After a few weeks away from the books, I’m back and raring to go – or I would be, if the S199 software from climateprediction.net would please play ball. I’m currently running Vista on my Mac using the very nifty Parallels Desktop virtualisation tool – an easy way to get the best of both worlds, as it lets you run Windows (or any other OS for Intel machines) as an application under OS X. Neat. Sadly, the climateprediction.net software doesn’t like Vista – I can see from the S199 boards on First Class that a few other people have been having the same problem as I’ve been getting, but since the OU doesn’t support Vista there’s not much help being given there.

You’re probably thinking the obvious solution is to just ask on the cpdn forums, and yes, they do have an apparently very helpful support forum – but you need to be a registered user before you can post queries. The only way you can register is through the cpdn application – which won’t work under Vista, so you can’t register to post your query. A wonderfully vicious circle. ::headdesk::

Fortunately, I have copy of an older version of Windows on hand, and Parallels lets you install as many ‘virtual’ OSs as you like – I just could have done without the bother of spending the time installing Windows 2000. Frustrated? Oh yes.

UPDATE: So after spending the time to get Win2K up & running, I found it still wasn’t working, which makes me suspect a problem at cpdn’s end. Same result on a native Windows box, too, so that rules out Parallels being the cause. Of course, since the app won’t register, I still can’t post to their support forums to ask about it. Ah well – wait a few days & try again…

UPDATE 2: And lo, it was a fault at cpdn’s end. Tried again last night and the client connected & registered with no problems. Here endeth a few days’ frustration…