Posted 10/02/2008 at 09:10:54am

Food for thought people.... this royalty price hike will affect all downloaded music sources, including Amazon, Zune store, etc.  I hope Apple wins in their bold "brinksmanship" stand with the MPAA, as they are usually unreasonable Aholes as we all know.

 The article mentions a 66% royalty increase.  That does NOT mean that songs will go from say $1 per song to $1.66.  The article should have mentioned what the royalty is NOW in real dollars to see how "unreasonable" a 66% increase would be.  Is the current royalty 1 cent? 5 cents?  10 cents out of a $1 purchased song??  We NEED to know, otherwise you are acting as Apple's mouthpiece in your article.  If it's only a few cents, then Apple most likely will not go broke, and we most likely won't pay much more per song.

I personally like Amazon MP3 downloads over Zune or iTunes, as Amazon songs are DRM free (don't cause problems with hardware) and a reasonable price.  I DO NOT STEAL MUSIC and neither should you.  Stealing music (filesharing), hurts the artists, and hurts your integrity. 

If this royalty increase goes to the artists, then it might be OK if the increase is a few more cents.  If it goes mostly to the MPAA and their legal lackeys, then heck with that.  I'll start buying CD's again and ripping the (non DRM) songs to my Zune and iPod again.  If CD prices go up too much too, then I'll just stop buying them and listen to the radio!

Posted 09/04/2008 at 09:43:19pm

Hi guys,

I'm usually a big fan of the Podcast and the Magazine, but I've noticed a steady decline in both in the last few months.  This last podcast was ALL BS.  Hardly any real content.  Not real entertaining either.

Are you guys spending 90% of your work day playing games and going to non-events like Comic Con?  You're supposed to be a PC magazine, not a gaming magazine for teens!  Let's get real here.

Posted 08/19/2008 at 10:24:24pm

I've been using Sync Toy for about a year now on XP.  It's got to be one of the best pieces of software to come out of Microsoft -- probably because a few guys wrote it as a side project without all the beureaucratic bozos ruining it. I'm glad they added the functions of folder pair renaming and dynamic drive letter re-assigning, as they were my only minor gripes with the beta versions.

I have thousands of photographs, podcasts and MP3 files in a lot of places on my main system and going to/from my Zune.  I would go crazy if I had to find them manually and take them to work.   To make sure they are all "synced", with my work computer every week I use Sync Toy to quickly sync my portable WD Passport drive.  Then I do another sync from the WD Passport drive to my work computer.  Then I have 3 sets of file all synced, with just a few keystrokes!

For really important files that I can't lose, I don't do a 2 way sync, but do a "Contribute" (a one way sync without deletions).  That prevents deleting any important files during a 2 way sync, if one was accidentally deleted. 

 Sync Toy is not a Toy.  It's really a great program.  And it's free!

Posted 07/09/2008 at 09:05:38pm

I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but maybe Zone Alarm may have caused part of the problem?  ZA completely borked my AMD XP Windows install about a year ago when ZA pushed an update.  ZA software goes so deep into the inner workings of windows at the system level, I couldn't even uninstall ZA adequately so it would save the Windows install.  I spent about 20 hours rebuilding. (Now I have Acronis to prevent a similar debacle).

I found out on some forums that a small percentage of other Asus AMD 939 board owners had similar problems, and ZA acknowledged they had a problem after a few weeks of hearing from very pissed off people. Their suggested "fix" did nothing.

ZA never did come up with an adequate solution,  so I stopped using their software.  I don't trust their programming prowess anymore.

Posted 07/06/2008 at 07:37:31pm

Hi guys,

Love the podcast, and have been patiently waiting for you to keep your promise that the podcasts were going to be in the Zune marketplace--soon.....  But that was about 3-4 months ago?

What's the holdup?  Did MS reject you because there was too much cursing?  Or was there so much awesome PC knowledge in your podcast, that it would make the PCMAG podcast guys sound like noobs? (true).

Oh, I know the real reason it's not in the (Microsoft) Zune Marketplace.  It's because you guys really do love Steve Jobs, as I've gathered from hearing all the drooling over the iPhone, and now you crowning the Apple laptop as the best laptop :-)