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Moving to Windows 7 and 64-bit operating sytems is still in its infancy in some respects (no Adobe Flash Player yet) and in others it's leaving behind some good kit.

Our Nikon Coolscan IV, along with all Nikon film scanners, even the £2500 ones, are nor recognised by Windows 7. The Nikon website says they have no plans to work on compatible software, apologies for any inconvenience and we hope you will buy Nikon again! Actually loading the software is fine, but the system just does not see the scanner.

Fortunately we still have a Vista laptop and that works like a dream....so we're scanning again.

Now Sue is having a go with Sims3.....early days yet!

Try running the software in compatibility mode. Select Windows Vista and the service pack working on the laptop and it should work like a dream.

I hope that Sims 3 works better, don't forget to move all your saved games over from the laptop - now that Windows actually talks to other computers properly it should be easy to network and transferre.

Nikon explain that the sofware works fine, but the system does not see the scanner regardless....basically they are saying tough luck but please buy Nikon again. Good deal eh?

The laptop is a long story, to be saved for another day.

Write and complain - then set up a Facebook group grumbling about it, if enough people complain they will quickly change their tune.

Nikon need to look at it this way...from a recent survey (see here for article), 10% of PCs accessing the internet are doing so using a Windows 7 operating system. That number is only going to increase over the coming months as more and more people upgrade to 7, leaving Vista and XP usage to drop.

£2500 for a film scanner is a lot of money, but if you have a company who NEEDS to utilise such a product, then you imagine that they are likely to be interested in ensuring their PCs are operating at peak efficiency. Therefore they will upgrade regularly and will inevitably end up running Windows 7 far quicker than the average PC user. They are also likely to want to upgrade the hardware that captures the digital media on a regular basis. Correct?

So, Nikon are basically saying they don't want the big, regular spenders money? Sounds like a stupid business model to me! They don't happen to have any ex-Labour Treasury guys working for them in the finance dept. do they?

I suspect they have lost interest in selling film scanners - there will be few new users as everyone will have scanned their negatives by now. Small market = small interest in developing any further?

What I do like about computing is that there is always something to learn from every problem that crops up.

The Sims3 updater indicated that the Adobe Flash Player was still in beta for Windows 7. The Adobe website just downloaded it with no problem whatsoever. EA want to get up to speed....

EA are loosing money hand over fist so I think that they should get their game up to speed asap. Sims is one of their few money spining franchises to make any money.

I think that they are missing a trick with that game, they need to make it easier to purchase items from within the game with real money. It could be like a number of online games, where you get to purchase for free using a large amount of sim money or use a 'sim credit' that could be purchased for a nominal fee. . . . the exchange is just too annoying at the moment, it keeps asking us to install some premium content to take advantage of some of the free items but it never tells us which one!

We now have the first of our two new monitors, and wow!

I say first one because when Sue gets home and sees this she'll want one...we went for the Dell 2209WA, which is a native resolution of 1680x1050 and a 22" diagonal. It's the right size for where I work.

The viewing angle is excellent, no variation as the angle changes, and the sharpness, colour and dynamic range are spot on. Thoroughly recommended and a snip at £258.00 inc. VAT.