Upgrading to Windows 11, An Odyssey

I currently have two PCs running Windows 10 that can't be upgraded to Windows 11, and with Microsoft recently sunsetting Windows 10 it was way past time for me to get a new machine, so I did. It's state of the art and I love it, but it's brought about a whole new set of challenges for me.

Both of my existing PCs, a desktop and a laptop, are old and tired, and between the two I have about a terabyte of docs, pics and videos, plus all kinds of old outdated software, so I wanted to start fresh and combine everything into one system running the latest software. Easy, straightforward plan, right? Mostly.

In preparation for the cutover, I copied all of the data I wanted to keep from both PCs to an external hard drive and then started to set up the new laptop. Microsoft makes things relatively easy to set up a PC now, if you want to play by their rules. I, however, do not, and herein lies the problem. I wanted to set the new PC up with local accounts, and they make that awfully hard to do these days. They want you to sign into new PCs with your Microsoft account, there's no local account option anymore, at least not any that are easily accessible, and they want you to live and play in the cloud. No thanks, not a fan. I don't want all of my data being sucked up into the cloud for a multitude of reasons. Number one is privacy, you really don't want things like your tax docs and medical records floating around in the ether. Number two is that I have way too much data, it would cost me a small fortune per month to store a terabyte of data on OneDrive, so I planned accordingly and got a PC with a huge solid state hard drive. Reason number three is that I like to be able to use my PCs offline, I don't want to be dependent on network availability to access my stuff. Three strikes and you're out, so it's local accounts for me, and OneDrive gets turned off.

To accomplish this in Windows 11, you need to interrupt the OOBE (Out Of Box Setup Experience) at just the right moment with a "shift - function - F10" keystroke, that apparently takes more finesse than I possess, but I finally got it to work after a couple of reboots. This key sequence brings you to a command prompt and from there you need to enter: Start ms-cxh:localonly This command causes the PC to reboot and allows you to set it up without a network connection and create local accounts. Of course, Microsoft fights you the whole way with annoying little pop-up suggestions like "Log in to your Microsoft account to get the full user experience", and "You're not protected, let us back up your files and settings". Doesn't matter that my data is still nowhere near the new computer, I'm just "not safe" by their way of thinking. So frustrating.

Anyways, I got past all of that and created two local accounts: an admin account for installing things and a standard user account for everyday use. I've found that this is the best method for protecting your device, if you accidentally download malware while on the user account, it can't install without you raising your privileges by logging into the admin account. It's a nice little safety valve.

Next, I started removing all of the bloatware that comes on a new PC, this is important to do before you install the things you really want and need. Case in point; Microsoft puts a trial copy of Office onto all new machines and because I purchased a full copy of Office Home edition, it had to go. You would think the Office installer would take care of things like that, but it doesn't, and you can't do a clean install of Office until you remove it, so I did. I also got rid of, or hid, a bunch of other non-essential crap, and changed all of the settings to my liking. Making progress!

The next step was downloading and installing my new copy of Office Home 2024. I thought this would be pretty straight forward as well, but surprise; it is not.

Office 2024 requires you to be logged into your Microsoft account to both install and use it. This means that even if you're set up as a local user and you've purchased a full copy of Office, you need to be logged into Microsoft whenever you use Office products. It also turned OneDrive back on, backed up my settings and files, and it used my Microsoft credentials to log me into Edge; "get points and bucks for your search data!" Again, no thank you. Frustration levels rising...

Easy fix though, I went back into OneDrive and turned it off, again, amid more protestation, and I logged out of Edge. This still leaves you logged into your Office products and able to use them, so I'm good with that to some degree. There was a small benefit to this extra step they forced me into; when I logged in it triggered the Windows 10 ESU (Extended Service Updates) and my old machines started receiving patches again, so I guess letting it back up my settings and files on a relatively empty machine was worth it. I was shocked at how fast it glommed onto my new machine and backed it up unbidden though, but it is what it is. It is nice to have a little protection on the old devices while I cut over.

