Windows Fail

I took this picture in my local book store to submit to the FAIL blog, but they never used it.  Oh well.  Posting it here!

My Dreamcast Memoirs

I wrote a Dreamcast article a while back on Retrojunk.com.  Everything was written in notepad, so I had a few spelling mistakes/typos that made it through.  I’m very satisfied with the way this article turned out since I managed to write down my memories before they were completely gone from my head.

My Dreamcast Memoirs

Going from Windows 7 to Windows XP

People said once you use Windows 7, you can't go back to Windows XP.  Is this true? 

As someone who has been using Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 64 bit edition, I think I could answer that question.  I was having some trouble with an external firewire drive in Windows 7 recently and decided to go back to Windows XP 32 bit.

So now I'm using Windows XP.  How do I feel?  Well, for starters, I missed the driver support in Windows 7 and the actual usefulness of Windows Update which actually finds some drivers where in XP it did nothing.  I had to get out all my drivers and install them.  Using Windows 7, all I had to do was install the video card drivers.

I miss the lovely redesigned start bar/action bar.  It made things look so much more organized without the various open windows scattered everywhere at the bottom.  I've increased the size of the quicklaunch icons in XP, but that's a poor substitute.

On the plus side, I know every piece of software I want to install will work flawlessly because it's Windows XP, an OS that was released in 2001.  There were quite a few times when I was using Win 7 64 bit and I had to check various sources to see if some software could run or be installed properly.  This is mostly due to Windows 7 being unreleased and it being a 64 bit edition of Windows.

I didn't think I would, but I miss Aero.  Everything just seemed much smoother when I had it on in Windows 7.  Going back to Windows XP without Aero is a bit of a downer.

I really miss Windows 7's file explorer and the way it had better automatic detection of view type depending on the content in folders.  I really loved the space indicator located in Computer which showed the storage space with a graphical bar of your hard drives.

Overall, I think Windows 7 is going to be a great OS when it's released in October. 

Product Review: Western Digital TV

Time to review a new piece of hardware!

I'm reviewing the new Western Digital TV box that allows users to play digital media files on their televisions. Basically, people would want this that have movies or videos that are stored on a computer, but would be much better on a television.

I absolutely love XBMC, which is a piece of media center software that can be used on Macs, PCs, and a hacked Apple TV. I think it's the #1 media player out there for playing Internet formats on a television. I compare every device that allows media to be displayed on a TV to XBMC.

So I hooked up the WDTV with an HDMI cable and plugged in the power. Everything was done except to connect a USB storage device. So I grabbed an 8 GB flash drive and loaded some test videos on it and plugged it in.

My first impressions were based on the 1.01 firmware.

-High quality xvid files played fine and smooth!

-Movies/Shows with external srt subtitles had a bit of trouble.
When I played a Korean movie, I noticed that the subtitles would appear half a second later than they should. This really really bothered me and made watching a movie very difficult. Another issue was the subtitle display. The subtitles themselves were white with a very small black outline, too thin for anyone to actually read them when something in the film was bright.

-The navigation menu is a bit clunky and unnecessary, but it works.

-The WDTV unit is very tiny! The pictures don't do it justice.

I was feeling regretful over my purchase until I found online that Western Digital had released a PreRelease version of its 1.02 firmware. I checked the changelog and it fixed all the issues I complained about with the previous firmware.

After updating the firmware on the device, my movies and shows play perfectly with more definied and better positioned subtitles. This makes me extremely happy.

The price on Amazon was $100, which was a really great deal. I was looking at the Apple TV ($220) and the WDTV ($100) and I went with the WDTV due to price and hoped that the developers would continue updating the firmware, which they have.

While the device lacks wireless capabilities for sharing from other computers, that problem can be resolved by attaching storage directly to the WDTV box.

Overall rating (with prelease firmware 1.02): 4/5

Tech annoyances

Do you ever have little things that just frustrate you?

I'm going to list some things I notice some people do that just annoy me.

Maximize a web browser window on a widescreen monitor
DON'T DO IT. Most websites are designed in a 4:3 style and sometimes maximizing a web browser window causes the site to become wider, resulting in text going across the entire screen. Don't people realize that's not efficient for reading?

