Tactical Combat is off by default, which means that the ship designer is disabled as are some research items related to it. Start a new game, make sure Tactical Combat is on and see if the error persists.

Is it true that if you get to 2,000 GOGie games they will reward you with a gigantic chocolate cake with raspberry filling?

No, what you get is a naked picture of Ted Koppel.

a/s/l

a: -2
s: O
l: middle of Nowhere

(Does that help? Note that the "O" is the letter "O", not the numeral "0".)

It helps more than words could ever convey.

New to this have purchased several games downloaded them on to my desk top now wanting to download to laptop....is this possible, brought game in 2011 - cheers for the help

Download them the same way you did on your desktop. Access your account from your laptop, go to your library, and click on the game you want to download. You can either:
A) Install Galaxy and use that to download everything through
B) Use the somewhat-outdated GOG Downloader
C) Download directly using the link(s) under the installers section after you click on your game

Chat is major-borked. I'm not new but I only just noticed this and so I feel I ought to be?

It got a change recently such that it's now basically the same chat from Galaxy.