Office wasn't done surprising me yet, though. I told you it's been a long time since I'd upgraded, so long that my old copy of Office came with Outlook, and that's no longer the case. You can only get a full copy of Outlook with the Office Business Edition now. With the Home version, you need to download "New Outlook", which is part of the Office 365 suite and is a web-based product. Why I would want to install Office 365 on top of my full copy of Office Home still eludes me, although Microsoft suggests that it will make all of my other devices more productive... The layman's translation to that is that they want access to all of your phone's data as well. Speaking of access to all of your data, New Outlook wants you to give Microsoft permission for them to access all of your contacts and emails. I don't know about you, but I have hundreds of business, personal and organizational addresses, and it would be wrong for me to hand that data over to a third party, it would be a breach of trust. My provider already has access to it, why would I give it to someone else just to use a third-party mail client? Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent.

I do like to have an email client though, as it allows me to combine all of my accounts into one view and it also gives you more features and flexibility than webmail alone. After a little research I've narrowed it down to a couple of options to replace Outlook. I'm currently experimenting with eM Client as an alternative. So far, so good, I'll keep you posted as I plod along. I really wish that there was an Apple Mail app available for Windows, it's got them all beat for privacy, functionality and ease of setup in my opinion, but there isn't.

One more tip before I wrap this up, and this is important; if you're an iTunes user, you are much better served going directly to Apple's website and downloading the Windows 64 bit version of iTunes instead of installing the Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Devices apps from the Microsoft store. When you install the apps, you can have a really hard time syncing your devices, especially if you still have any iPods. The Apple Devices app, which you need to manually sync any Apple device, including iPhones, has some awful ratings, some mentioning bricking of phones. The Apple TV and Apple Music apps themselves both work fine, but when either one is installed, they eviscerate iTunes, turning it into a podcast and eBook only shell of itself, and forcing you to download the third app, Apple Devices, for synching, and that's just too risky for me. I'm not using any 1-star rated app to back up and manage my phone. There are literally thousands of reviews from unhappy users about the Apple Devices app for Windows. Stay away, stay far, far away.

So, this exercise in modernization and consolidation has turned into a GIANT project for me, but I've learned a lot. It doesn't have to be so difficult for you though, if you want to roll with the program and set up as a "cloud first device". That's just not what I want, and when I pay this much money for a whole new setup, I want some say in the matter. I understand Microsoft's reasoning, they're basically giving you the Windows OS for free, and making their money from subscription services and packaging deals. Personally, I'd rather pay for my software and own and use it as I see fit. One thing I've learned is that nothing is free in the IT world, you either pay cash money for something, or you pay with your personal information, and in my opinion, your PI is much more valuable than money these days. It's a conundrum we all have to face in this digital age. 

At the very least, it would be nice if they gave you the option to set the machine up locally without having to break out of the setup. If you're not aware of this requirement beforehand, it's a difficult thing to recover from, and that's their thinking, I guess. It feels slippery and disingenuous to me, and I'm really glad I did my homework before I unboxed. An opt out for OneDrive would be greatly appreciated as well, it's annoying and frustrating. The average user isn't going to deviate from the network centric setup, only the fussy old users like me, so they wouldn't be losing any revenue. It would just be the right thing to do. 

Don't get me wrong, I really love my new machine and some of the new features. Windows 11 is streamlined and fast, and not that hard to get used to, all things considered. This latest crop of machines is amazing.as well, so this isn't a Microsoft or big tech hit piece, I just feel that it's important that they know we want, and need, more input into our own setup processes and PI management.

OK, I'm done grousing for now, I've droned on long enough. Stay tuned though; I have some updates and reviews coming up of the actual system I ended up going with, as well as a few apps I'm test driving. First, I'm gonna go take a couple Tylenol and lie down for a while...

Apple Needs To Bring Back the iPod

I jumped on the iPod bandwagon early and rode that baby all the way to the end of the line, and it was a sweet ride. The iPod revolutionized the personal music player market. No more big devices to carry around, and more importantly, your portable music library was no longer limited to the number of cassettes or CD's you could lug around with you. Your whole music library, available all the time, right in the palm of your hand. Heady stuff, Jetson-esque stuff, and it still is. Digital data opened up a whole new world for us. Then the iPhone came along, a natural progression, and eventually phased out the iPod completely.

