Laptop is dying :-(

Imagine my surprise when I went back to my laptop on saturday to see the screen filled with colour vertical lines.

Hmm, that is strange. So I shut it down, unfortunately my laptop doesn't shutdown by itself anymore (which is generally why I stand by it). So I have to hold down the on button for a couple of seconds to force shutdown.

Started it back up and a couple of coloured vertical lines appeared in the XP loadup screen. Hmmm. Eventually the login screen appeared and I did. However about 2 mins into the login process the screen started flashing on and off. Not good at all. I switched it off and didn't turn it on again until sunday morning.

No coloured lines and no screen flashing. I login and copy some of my files to my desktop for backup purposes. Unfortunately I get sidetracked for a couple of hours and go back to the machine and lovely coloured lines and flashing again.

Turn it off (have to go out anyway). Same thing happened monday morning, so hopefully I can get a clean login when I get home and get the rest of the stuff off I want. I'm going to hook up an external LCD tonight as well because this will let me know if it is a video card issue or a screen issue. I suspect it is a video card issue.

I need a new laptop anyway (this one would be almost 5 years old now), just wanted to hold out for a couple of months. Oh well.

So if you were expecting a reply to an email, or a new version of something - this is why you haven't heard from me yet. It has also set me back a couple of days in development time.

I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Now I get the fun decision of which Dell to get as a replacement...

Visual Forms - Version 1.3 now available

A new version of Visual Forms is now available for download.

The update contains the following enhancements:

• Automatically add and remove thumbs when forms are removed or added to the active project


• Enhanced printing capabilities allowing for Headers, Footers and Descriptions to accompany printed forms


• Delphi 2007 Support


• Use Help Tip hints


• Incremental search capabilities in windows

Existing users of Visual Forms can download the new version from the members section.

New users can purchase Visual Forms for 50 Euros here.

Access the Visual Forms help file online here

Visual Forms Home

JED, QC: The final post

When the new version of my QualityCentral client is released it will not be called JED, QC.

The name has been changed to QC Plus (QCP, QC+). I was eagar to remove JED from the title and the name was selected from many put forward by some of my more vocal users. There was a version that some folks had that was called "Name Me"!

QC Plus has many new features and bug fixes. I've written a couple of new articles about these features and these will be available either before, or as soon as QC Plus is available to download.



Special thanks to Levi from CleverIcons, who not only donated the splash image and icon for QC Plus but took my "pen on paper" sketch of an image and made it look very good.