It's been an upgradey few days for me. On Friday, my old work Dell (256 MB of RAM to run Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash at once, yummy!) finally found itself a new home as a bigger, newer model stopped by. My IT guy said it should take two hours to transfer all the files off my C drive (we have network storage for everything except personal/music files). He was back five and a half hours later. He was astonished that I had a massive 10 GB of music on my computer; I was rather surprised that it was only 10 GB. Perspective, I suppose.

My dad upgraded his laptop this week and I was next on the list for a replacement, so I got his one-year-old Inspiron. It is about 100 lb. lighter than my old HP, and has about 1000 times more power, so I'm hoping for Great Moments of Creative Productivity over the next while.

Surprise of surprises, it has Vista on it. He's finally decided to give the new OS a chance, and it appears he's taking me along for the ride. He told me that I can go back to XP if I want, but there's something so fun about having no idea how to turn off Autoplay or how to find your My Computer. It a rare moment when I know more about computers than my dad (I've been able to teach him a few tricks with iPods, and of course HTML, but he's been building the things since '82 and trains cable companies on how to improve broadband connectivity, or something, for a living), but I was able to figure a few things out before him.

Everything went well with the software installs, but when I got home and tried to connect to my remote storage, things took a dramatic step backward. Netgear doesn't support Vista. 160 GB, all my photos, music files and documents, are completely inaccessible to me. So I did some searching around and discovered (amongst the complaints that my particular device likes to overheat and sometimes erase all its files—how do I back up 160 GB without going insane?) that there's a new beta version of the software needed to connect the device to Vista.

And that's what I'm up to today. Cross your fingers for me that this beta won't cause me to lose everything, and that my printers and tablet are not as difficult to troubleshoot.

Update: Success! Now onto the printers!
Update 2: Anyone need a Samsung laser printer? Works great with XP!
Update 3: Scratch that. It was the print server that was causing the trouble. The printer works fine with a little third-party software and a direct connection to the computer.

So yesterday My iPod finally did it: it died a noisy, angry death. I got the Sad iPod.

I'd seen the Sad Mac once or twice during my years as a high-powered magazine editor (one time the Mac even made a sound like a fiery car-wreck to highlight its distress at becoming completely inoperable without prior warning), but this is the first time I'd ever been personally confronted with its helpless, hopeless face.

And to add insult to injury, it took my iTunes with it when it crashed. I was forced to listen to my own thoughts all afternoon, and it's scary in here!

And yes, I probably should have predicted my old Mini's time was up, given that I'd dropped it on the sidewalk the night before while collecting my mail, but it still surprised and shocked me to bits.

Gone were the GBs of fabulous new music (Eagles of Death Metal, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Kasabian), carefully selected from the crappier new music (Babyshambles) given to me by my new Scottish friends. Gone were the hundreds of songs from the office I'd never transferred over to my home computer because, frankly, it sucks ass these days. And gone was my sanity, zapped away randomly by a sad face and a link to Apple's support pages.

But since it is my Sweet 16 (plus 15) in a week, I've decided to turn my frown upside down by getting myself a new 30 GB video iPod. And if I make it through today music-free, I'll know I can make it after all.

(It probably doesn't hurt that I'm planning to listen to the Jays game all afternoon on my Homer-head radio.)

I had a little freakout at Sony BMG the other week. I bought the new Imogen Heap CD at Best Buy. 'Twas a windy night, and I decided I'd like to listen to the CD while I fishied my chores. I unwrapped the CD and threw it into my car's CD-changer. As I was playing around in the trunk, the wind caught hold of my bag, complete with receipt, and blew it away. Hmm. . . . What are the odds I'm going to need that receipt?" I said to myself.

That evening, my dad and I were on the phone tech-supporting my ReplayTV and I noticed the SunnComm label on the back of the CD. "Do you know anything about Sony BMG's copy-protection?" I asked my dad as I popped the CD in.

"Yes," he replied warily.

"What?" I asked.

"Don't use it," he said.

"So I should say no to this installation agreement?"

"Yes. Do not accept."

This was the week that the world started freaking out about First4Internet's XCP software, but mine wasn't First4Internet, so we couldn't immediately find anything on what this software was doing to my computer. We disabled the autorun, then tried pulling only the music files through Nero. It didn't work.

The next day, I found this article at Freedom to Tinker, the first article I found that equated SunnComm's software with First4Internet's. That evening, I followed the instructions, deleted all the hidden files that SunnComm installed before the end license user's agreement had finished loading, and restored the system back to a couple days before I put the CD into my computer. I turned off the autorun again (important step!), then loaded up iTunes and ripped away.

That weekend, I took the CD back to Best Buy, brought along a couple articles to support my position, and got store credit (damned wind!).

What I don't get is why Best Buy (and HMV, where I'd originally been put on a wait list for the CD. They called and when I told them I wouldn't be buying the CD because of the copy-protection software, said, "Well, do ya have a Mac?") won't ake a stand and refuse to sell these discs. This can't be good for business. People who have less of a grasp on technology are going to buy these CDs, and get fucked for doing so. They're going to have no clue why their computers are running slowly, why their CDs are playing so choppily, why their iPods don't work right. Consumer protection has to be part of Best Buy's mandate. I would much prefer having to ask for music and being told that it isn't being stocked than to have to go through the effort of having to uninstall software I haven't asked for and make an extra trip to the store to return the CD.

Nasty dealings by manufacturers isn't going to make more people buy legitimate CDs, nor is it going to stop iPod users from ripping Sony CDs, or iTunes users from making MP3s. All it's going to do is convince me that people who steal music are really onto something.

Oh iPod Mini, lovely and blue,
What have I ever done to you?
Your steely look, your gigs of files,
Don't mean a thing when I can't get a mile.

All I ever wanted to do,
Was go to work listening to a song or two.
But the battery's flat, after charging for hours.
I hear no songs and I have no power.

In less than a year my goose was cooked.
You had me trapped, and you had me hooked.
My Rio may not have had much space.
But at least it always knew its place.

Consumers feel like they’ve taken a bite out of a bad 'apple,' and now they want their day in court, from Pulse24.com