There's still a need for them, though. I love my iPhone, but it's not the right tool for every situation. If I'm going to be anywhere near whirling blades or water hazards, I don't want my iPhone in the vicinity. I also don't want to be constantly draining its battery; I want it charged and ready for when I need it. My iPod Nano is my go-to device for things like yard work, or long walks off a short pier. It's small, sleek, and functional. No dial tone, no annoying spam, no data stealing apps, just a good standalone music player, cuz sometimes that's all you need.

Apple had really hit the sweet spot with the Nano, and the 7th gen was their best device in my opinion, from both a size and functionality standpoint. It has Bluetooth, an FM tuner, a moderate amount of storage, and relatively little else, but it does the trick. If Apple built a new model based off of the 7th gen design with a beefed-up storage capacity, say 64 or 128GB, I'd be first in line to buy one. I'd even grudgingly accept Wi-Fi for ease of syncing, just as long as it didn't increase the size and battery drain by too much and they limit the apps that run on it. No mail, no texts, I want none of it. I'm sure they'd wedge their Apple Music streaming app on there, it's not something I need or want, but I could live with it as well.

I know there are other DAP's (Digital Audio Players) out there on the market, some with incredible specs like the high end A&K's and the Sony's, but they're all very pricey and Android based, and would entail duplicating my iTunes library or just outright converting my iTunes library into an app that works for both Apple and Android devices, but that's a hassle and entails subscription costs. My library is huge at this point with extensive playlists, so that ship has sailed for me. I'm pretty much locked into the iTunes world, warts and all, but I'm okay with that; it's free, familiar and relatively uncomplicated.

Uncomplicated, that pretty much sums up this whole argument. These days people are craving a "do not disturb" kind of device, it's not just nostalgia. There's most definitely a large market for it, and a new iPod is just the ticket. So, give us a new iPod, Apple, I'm begging you. My batteries are slowly giving up the ghost, its time, so let's get cracking.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Apple

My wife got a shiny new 7th gen iPod nano in her stocking this Christmas, a pink one no less, and it put a huge smile on her face. The new nano is a nicely thought out little device and the perfect workout accessory; it holds a ton of music, has Bluetooth for wireless headphones, a built in pedometer, and it has the Nike+ personal trainer app, which is pretty slick.

She has an iMac and she’s had a couple of iPods and an iPad, so Santa felt pretty comfortable with this particular gifting. The only requirement for the new 7th gen nano is that it needs iTunes 10.7 or higher. Piece of cake, thought Santa.

His confidence was based on the fact that he has iTunes 10.7 running on both an XP and a Windows 7 machine back at the North Pole, both ends of the technology spectrum in the Windows world, plus the iMac in question already has iTunes 10.5 loaded on it, so upgrading from 10.5 to 10.7 on a fairly new iMac shouldn’t present any problems. iTunes 11 might be a problem, but 10.7 is just a simple rev bump.

That was his thinking, anyway, but Santa was wrong, way wrong.

First my wife tried to upgrade to iTunes 10.7. The download went fine, but her iMac balked on installation, informing her that she was running OSX 10.5 (Leopard) for an operating system, and iTunes 10.7 could only be installed on machines with the newest version of OSX, Mountain Lion (10.7).

So, Apple has a version of iTunes 10.7 for XP, Vista and Windows 7, both the 32 and 64 bit versions, but for their own platform there’s only 1 version, and that’s for their latest and greatest OS only. Nice.

Oh well, no big deal, we thought. Mountain Lion is available as a download on the Apple website, for a fee of course ($29.99). Wrong again…

To upgrade from Leopard (OSX 10.5), you first have to upgrade to Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), and Snow Leopard is not available as a download. You have to buy the disc set from Apple, again for a fee, load it, and then you can download Mountain Lion.

