Overall I like it, but there’s still some slightly rough edges that will hopefully be addressed via minor updates.

Until I’m able to write further on the subject, I’ll leave you with the swank “Now Playing” screen:

7:52 pm Update: If you’re having album art troubles (where some of the album art doesn’t match properly), check out this workaround from Microsoft. I had a few that were off, but are now fixed.

If you use Vista, you’ve run into this problem. Vista seems to think that every folder contains music, because the “Artists”, “Album”, “#”, “Genre” and “Rating” columns are always visible. Look at my example above. This is after resetting all of the file type settings, etc… and Vista still thinks that a directory containing two MDB (Access databases) and a ZIP file warrant showing media columns. Ugh.

Please, Microsoft, fix this for SP1. The fact that it isn’t fixed already via a hotfix speaks volumes about how slow you react to even the smallest of bugs.

I’m sorry I rant so much, but these things are really upsetting me lately. Maybe you can relate to some of the topics?

Dell – A friend of mine, Nicole, brought me her Dell laptop to take a look at, since it will no longer boot. I figure it’s a bad hard drive.. the signs point to that, so I order a drive and stick it in, preparing to reinstall Windows. System can’t find the drive.. or wait, it can, oh wait.. it can’t. It randomly just doesn’t see the hard drive. I check online, and find that the world pretty much agrees that the Dell Inspiron 5150 is the crappiest model of laptop to ever roam this earth, plagued with engineering flaws that cause chips to crack, the CPU to overheat (2), and power plugs to short out. This led to Dell getting a class-action lawsuit brought against them, and them losing. As part of the settlement, they must pay for repairs up until Sept. 30th, 2007.

Now, Nicole’s already had the motherboard replaced by a tech once before, sent the laptop in for repair, had yet another motherboard replacement, a power adapter replacement, etc… and it’s still not working right. I had her speak to Dell again and get another motherboard. They say they can’t send one at first, citing some policy that once a motherboard’s been sent out, they can’t send out another (what?!) but the tech eventually agrees to send one out. They receive it the next day, and I examine it. The “new” board is actually refurbished from 2005 and looks terrible. I decide to swap it out anyway, and what do you know? It doesn’t work.

I’ve heard that some people have had luck e-mailing the “Customer Advocate” team at Dell (Customer_Advocate@Dell.com) and I did e-mail them six days ago, but haven’t heard a peep. I’m e-mailing them back tonight and asking for them to at least respond. I’m seriously doubting they’ll bother responding back.

Microsoft/Windows Vista – I had to completely re-install Vista two days ago, because SQL Management Studio stopped connecting to servers. Just straight up would not connect to any server anymore. Just gave me a generic fatal network error message. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, cleaning out the registry, deleting files, etc… just couldn’t get it to work. And seeing as SQL Management Studio is pretty much a requirement to do my job, I had to reinstall everything to get it working again. Ugh.

Then, I decided to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive and memory, since I had skimped on it before, but now that I use it for work, I need it to be much faster. Bought a 100 gig 7200 RPM laptop hard drive and two gigabytes of RAM. Put the new hard drive in, and Vista says it’s now deactivated. What?!

Maybe you know that I’ve had problems with Vista’s lame activation in the past. How about the time I put in a soundcard? Or the time I reinstalled Vista (after having it installed for months beforehand?) Now I get it for installing a hard drive. Of course I have to call, read off a number to a guy in India, and then he reads me back another code, and I’m activated again. What a waste of my time.. and there was really no reason to get “deactivated” in the first place.

Microsoft/XBox 360 – My XBox 360 recently started getting the red rings of death. It wasn’t so bad at first, but then it got ridiculous, locking up like 20 minutes into a DVD, etc… so I decided to send it in. The first call, I spent about an hour waiting and talking to a tech, leading me through troubleshooting steps (which obviously aren’t going to fix the red rings problem.) Of course I get disconnected in the middle of this, so I give up for that night and try again a short while later. This time, the tech tells me that their computer systems are down, and I need to call back in 30 minutes. Ok.. so I do call back, and the automated voice prompts tell me that I can just do a service request online. Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

So I file a request, they send me a little box to package up my XBox 360, and I send it back (to somewhere in Texas.) You can check the status of your repair via their http://service.xbox.com/ site.. at first it said my unit had not yet been received, then it changed to received.. and now it says “No Repair”, and that my warranty is invalid. Obviously I freaked a little, and snooped around online for “no pending repair”. Looks like this means they swapped it out for a refurbished console. Okay, that makes sense, but why should the service status be so misleading? Why can’t it say “swapped out” or “replaced” or “replacement shipped”? Instead, I have no way of even knowing if the accepted my repair, shipped it, etc.. talk about lame.

