I am now in the process of changing the name of my blog. I have registered the domain name abokevin.com and have transferred my blog to this address. I am in the process of finding a new theme for the blog, as well as changing the top image to incorporate the new name.

So why the new name? When I started this blog a few years ago (I know, I know – I have not been too active here) Windows Vista was just about to be a Release Candidate and I wanted to blog about it and other MS Tech related news. Well the world has moved on, the new MS OS is now Windows 7, and I felt that the name Norwegian Vista no longer seemed appropriate. I was thinking of keeping it on interpreting the name to be more like the Norwegian Outlook on things tech (no pun intended 😉 ), but decided against it.

AboKevin happens to be my nickname in Lebanon, since my oldest sons name is Kevin. AboKevin literally means “Father of Kevin”. A nickname like this is given with respect and is something I truly honor and appreciate, and I can think of nothing better as the name for my blog.

You will continue to be redirected here if you use http://norwegianvista.wordpress.com

The change of name also underscores something that has already happened to the blog; it is no longer only tech-related. Although tech is most likely also going to be the biggest topic on the blog in the future, I will post more about geopolitics and other topics that I find interesting and worthwhile getting out there.

Our small family is also growing. I will soon be the father of a third child. We don’t yet know whether it is a boy or a girl (didn’t want to know is more precise) but are really looking forward to the arrival of the fifth member of the family. The arrival is scheduled for later this month, more posts on that to follow.

Anyway, there you have it: The name of this blog is now AboKevins blog.

Thank you for your continued interest;

You can also follow me on twitter!

Good intentions are obviously not enough! I had every intention of blogging here regularly, but as is quite obvious, that has not happened – at all! So enough of empty promises – I will only now say that I will try to keep this blog alive. How often I will blog? Well… as often as I feel like it.

A lot has changed since I last blogged when it comes to my computers, software I use as well as in my personal life;

– I still have the Hp dv9074ea laptop, but I have formatted the hard drive and installed Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on it this time around. I am very satisfied with the performance of the computer, although I wished that I could add some more RAM. Alas, I have already topped it with a maximum of 2 GB. On the negative, I must mention that along with a lot of other Hp dv users I have had to send in my machine for a motherboard replacement as the laptop totally died on me some months ago.

I had at the time also purchased a Hp dv6055 for my wife, that also ran into the same problem, only a couple of months after I bought it. Terrible! Besides that very annoying malfunction on both laptops we are both very satisfied with the performance of the machines.

– I have upgraded my desktop so that it now has a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor with 6 GB of RAM, a Powercolor Radeon HD 4870 graphics card on a ASUS P5K-E Wireless motherboard. I have of course installed Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on this machine as well. It is a fast! machine that meets all my computing needs and then some. Although I am no heavy gamer, I do play the occasional game, and Crysis runs beautifully on it.

On a more personal note I am very happy to say that me and my wife are expecting our third child! 8 years since last time, but we are really looking forward to our new family member. And the kids just cannot wait until they see their new sister or brother. It has been so long since last time, that it almost feels like its the first time for both of us! Couldn’t have been better!

About future blogging;

Having 2 laptops and 2 desktops in the house means that there is a lot of maintenance to do.  And there are multiple copies of files spread over the lot. I have downloaded Live Mesh and SyncToy 2 and are at the moment trying to figure out how to sync my data between the different machines. For instance I would really like to have all my email on both my laptop and my desktop. I manage email through Outlook 2007 with the Outlook Connector software for gmail and hotmail, but I have not yet had the time to figure out how I will sync mail between the machines in order to have everything on both machines at the same time. I think SyncToy will do the trick. I will post here when I figure out how to do that.

Another topic is sharing multimedia data in the household. On the desktop hard disc I have more than 15000 digital pictures as well as approximately 7000 songs. I would really like to share these files with the rest of the computers in the household as well as to the Xbox 360. Windows Vista makes it easy to share and access, but being on a mostly wireless home network (g) I am not too impressed with the speed and usability. I will have to delve further into how to make my setup more user friendly. Posts to follow.

Well I think that should be enough for now. Promising more will probably be promising too much at the moment.

Any hints or tips on those topics are welcome indeed. 😉