Thanks to all who have helped with previous ones, which I posted on:

• March, 2005: Sat 05 Mar 2005, Sun 27 Mar 2005


• April, 2005: Sat 16 Apr 2005, Sat 29 Apr 2005


• May, 2005: Sun 15 May 2005, Sat 28 May 2005


• June, 2005: Sat 11 Jun 2005, Sat 25 Jun 2005


• July, 2005: Sat 09 Jul 2005


• August, 2005: Sat 13 Aug 2005, Sat 20 Aug 2005


• September, 2005: Sat 03 Sep 2005, Sat 17 Sep 2005


• October, 2005: Mon 03 Oct 2005, Sat 15 Oct 2005, Sat 29 Oct 2005


• November, 2005: Sat 12 Nov 2005, Sat 26 Nov 2005


• December, 2005: Sat 10 Dec 2005, Sat 24 Dec 2005


• January, 2006: Sat 07 Jan 2006, Sat 21 Jan 2006


• February, 2006: Sat 04 Feb 2006, Sat 18 Feb 2006


• March, 2006: Sat 04 Mar 2006, Sat 18 Mar 2006


• April, 2006: Sat 01 Apr 2006

Thanks to jeanlucpikachu, altamira16, zaimoni, twinbee, and onfeynyuan_shen for replying last time.

Here's my fortnightly update:

• 1. Less memory-intensive variants of Photoshop, Word, Powerpoint, Firefox: OpenOffice. Mozilla (1.7.12). The GIMP. What else?


• 2. Text-mode application sniffers for IM and shells: No dice; all I've got so far are generic Trillian tie-ins. Is there a GAIM scripting language, at least?


• 3. Turning off things in Windows: Speech rec - nope. Touchpad - haven't tried. Dead profile - went away by itself.

Now for the new questions:


New Vista Build?

I heard there was a Community Technology Preview build of Windows Longhorn/Vista Beta 2 more recent than mine (CTP 5270), and that it solves a few of the Dell Inspiron problems such as not getting any sound from the headphones. I'd like to try it out - does anyone know where and how I can get it?


Registry Preservation

If I do get a new build, I'd really like to back up my registry and restore it after reinstalling the OS. Does anyone know of a way to do this? In the worst case, I can reinstall applications; I'd just like to save that time if possible.


Old Computer Problems Return for a Wild Card Round

Hey, if American Idol can do it, why can't I?

1. I still need a compact IP telephony solution, one that preferably fits on a P5-120 notebook computer or an iPAQ H3635 (Intel StrongARM 200MHz RISC processor).
2. The constant attempts by MS Office Professional 2003 to configure Speech Recognition every time I fire up Word are really driving me nuts. With no headphones or mic? It isn't going to happen! Any idea how I can suppress this?


--
Banazir