All-in-one printer/scanner - made me install 32-bit OS :(

In immediate need of a scanner, I went to a local retailer to find one. All available scanners had a starting price range of $80-120, and for that amount I could also get an "all-in-one" printer/scanner. Since I had no printer, why not?
Usually I would take my time and find the perfect choise and buy it online. However, since I needed the scanner ASAP I had no choise but to pick one from the retailer's selection. The selection was limited to a number of models from Lexmark, Brother, Epson and HP. Back home to search for 64-bit drivers for any of those - and not one of them could offer it, nor was x64 barely mentioned! The closest I came was HP who announced that their products would not install/run on Windows x64 however later this year there WILL be 64-bit drivers available. That had to do it, so I chose the HP PSC 1510.

So - I hate to admit it - I had to give up my "64-bit only promise" and install the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003 in order to have the scanner working. I am now running a dual-boot system with x64 as the primary OS and the 32-bit as a secondary boot option. Hopefully soon HP will present those x64 drivers!
By the way, the HP PSC 1510 All-in-One I am fairly satisfied with even though I am not a big consumer of printing and scanning.

PowerDVD and mounted DVD images

For some reason, DVD images mounted in PowerDVD 6.0 from Cyberlink will not play. However it does not seem to be a general issue since some people have no problems, appearently.
I downloaded a trial of WinDVD 7 from InterVideo and it works without any problems. So I guess it's time to invest, again :(

Sony digital camera unrecognized

Usually, plugging in the digital camera on the USB port, Windows will recognize it as a removable storage drive, thus you can copy/move and delete photos from the cameras memory stick with Windows Explorer. But on Windows x64, my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P92 is not recognized, and no driver is available for x64.
Luckily I found a workaround - in the camera's setup I chose PTP as the USB Connect mode. Doing this, the camera again is recognized as a storage device and you are able to copy photos to the hard drive using Windows Explorer. Copy. But only copy - not move nor delete.
I will be surprised if Sony in the near future will offer x64 drivers. Anyway, maybe it's time to get a new digicam as well...?

SATAII hard drive from Hitachi

Just purchased a new Hitachi 250GB hard drive from Newegg.com. It is SATAII which can transfer data twice the speed of SATA. As always, Hitachi delivers a super drive - completely silent, rock stabile and super fast!
Installation was sweet, just plugged it in and it was running on my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard (which supports SATAII). However, it is necessary to use Hitachi's Feature Tool to enable SATAII (if you don't it will just act as regular SATA) but it is a cake walk to do it!

Data recovery

A few days ago I tried Paragon Partition Manager since I needed to resize a partition. I was surprised that the application actually seemingly worked on the x64 system. However, the price was too high since it at the same time deleted the parttion it was taking the space from. Not so nice! Need I say I do not recommend this piece of software?
So, I had a 120GB partition with tons of data on it, only it had been deleted. I have experienced the situation before and have recovered deleted data with GetDataBack from Runtime. However I was pretty sure that it would not work with x64 but I was amazed! that their latest version 2.31 did! Now the price of $79 is a bit high, I think, but worth every Penny when you are in the situation...