Don't try this at work! It seems that watching a DVD is not something Microsoft thought you would want to do at work.

Ok, so I don't tend to watch DVDs at work, in fact I can't seem to think of a time that I have ever done this but I have however watched a DVD on my work laptop in a hotel room when I am on the road.

Today, when I went to watch a DVD in bed (yes, it was a lazy afternoon and it was cold!) I have no TV in the bedroom so I grabbed a laptop (there are three in the house), I happened to grab my new vista laptop as it has the longest battery life, the others are older and suffer the dreaded laptop battery fade.

In goes the DVD and up pops windows media player - all good so far. And then a warning pops up telling me I don't have a codec for it. Now, this is not new to me, divx comes to mind but not for DVDs on a supposedly advanced OS.

So I follow the link to the MS support site that informs me that "If you are running the Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise you might need to install a compatible DVD decoder before playing a DVD" and then helpfully gives me a link to purchase a DVD decoder. Among my options, I can upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate.

Great... ok, time to grab the mac and long power cord...