I guess I’ll wait a few more days and see if an XBox 360 comes to my door via UPS. If not, I’ll have to call and deal with a guy in India.. (gee doesn’t that sound familiar?)

Nissan – I love my car. No really, I do. The navigation system needs work, but other than that, gravy. Except I keep having a problem where my driver’s seat has it’s leather “unhooked” from the seat itself, near where the seat touches the center console. I attribute it to me being a bigger guy, but still, it shouldn’t be coming undone. I’ve had Nissan fix this twice now, and it still keeps popping off. So I e-mailed corporate and they e-mailed me back days later, asking for my mileage and where I last had it serviced. I send them back the information, and they say a “specialist” will be in touch with me by the following business day. It’s been two days, and nothing. I’m not that upset yet, but when you say following business day, you probably should mean it.

But even if they do contact me.. say, tomorrow.. what is this “specialist” going to do for me? Just tell me to bring it in to get fixed? It obviously keeps happening.. it seems like an engineering problem to me. I don’t sit in my car funny, aka slamming your butt onto the seat as you jump in. And I always try to be “centered” in my seat, so I just don’t get it.

Anyways, I’m sorry for such a long rant. But maybe you can relate to some of these. I don’t think I’m expecting too much from these companies, and it just goes to show how little they care for their customers in general.

The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932406

I started having this problem a LOT lately. Not quite sure why. I’m installing this hotfix, maybe it’ll do the trick. I’m sharing the info. in case it helps others out..

These packs were leaked in beta a few weeks ago, but today Microsoft released the full final versions. You can find more information (and download it) at Microsoft’s website, under KB 938979 and KB 938194.

The fixes? Check it out:

• You experience a long delay when you try to exit the Photos screen saver.
• A memory leak occurs when you use the Windows Energy screen saver.
• If User Account Control is disabled on the computer, you cannot install a network printer successfully. This problem occurs if the network printer is hosted by a Windows XP-based or a Windows Server 2003-based computer.
• When you write data to an AVI file by using the AVIStreamWrite function, the file header of the AVI file is corrupted.
• When you copy or move a large file, the "estimated time remaining" takes a long time to be calculated and displayed.
• After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen.
• When you synchronize an offline file to a server, the offline file is corrupted.
• If you edit an image file that uses the RAW image format, data loss occurs in the image file. This problem occurs if the RAW image is from any of the following digital SLR camera models:
• Canon EOS 1D
• Canon EOS 1DS
For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
932988 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932988/) Files from a Canon EOD 1D or 1DS camera may be corrupted after you use Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Windows Explorer to edit the file metadata in Windows Vista or in Windows XP Service Pack 2
• After you resume the computer from hibernation, the computer loses its default gateway address.
• Poor memory management performance occurs.

• The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
932539 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932539/) The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver on a Windows Vista-based computer
• The computer stops responding, and you receive a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message. You can restart the computer only by pressing the computer's power button.
• The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations.
• The Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) stops responding when the computer is under heavy load or when very little memory is available. This problem prevents diagnostics from working.
• The screen goes blank after an external display device that is connected to the computer is turned off. For example, this problem may occur when a projector is turned off during a presentation.
• A computer that has NVIDIA G80 series graphic drivers installed stops responding.
• Visual appearance issues occur when you play graphics-intensive games.
• You experience poor playback quality when you play HD DVD disks or Blu-ray disks on a large monitor.
• Applications that load the Netcfgx.dll component exit unexpectedly.
• Windows Calendar exits unexpectedly after you create a new appointment, create a new task, and then restart the computer.
• Internet Connection Sharing stops responding after you upgrade a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP to Windows Vista and then restart the computer.
• The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly.
• You receive a "Stop 0x0000009F" error when you put the computer to sleep while a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection is active. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
931671 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931671/) Error message when you put a Windows Vista-based computer to sleep while a PPP connection is active: "STOP 0x0000009F"

I’d suggest running out and installing them ASAP. I was mainly having the “slow wake from hibernation” problem, and I believe everyone was having the estimated time remaining problem… but updated performance and reliability can only be a good thing!