Posted 07/20/2008 at 02:19:35pm

I know it's kind of dumb (and quite geeky) to reply to a post to correct grammar but I thought I might help people understand that WALA isn't a word.

 It's actually VOILA. It's a french word that's made up of the words Voi and La meaning "See There".

Posted 07/10/2008 at 08:13:26am

That's just insane. The RIAA has a history of going too far and that just ads another stupid move to a list of stupid moves.

The RIAA and MPAA bully the biggest companies into doing stuff like this and because the general public doesn't know it's caused by arm-twisting from the RIAA they blame the product manufacturer instead of the people who are actually to blame. Even more annoying is that most people would probably go along with the ridiculous trend to blame MS for everything instead of the RIAA (or MPAA when it comes to the ridiculous lengths MS and other software/hardware manufacturers have to go to to please these bullying organizations when it comes to video recording and playback) or even Dell in this case who could have at least refused and taken a stand.

It's bullies secretly getting their way while the unpopular geeks get the blame.

Posted 01/20/2008 at 03:03:33pm

"Open Command Window Here" and "Copy as Path" where the 2 Powertoys I was wishing I had in Vista and now I learn that they've always been there. Dr. Sneath is one of my favorite Channel 9ers.

Posted 11/01/2007 at 11:52:39am

Live Photo Gallery is a huge improvement over the original Photo Gallery especially with the new features of the photo import wizard which should have been part of Vista when it launched. Codecs are still one of the biggest problems with Windows because it's not visible to the user. Any software can mes with your codecs and unless you're a power user who knows how to use GSPot or some other codec analysis tool you might not ever figure out what the problem is. DVD Maker and Media Center would crash any time I would try to use a DivX or XviD file. It turns out that DivX still has problems with Vista (what are the DivX people waiting for?) so I un-installed it and installed FFDShow and now it doesn't crash. Movie Maker is still a little unstable with certain files though.

Posted 10/30/2007 at 06:36:54pm

I found that lots of OEM systems (I set up some Toshiba laptops recently) have the OS only partly installed and they have you do the rest then once it's finally done they nag you to make restore DVDs because they're too cheap to just give them to you. After that you need to remove all the useless trialware and shovelware they include with these computers which can be rather tricky because it's not always obvious what you can remove or disable without affecting the basic functions of the computer (especially with laptops). Building your own IS easier. Nothing is easier than getting good brand name hardware and installing Vista yourself. Installing Vista was dead simple and it found all my hardware with no problems. In your case you DID have an unusual string of bad luck too.

Posted 09/08/2007 at 08:19:48pm

The best thing about the new Photo Gallery is that they finally fixed the rather inadequate Photo Import Wizard in Vista. It groups photos by date and lets you choose which photos you want to transfer just like the old picture and scanner transfer wizard, only better. They even let you choose how "far apart in time" pictures have to be so that it considers it another group that will create it's own subgroup and folder and the controls for how these folders and files are named it very useful. They've also added panorama stitching capabilities. If Live is what Microsoft will be using to start adding extra little touches to Vista without having to include it into service packs or Windows Updates then I'm all for these oddly/confusingly named applications. It's kind of like the old Power Toys only bigger. The whiners can't complain that it's being bundled with the OS or automatically installed because you have to download and install them yourself.