Trying to Maximize a window on a Mac
The Mac OS was designed to allow people to work with multiple windows and go back and forth to the desktop. Lately, there are so many Mac newbies out there that think they have to stretch windows to make it "maximized" like on Windows. Hello, that's not helping productivity! (Perhaps in some cases, I can see a need for a full screen app, but most users don't need it)

People confusing Windows and Office
I can't tell you how many times I've run into people that tell me they can just start over and install "Office XP" on their computers. Or if I ask if they have Office 2003/2007, they end up telling me if it's Windows XP or Vista.

Just recently I had a person confuse Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7.

People that don't know when to single click or double click
I see people all the time that double click links on a website. Go get your computer operator's license and come back, please.

People that don't understand when to right click or left click.
Left click is the action button. Right click usually brings up context menus. The end.

I'm sure there are tons more, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.

What are your tech annoyances?

Review: Windows 7 Build 7057 x86

I originally tested the first beta of Windows 7 in a virtual machine some time ago, but I couldn't really get a feel for the operating system that way. I partitioned my drive so I could dual boot between Windows XP and Windows 7.

The first thing I like about Windows 7: I didn't have to have a folder waiting full of drivers. Windows 7 recognized everything and even allowed me to get driver updates/install additional drivers through the new update service. The only thing I needed to install were the graphics card drivers from nVidia using special Windows 7 beta drivers.


The second thing I liked was the clean interface upon first booting into the OS. However, I'm afraid computer manufacturers are going to mess this up completely with all the bloatware they preload machines with lately.

After seeing how nice Aero looked, I disabled Aero and changed the theme to classic. Yes, I am old school. I like my classic theme! Makes it easier to focus, in my opinion.


I installed the latest beta (2.0) of Google Chrome to use as my web browser. For some reason, pages seemed to load a bit slower than they did using the latest beta on Windows XP. I attribute this to Windows 7 using the IPv6 protocol by default instead of the IPv4 one that XP users are accustomed to using.

I checked Windows Task Manager to see how much memory Windows was using without running any additional programs. It turned out to be 662 MB and was roughly the same with Aero and themes turned on. I still am not comfortable with having an operating system use more than 500 MB of system memory just for itself, but I guess I should accept it now that we have systems that range from 4 to 16 GB of RAM.


Other small things I liked:


-The ability to scale windows so that you can have 2 windows side by side. No more manually resizing windows!
-The control panel takes getting accustomed to, but I suppose it will do. It's no Mac OS X preferences, though.
-Microsoft has done a really excellent job with Windows Media Player. It is really minimal when playing a movie or song. I stopped using Windows Media Player after version 6 due to how bloated and ugly it became. This new version is so much easier on my eyes. I don't think I would switch from Media Player Classic, though. But maybe I will.

In general, I find Windows 7 to be a decent version of Windows. I could live with it and use it as my main OS. I think it is the best CONSUMER version of Windows Microsoft has ever developed. As for businesses, I don't see why they would need Windows Vista OR 7. Windows 2000/XP works great for them.

Windows 7 can be a great operating system if it is used as a main OS. I would not recommend it for virtualization. I think Windows XP would be much better suited for that.

Of course, what I tested was a beta version and does not reflect the final version of Windows 7. I hope Microsoft has better luck with Windows 7 than Vista. Microsoft's operating system affects so many people's lives that any change to it's software has a big effect on the world.

iTunes Experience

Well, I finally bought something on iTunes. Yeah, I know I'm late to the game, but it's not without just cause. I refused to buy anything from iTunes for a long time until the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection was removed from legal music that I purchased. Now that iTunes has mostly (Not everything yet) gone DRM-free/iTunes Plus, this makes the iTunes store way more appealing to someone such as myself.

So what did I buy? Nothing in the top 10, that's for sure. I bought songs from two of "Entertainment System"'s albums, some songs from "Dr. Wily And The Robot Masters", some songs from "Retro Remix Revue" and one Tetris remix song from Pronobozo.

I'm pretty satisfied with my purchases.



As you might notice, all the songs are old video game tunes remixed or performed on instruments. Other music I acquire is usually imported from Korea or Japan, or just downloaded. iTunes sometimes (okay, most of the time) doesn't have what I'm looking for.

My only complaint about iTunes for buying digital music would be this: I want it to work like Steam, a digital video game distribution store. Once you buy something, it's stored in your account. Even if you lose your computer or accidently delete something, you can always just find your games in Steam and have them redownload and install for FREE. iTunes seems to put the burden of backing up music on its customers, which I don't think is necessary.

Here are the links to the groups' music I downloaded:

Entertainment System
Retro Remix Revue
Pronobozo