Posted 06/30/2009 at 07:19:54pm

It should be FREE to all Vista users, it's basically just fixing broken shit and a minor visual refresh. I think of Win 7 as a service pack.

Posted 06/15/2009 at 03:04:57pm

Ketarin + FileHippo static links will keep common intallers up to date. Granted, it doesn't run the installers for you (seems like a better plan anyway). Pick only the packages you want, and update all at the click of a button.

Works perfect for keeping an up-to-date app collection you can burn to CD for those oh-so-frequent cleanup/reinstalls we are always doing for our frineds and family.

http://ketarin.canneverbe.com/

Posted 04/02/2009 at 08:30:35am

DVDfab HD Decrypter is better than DVD43 or DVD Decrypter (neither are updated to keep up with current copy protections). It's uncrippled for ripping the DVD to your hard drive, but if you want the transcoding features then you have to pay.

But why pay when Handbrake is so awesome? I use this pair to rip movies for my WD TV. Just select the Apple TV preset, enable the "decomb" option, crank up the constant quality slider to 70-80% and you get a beautiful .M4V after the transcode. 

Posted 03/27/2009 at 12:14:26pm

It supports divx and xvid .AVI files, just not .DIVX extensions.

I have one, and it works great with Handbrake encoded .M4V files, but the major difficulty is no .WMV support.

Posted 07/30/2008 at 11:49:02am

Video and audio pros use Firewire - it works better than USB for these types of devices.

Too bad Microsoft crippled FW800 with  XP SP2 (it runs at 100 speed). When they didn't "support" FW800 it was fine. Here's a link with info on how to fix FW800 in SP2/SP3:

http://www.rme-audio.de/en_support_techinfo.php?page=content/support/en_support_techinfo_firewire_xp