A Half-Arsed Review of WMP 11

I tried the new Windows Media Player 11 recently.  Hated it.  Out of the box, the default view is the thumbnail view (the view that you experience when you install Windows XP out of the box.  My first change is to set to ‘icon’).  It took me some time to get it to display my playlists without the thumbnails.  Another issue I have is how the items are arranged.  Yes, I know they’re arranged alphabetically, but I could do without the prominent categorization (that’s the best way I could put it.  The wikipedia article describes it better than I could).

I like the to panes.  I like that category trees.  It is much faster for me to navigate my mp3 library and go from one song to another in Windows Media Player 10.

Or I could just wipe my drive and go back to Windows ME.  Microsoft is still supporting it until July 11.

How to make an ATI TV Wonder Pro work in Windows ME

Ok, I should probably stick with Windows XP, but what can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment, and I like 'going retro'. That being said, the driver cd that comes with the ATI TV Wonder Pro only has drivers for Windows XP. The instruction manual that comes with it has instructions for Windows ME (and on the box, it says that it will work with WinME), but there are a couple of drawbacks. The main one is that the instructions for WinME installation refer to a directory on the CD-Rom that no loonger exists. OK, so here's how to make it work:

Go to the ATI website, and download the software here. Put your ATI cd into your computer's cd-rom drive, when the installation program starts, exit out. First, run the program "mmc-8-1-0-0-dao-mdac.exe". This will run and end silently. Then, run the program "tv_wonder_pro_wdm.exe". When this program runs, it will prompt you to restart your computer. So, restart it, idiot. When it restarts, right-click on 'My Computer', and then click on the 'device manager' tab, and see the 'pci multimedia device'. It may not be named that (to be honest, I really can't remember what it's called, but you'll know what I'm talking about, as it will be the item with the yellow question mark by it). Right-click on the item, then click on 'properties', then the tab 'driver'. Now, click on the button 'update driver' (or, it could be 'find driver'. I'm not sure). The next window that comes up, click on button 'specify location'. Make sure the box marked 'removable media' is checked. Click 'next', and windows should find the driver off the cd-rom. WHen it finds it, windows will install the driver automatically. You'll get a bunch of rude messages from windows about missing files (after all, this cd was originally meant for windows xp, remember). Just click on 'skip file', and move on. Afterwards, your TV card dirvers should be installed (it should work, I did it twice on my system). Now, install the program "mmc-8-9-0-0.exe". Reboot, rinse, repeat.

Ramen.

Window Vista Requirements released

The Anti-Christ has released the requirements for Windows Vista. I'm shocked. My six-year old system can fill the requirements. Just barely, though.

More hardware stuff

Since I put a new video card and tv tuner in my tower, I had my eye out for a DVD burner. In particular, this one. Since my computer is not the newest (I'm still running a PIII, 866 megahertz), I look for hardware that backwards compatible with Windows ME (I still run this OS on occaision, like right now. Just because I can), as well as Windows XP. I finally broke down and bought it today. Since I have an idiot-proof tower (courtesy of Gateway), it a cinch to swap out and install new components in my tower, this was no exception. Software installation was just as quick and painless. Now off to do what everynew DVD burner ought to be doing: downloading Knoppix.

Ramen. (I have to add that since I got alt.religion.pastafarianism added to AT&T WorldNet news servers).

Software Plug (well, sorta)

For my desktop wallpaper, I usually use something that’s astronomy themed (mainly from here, with a lot of good pictures).  But, I recently discovered an automated process that will change my picture daily.  The Astronomy Picture of the Day website has a program for Windoze, that will do it automatically (available here).  The only drawback is it will call home daily (to NASA) to get the next picture, but compared to what the NSA is doing to our phone conversations, this is nothing.

A note to Ernie.

Ramen.

Goodbye Radeon, Hello Nvidia

For the past five years, my video card has been the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon.  It wasn’t a bad card, but it I felt it was time to replace it.  I noticed at CompUSA that they had a Predator GeForce MX400 Plus, (which, when you install, your computer will tell you what it really is, and Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 4000) for only $49.99.  I paid over $300 for the AIW Radeon when I bought it new in 2001, and that was only a 32 mb card.  Now, they had a 128 mb card for 1/6th that price.  I’m no fool.  I bought the card.  But that brought up another issue.  No TV tuner.  Fortunately, right across the aisle from the video cards were the TV tuner cards. So I grabbed a ATI TV Wonder Pro.  Got them home, popped the tower open and installed the cards.  It took about 3-4 tries before I got all the cards seated and positioned so they were not conflicting with each other.  After installing all the software (I just ignored the software cd that came with the predator and downloaded the driver directly form Nvidia).

All in all, I’m impressed with the performance over the old ATI.  When I play FS 2004,  I’m  impressed with the performance improvement.  The default flight is from SeaTac airport, heading northbound.  With the old card, the scenery was ok, but could be better.  With the new card, I can see Seattle, Bellevue, and a whole lot more.  Combat Flight Simulator 3 no longer skips or hangs when I’m dogfighting or blowing somebody to smithereens.  Not that the AIW Radeon is a bad thing.  I won’t even throw it out.  I’ve already found a home for it and it will still provide satisfying service for quite some time).