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You'd think so right?

I often think about how modern media players lack many features Winamp had by version 1.5* or so... A program which is something like 10 years old!

* I don't remember the exact version I've actually looked up, but even if it's version 3.0 it's still unacceptable, IMO.

[one through five star]

Howdy y'all, long time no see...

I would pay good money for an awesome MP3 player program for Android. There's one feature that I cannot find anywhere: song rating support. I want to be able to rate all my music using the somewhat standard one through five star rating system available on most music management programs (Media Monkey, J. River Media Center, Winamp, WMP, etc.) and some dedicated PMPs (Sandisk Sansa Fuze, most iPods (I think), the Creative Zen line, and the Archos players too (I think)).

Anyone out there have the know-how and ambition to create a killer MP3 (and other formats I guess) player app?

I would be willing to pay a somewhat large amount of money to get the ball rolling on this project, if that would help. Of course, I don't want to waste money, so I'll need to be convinced that whoever I give it to will actually deliver (or attempt to deliver) what I want.

The best media player I can find is called Meridian. It has some semblance of a star rating system already, except as far as I can tell the ratings do not sync with any other programs.

I've never bought a pre-built desktop as far as I can remember but when I buy a laptop it doesn't take me long to format and reinstall using a clean Windows disc. So far I've never had a computer that wouldn't let me activate using the COA stuck to the computer.

Formatting and reinstalling is more consistent, less involved, better (IMO), and can be faster (depending on how many updates Microsoft has released). The only hurdle is getting ahold of a genuine Windows disc with witch to do the install. Microsoft would probably be better off if their ISOs were more easily obtained.

I downloaded and installed the Home Premuim "upgrade" from Microsoft. I only do clean installs (if I can) so I decided to try doing a clean install using the ISO I downloaded from MS. It worked just like Vista - if you don't put in a key during the install it'll install a "trial" - the only difference is that it did not ask which version I bought. I left it installed for I guess about a week now and just a minute ago put in the key. So far so good, it activated without even a hickup.

To summarize: I did a clean install using the "upgrade" key I got from Microsoft.

Oh, even though I hadn't read Paul's site before, what I did was what he labeled "Method #1".

That installer looks awesome! I don't know if I'll use it or not (so many of the programs I use are portable so I just copy the folders).

They got CCleaner into the list, by the way.

[skrommel]

Well... It's not *much* of an advance beyond double-clicking the menubar titlebar, but if I want to move a window to my secondary monitor, I simply drag the window over and then make sure that it touches the top of the viewable area of the monitor et voila! It's maximized. It really SOUNDS quite silly but I actually find it to be surprisingly handy  

EDIT: corrected wording... Doh! I was THINKING "titlebar" while I was typing the original post, too  

Ah, I think what you're referring to is actually called "Aero Snap". Shake lets you grab the title bar, shake it, and all other windows minimize (sorta like WinKey + D, but it keeps the current window open). I guess the purpose of Shake is to help you focus on the top window without being distracted by the other windows on your screen or something...?

skrommel made an autohotkey script that apparently has a similar effect (but better). I haven't tried it yet though, I guess I'm too lazy to install AHK. Here it is.

[Darwin]

Maybe I just haven't realized why it's handy yet, I don't use multiple monitors any more though. Can you describe how you use it Darwin?

Only thing I've missed in Win7 compared to XP is floating appbands
...

I'm not clear what an appband is. Is that what is created when you drag a folder to the edge of the screen and it creates a taskbar-like menu? I used to use one on the left side of the screen but now I just put my whole start menu on the left and pin all the programs I use to it. Works great!

Hmm... Maybe I'm just a cynic but I didn't like any of those.
Vid 1. Wasn't Movie Maker in Vista? Is this even a new commercial?
Vid 2. Personally, I find Aero Shake to be annoying, 'specially since I've only done it accidentally.
Vid 3. Another existing Vista feature.

I can do without all those features myself. I think I would be more disappointed if I used Windows Explorer.

...
11-Pink Floyd-High Hopes.mp3 - 48.6MB

And that's sticking to 192kbps MP3 quality for the non-lossless format
...

I wonder if increasing the bitrate of the traditional MP3 portion of the file will produce a larger or smaller MP3HD file. It would be interesting to see a 32 vs. 320 kbps comparison.

I'm still on the fence about this idea. I guess to me it probably boils down to how well they work with tagging programs. Encoding/decoding time will also probably play a large part in whether it's adopted or not.

Have you checked out J. River Media Center yet? It has its share of problems, but it does all the things you listed (drag and drop from explorer, once the songs are in the library they'll stay there (it also updates very quickly), you can rearrange the playlist, and it shows the total time and file size).

I've basically abandoned discs everywhere possible, one of the best decisions I've made. Good luck with your backups!

Surely he meant what we know as a projector. Even though I consider myself a projector expert the first thing that popped into my head was "BMW" as well.

Another one I like is that "torch" and "flashlight" sometimes have the same meaning.