Rather than order Snow Leopard online and wait impatiently, we decided to head out to the closest Apple store and pick up a copy. Seemed like a good idea at the time, we just wanted to wrap things up and move on at this point, but we were wrong yet again.

When we got there we were told that the brick and mortar stores don’t carry copies of the operating system, you can only order them online. Of course, they were very nice about it, even reminding us that we’d be able to download Mountain Lion once we ordered and installed Snow Leopard. It was small compensation though, and we trudged back home, extremely frustrated, and placed our order for the Snow Leopard disc set.

Now we sit and wait, knowing that once we get the software delivered, we have to do two OS upgrades and then an iTunes upgrade, plus we’ll need to fix the collateral damage; upgrading other programs so that they’re compatible with Mountain Lion. The collateral damage is the main reason we hadn’t updated the iMac yet. Our current version of VirtualBox, the program that allows us to load a second operating system, XP in this case, won’t run on Mountain Lion, and without it, my wife can’t work from home. So once we finish the OS and iTunes upgrades, we’ll need to do the VirtualBox upgrade.

Meanwhile, the pretty pink nano sits there next to the Mac, gleaming in its little acrylic box, unused and unloved, silently mocking me.

“Great present”, it whispers.

*sigh*

I take solace in the fact that with gifts, it’s the thought that counts, and none of these upgrades are a bad thing in any way. Matter of fact, they we’re way overdue, but it shouldn’t be this hard to set up a simple music player.

If Apple can make a version of iTunes for every Windows OS, they certainly could do the same for their own, so why don’t they? Well, they have to cater to Windows users, they make up the lions share of their customers, and it’s not their OS, so they can’t force change. Ah, but Mac users, they’re the cash cow. They can get them coming and going; new iPod, new OS (or two!), sometimes even a new system. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Apple has released 3 OS upgrades since we bought the iMac in 2010, and countless versions of iTunes software and iPod firmware. Ideally, you always want to have your computers and gadgets up to date, it unlocks new functions and features, and can ultimately make a big difference in your device’s performance, but it gets very hard to keep up with, plus you have that old “collateral damage” problem.

The iPad, iPhone and Touch all have Wi-Fi and can sync to your iTunes account via the cloud, so you’re not as much of a slave to change as you are with devices like the nano that need to be physically connected to a system to sync and operate, but you can still get bitten, so beware.

The lesson here is; do your homework before buying any kind of software or hardware, especially when it’s for someone else. The last thing you want is to be raising stress levels instead of bringing joy and delight.

Oh yeah, and do your upgrades in a timely fashion, don’t be a slouch like me.

That is all.

The Ultimate App for Pats Fans

Whether you’re on the move, camped out in the man cave, or at the game, you need the Patriot’s smartphone app to stay in the know.

The smartphone app runs on both the iOS and Android platforms and provides you with a wealth of information. Pats news and videos, team and league stats and scores, photos, blogs, schedules, you name it, they’ve got it. My favorite feature though, is the Gameday section.

Gameday has a tab for up to the minute Play By Play action, another for a Live Blog with PFW Editor-in-Chief Fred Kirsch, so you can kibitz during the game, a Game Stats tab that breaks it all down by team, player and drive, and a Scores Tab that keeps you up to date on all of the games that week.

Not only is this app a must have if you’re away from both TV and radio on game day, it’s also indispensible when you’re actually watching the game. Let’s face it, we all need the occasional bio break or snack run, and you inevitably return to your seat saying “WTF just happened? How did they end up with the ball, and how did they score so quickly?”

I keep the app open to the play by play tab on my Touch when I’m home, or on my phone when I’m out, and if I miss anything, there’s a detailed play by play description of the action constantly updating on my device. “Ah, Big Vince with the fumble recovery, now it makes sense…”

Nice.

You can get the app at both the iTunes store and Google Play, or you can just go here, to the Patriots Media Center, where there’s a link to both. There’s also a Patriots Football Weekly app available for the iPad, and a link to the Patriots Mobile Site so you can browse a mobile version of the Official New England Patriots site on your portable devices.

