Thursday 16 June 2011

Surprise acquisition

Yesterday morning we took a trip to the recycling centre to drop off a kid's bicycle, and then decided to stop off for lunch at M&S in the new Leckwith retail centre. Browsing the technology section, as I habitually do out of curiosity in any big store, I spotted a bargain, and bought a bargain Sony laptop on impulse. It was the last thing I expected to do when I left home, although I have been looking with interest for a potential replacement for my regular desktop machine for some time.

Setting it up was a smooth and easy process, but I ran into time consuming trouble attempting to install the Libre Office Open Source productivity suite of programs. Getting the installer to play with the in-built Windows 7 security was difficult enough, but eventual successful installation routine failed to leave me with a program that worked. No amount of on-line research last night and this morning has yielded either a solution, or another person with a similar machine and the same problem. 

The arrival of usable on-line office productivity suites like Google Docs makes this far less of an issue, but I'm left wondering why this occurred. I read and followed meticulously the 'Readme' instructions accompanying the downloaded installation file. I've been a Open Office and now a Libre Office user since the former was launched, and this is the first time I have ever experienced such an installation failure.

Apart from this, I'm glad to have piece of kit that will give me a good viewing experience when catching up on missed TV programmes on BBC iPlayer.
  

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