, it’s not a file permission issue and it is not resolved by disabling all plugins. Ugh again.

Update 2: All fixed. Details here.

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