The Pat’s have done a fantastic job on both the apps and their websites, but I'd expect no less from the franchise that's been at the forefront of the NFL’s foray into cyberspace since day one. You’ve gotta love the Kraft family, always on the cutting edge.

That is all.

Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker

I teased you in my last post that I’d been playing around with some pretty neat technology this summer, it’s time I got down to business. Let’s start off with my favorite new audio accessory, the Bose SoundLink Bluetooth Mobile Speaker.

Forget about docks and cords, wireless accessories are where it’s at these days, and the Bose SoundLink is my personal favorite in the wireless speaker category. It’s small and compact, with a solid feel and a sleek look, and it has pretty good overall volume and sound reproduction for a device of its size and portability.

It pairs with and remembers up to 6 Bluetooth devices. After 6, every new device you pair it with bumps an old one out of its memory. I currently have it paired with my laptop, iPod touch and my Smartphone, all were a snap to pair, and all reconnect to it instantly after initial setup. Its sound is warm and impressive with nice full bass, not sonically perfect, but nice, and it has enough volume and clarity to use outdoors.

The controls are simple, just a few buttons on the top of the device for power, volume, mute and Bluetooth pairing. No remote, but that’s fine with me. The paired device performs that function quite nicely. It also has a built in cover with a magnetic latch that does triple duty. It protects the speaker when it’s closed, acts as a stand when it’s open, and turns the unit off when you close it again.

Like most Bose music systems, speaker placement is key to maximizing its sound; you want to have a solid surface a few feet behind it to reflect the bass, especially when you’re using it outdoors or at a large party. The SoundLink’s range is at least 30’, which gives you a lot of options in the placement department.

I’ve actually had the device for a few months now, but have been holding off on a review until I’d really put it through its paces, and this baby passed my summer torture test with flying colors. The only problem is, I waited so long that Bose has just released a second generation device, the SoundLink II, and a software update for the original device. The SoundLink II has been sonically improved, and now comes in 2 flavors, Bluetooth or AirPlay (Apple’s proprietary Wi-Fi).

The sonic improvements come in the form of new transducers and better digital signal processing, and the addition of an AirPlay version gives the device even more flexibility when paired with an iOS device or iTunes.

The software update for the original model is easy to install, the SoundLink has a micro USB port on the back labeled service, and it’s great to know that the device is upgradeable, seeing as the electronic landscape seems to change every nanosecond these days.

Bottom line, there are other Bluetooth sound systems out there, and most are a lot cheaper than the SoundLink, but for my money the SoundLink has just the right mix of sound, portability, function and form. Small and sturdy enough to travel with, perfect as an add-on speaker for your laptop, iPod or Smartphone, powerful enough to use as a boom box at your next party, and it pulls it all off with style.

That is all.

Reloading An App, Revisited

Here’s an update on the post I did a couple of weeks ago about troubleshooting an app on my iPod touch. To Apple’s credit, someone from the iTunes Store Customer Support Team finally responded to me and was very helpful. Their first suggestion was to do exactly what I had planned on doing after I read their knowledge base, delete and reload the app.

I followed Apple’s directions, and even went a few steps further. I backed up iTunes, and then sync'd my nano and touch. Fresh copies all around! Speaking of copies, I made sure I had a copy of the old iTunes 8.0.20 installer, which I did, just in case. Next I backed up my PC to an external drive, and then I upgraded to the latest version of iTunes (9.2.1.5).

Surprisingly, all went well. When iTunes 9 was finished installing, I rebooted the PC and then tried resyncing my ipods. Everything worked fine.

Next, I deleted the app in question from both my Touch and iTunes. Then I went to the app store and repurchased it. iTunes recognized that I had already purchased the app and allowed me to download it for free, nice, and then a dialog box popped up that said:

"You must authorize this computer to download this application. There are also other applications on your Computer that are not authorized and will be removed if you don't choose to authorize now."

Not nice. So of course, I reauthorized the computer that I've been using to handle my account without interruption for at least 3 years. Very strange, but what's worse is the next message:

"You now have 5 of 5 possible computers authorized to use this account."