[Josh]

Josh, do you save your settings to the registry (I guess that's where they go by default, I don't really know) or have you selected to keep the settings in an .ini file?
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I use the .ini file, I've been through multiple formats and re-installs with the same set of settings. I've also copied the files to multiple computers. I love portable software!

Are strangers going to come to your house for this?

or maybe the people on that video are trapped in a hellish world of continual windows 7 parties and party planning 24 hours a day.

HAHAHAHA!

I'm not sure what you're saying about the google searches either. Are you saying that when you're reading a page when you see something you'd like to explore further you highlight it, right click on it, and choose "Search Google for _____".
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Since the page opens in the background you don't check it for a while. Then once you do start reading it you forget what the search was for?

I agree with your find bar idea, multiple find boxes would be very helpful.* Or at least an option to have one "find" query per tab (instead of one per window like it is now). I'd also like some more power in my searches finds (wildcards, "or" option, number ranges, etc.). The "Match case" option is nice and all, but I could use a few more options.

* I didn't read much of the Thinger page, does it have that option?

But in my experience the code WILL ALWAYS work, so long as you use an actual Windows DVD with the same service pack as the code. Maybe it is indeed a regional thing.

Easy solution: get a real Vista disc, use your code to activate. Yes, it will take two additional minutes.
Complicated solution: get new crappy discs from your computer manufacturer. Hope that you can avoid the activation process.

[nite_monkey]

The key on the computer will work with any (real) Vista disc though wont it? If nite_monkey can get ahold of a new disc he/she should be able to use the key to install Vista on the computer and successfully activate it, right?

[/topic]
I think Microsoft made a wise decision making all the Vista discs the same, this way people have extras (I have something like 5). This makes it easier for people to get "real", unadulterated install media. Back when a friend of mine was using Windows 2000 I... I mean he ended up downloading a Windows 2000 image from the net - an image that could conceivably have had viruses and stuff on it.
[topic]

[3,796,500,524]

I'm no expert, but I have owned a few genuine Vista DVDs so far. For craps and giggles I've used Beyond Compare to compare at least two different images that I personally made of different Vista discs. I know I compared a Vista Business disc that Microsoft was giving away at trade shows and an OEM Vista Home Premium disc. I'm also pretty sure I've compared my retail Vista Home Premium disc. They were all IDENTICAL with the exception of around ~10 (or less) blank characters (ascii code 255 I think) at the very end of at least one of the discs.
- To put this a different way: The 64 bit image I have is 3,796,500,524 bytes, when I've compared disc images approximately the first 3,796,500,514 bytes were identical between all discs. The tiny portion that wasn't identical was only a few blank characters at the very end of the file.
[edit]Sorry, I forgot one pretty important detail: the discs only have the 32 bit versions OR the 64 bit versions. To be prepared for all possible installs you'll need two discs, a 32 bit and a 64 bit.[/edit]

Why I mention this is to let you know that if you can get ahold of a real Vista disc you should be all set, no matter if the key you have is for an OEM version, retail version, Home Premium, or Ultimate.

I just remembered an issue I had once while activating Vista on an Acer laptop that came with Vista Home Premium with service pack 1... None of my discs have service pack 1. IIRC the key on the bottom of the laptop would allow me to install Vista Home Premium OEM but when I got finished it wouldn't activate for some odd reason. In fact, I think I now remember having an issue where I couldn't get it to activate over the phone either. Then I realized that it may be the lack of having SP1 installed that was holding me up. After installing SP1 it activated over the internet without any more issues. Perhaps you're having a similar problem? If the code is for SP1 and you only have the... uh... "SP0" disc you may be in business. If the code is for SP0 and you only have an SP1 disc you might have an issue, but this is a scenario I haven't yet tried.

I'm pretty sure I called Microsoft tech support (not just the phone activation people) when I was having this problem. I even told them I was using a burned DVD (I quickly blurted out "as it says I'm allowed to do in the EULA"). They didn't seem to have a problem with it. As I eluded to before, every time I've called the people on the other end have been pleasant. Unfortunately this particular call didn't give me the answer I needed (I had to figure that out on my own) but they were nice and were trying to be helpful.

I wonder if you could use Compatibility mode to run Palm Desktop.
This screenshot is from Windows 7 so it may look a lil' different on Vista.
[attach=1]

Another idea is to use a virtual machine to run the software which sounds very inconvenient to me, but I bet it would work.

I'm not certain, but I would think there would always be a phone activation option (what if you didn't have internet access?). If all else fails disconnect from the internet (turn off the Wi-Fi if you can) and try activating again. Windows should give you the phone option when it figures out that there isn't an internet connection available.

I've done the phone activation many times. The Microsoft voice recognition system is actually very good. Usually after you say the activation code you'll be connected with an operator who will ask a single question which is something like "onto how many computers is this copy of Windows installed?". You just tell them how many (it should be just one of course) and they'll give you a new code to type into the comp. It almost always takes between six and seven minutes.

I also use a cheat sheet. I pin it to my start menu. It doesn't have everything, but it's covered me so far.
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Instead of printing I just take a screen capture when I've ordered something online. I of course use Screenshot Captor to make this process easy.