Why iTunes decided that the system I've been using for so long is suddenly not on the list is a total mystery. It's been authorized for 5 years, and it's been at least 3 years since I've replaced any components in it. Is it possible that iTunes 9 does a more thorough consistency check then iTunes 8, and just noticed the work I did 3 years ago? Regardless, at some point in the near future I’m going to need to deauthorize all the computers on my account and start fresh, but that’s for another time.

Anyways, the app appeared to download correctly, so I resynced my touch and tried to start the new copy of the app, and got the same error as before; a brief black screen followed by getting dumped back at the desktop.

bummer : (

I tried rebooting the PC and the iPod and then resyncing again, just in case, but the app still didn't work.

So, there I sat, broken hearted. Paid 5 bucks for an app that farted.

My bet at this point is that this latest version of Raging Thunder 2 just doesn't run on OS 2.2 as advertised. Polarbit still hasn't responded, but when I reported back to the iTunes support team that it failed again, they quickly offered to credit my account, which I quickly, and gratefully, accepted.

I can’t say enough good things about the iTunes Store’s customer service, and I’m glad I finally have all the computers upgraded to iTunes 9, even though to do it safely is a bit of a chore…The Sharing feature is the nards.

My only fear in all of this, is that my beautiful, shiny, fast as lightening 2nd gen touch is rapidly being painted into that inevitable high tech corner, obsolescence, at least in the available app department. I’m sure it won’t be long before all new apps are iOS4 specific, and I’ve seen the results of upgrading the OS on a 2nd gen touch. Poor battery life and general flakiness.

Hopefully, the good people of Apple will have come up with a tweak or two by the time that becomes necessary. In the meantime, I’m going to continue enjoying its current functionality, and that’s spinning tunes and eating downtime. I’ve become obsessed with trying to beat my wife at Five Dice. We play whenever we’re waiting in line, and it makes the wait go by in a flash. Passing the device back and forth is part of the fun, it makes it a much more interactive experience. Problem is, she always beats me. I think the tally stands at about 20 to 2 right now, advantage; wife. The fact that she’s constantly taking my first roll, and sometimes follows this by logging the score in a totally inappropriate box, isn’t helping my cause any.

Hey, you don’t think she’s doing it on purpose, do you? Maybe I should call her on it.

iPod Tip Of The Day: How To Troubleshoot An App

I’ve always been happy with my music purchases from iTunes, and up til now, with my App purchases also. About a month ago I purchased and downloaded Raging Thunder 2, a racing game for my Touch. I had searched long and hard for games that would work on a 2nd gen touch running 2.2, as a large percentage of the games and Apps available in iTunes these days are designed for devices running OS 3 or later. I’ve been tempted to upgrade, but I’m of the mind that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

My fear is that both the 2nd gen Touch and the Apps I currently have were all developed for OS 2. There's been a lot of hardware upgrades to the Touch since the 2nd gen, and both OS 3 and 4 were developed essentially for a different device. Why should I take the risk of having a buggy, flakey iPod when it already performs like a champ? Nah, I've been burnt to many times by their upgrades. When OS 3 first came out there were all sorts of posts about Wi-Fi strength and battery life going down on 2nd gens that had been upgraded. Seemed the processor just wasn’t up to all the new tasks, which is probably why they replaced it in the 3rd gen devices.

OS 2.2 has been a solid version, and I’ve been quite happy with my Touch just the way it is. Sure, I’d like to unlock the Bluetooth capabilities, and also be able to play games head to head without having to pass the iPod back and forth, but these are small things I can live without, so for now I just look for Apps that are rated to run on 2.2, but they’re getting harder and harder to find. I saw on the product description for Raging Thunder 2 that it ran on devices running 2.2 or later, so I paid the 5 dollars and downloaded it.

It appeared to load correctly, but once installed, it wouldn't start. Just a brief black screen, and then I’m dumped back at the desktop. Since purchasing it, I’ve sent 2 messages to the manufacturer, reported the problem to Apple by clicking the report a problem link in my receipt, plus every time I try to open the App, the Touch wants to know if I'd like a bug report sent to Apple. The message says that someone from Apple will look it over and get right back to me. No sir, not true. It's now been a month and I haven't had a single response from either Polarbit or Apple. Guess I'm out 5 bucks, but it's not the monetary loss that bugs me the most, it's the lack of response. The App store and the manufacturer should at least acknowledge my complaints. My emails have been very polite and chock full of details, plus they have the bug reports, so I’m sure they know exactly what the issue is. Instead, I have to scour their knowledge base, and then try a long list of “maybe this will fix it” solutions. Oh joy.

There’s a 90% chance that my problem is either a bad download or a bad install, and Apple does let you download things again that you’ve already paid for. You just need to delete the App from your iPod, and also from iTunes, then you go to the App store and select it for purchase again. iTunes will prompt you that you already own it, and ask you if you’d like a replacement copy for free. Click here for the full procedure for troubleshooting/reloading an App.

The instructions also say that you should upgrade to the latest version of iTunes and the latest OS before you try to download it again. As I said before, I’m not interested in OS 4, but I am going to upgrade iTunes from 8.02.20 to 9.2.1. We have version 9 on both my laptop and my wife’s iMac, so I know its stable, plus 9 has a nice sharing feature. Once all of our machines are running 9 we’ll be able to move purchases between all authorized computers, which will save a lot of hassle.

Of course, before you upgrade, you should always sync your iPods and do an iTunes backup, just in case…

Man, this is turning into a huge project! It would be soooo much better if either Apple or Polarbit would confirm what I need to do, but it’s a self service world these days, so I better get started. I’ll let you know how I make out.

MP3 Jukebox CD’s

It’s Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer, and it’s time for road trips, pool parties and backyard barbeque's. Are you prepared? Are you ready to rock the house, or the car?

I am, and I’m gonna show you a no fuss way that you can be, too, using just a single CD.

It’s an easy thing to dock your iPod and fire up a playlist, so you’re probably saying; Meh.., who needs CD’s? Well, here’s the rub; sometimes you just don’t want the added hassle of connecting and protecting your iPod. You’re in a rush to be on the road and you don’t want to have to deal with the connecting, fiddling, disconnecting and stashing of your MP3 player. Or maybe you’re bringing music to a friend’s backyard bash. You know someone will end up messing with your iPod as the night goes on, plus you may be way ready to leave long before the party is over, and there’s no bigger buzz kill than turning off the tunes mid-song at a party so that you don’t have to leave your iPod behind, plus there’s no way to slide out unobtrusively in this scenario, and we’ve all needed to do that once in a while…

The answer is to create an MP3 Jukebox CD. You can fit approximately 160 songs in MP3 format on a 700MB CD-R disc and have 10+ hours of uninterrupted music. Most of today’s auto and home CD players are now capable of at least MP3 and WMA playback, and some of the higher end models support additional formats. All you need to do to create one is to copy your MP3 files to a blank CD-R in data format. Most burning software will actually have an MP3 Jukebox option. Sonic, Nero, iTunes, all have it built right in. With iTunes, you’ve probably got your favorite playlists already created, so it’s a piece o’ cake. The burning process only takes about 15 minutes to boot. At any given time, I’ve usually got a couple ready to go, and they’re custom tailored for all situations. The ever evolving “Party Mix”, the more sedate “Don’t Harsh My Mellow Mix”, you get the idea. The possibilities are endless.

One thing to remember when using iTunes to make your CD is that none of your iTunes purchased music is downloaded in MP3 format. The MP3 Jukebox function will still work, it will just skip over any M4p/M4a/AAC files in your playlist. You can either let it, or you can convert the file formats to MP3. If you’re gonna convert, ALWAYS make a copy of the original first, because what you strip out in the conversion process can’t be put back. When I rip music from CD’s into iTunes, I always select the MP3 format just for this reason, and when I purchase songs from the iTunes store, I always create a standard audio CD backup of them, and that’s what I use to create the MP3 copies. I usually close iTunes and rip the songs back in as MP3’s to a different folder using Media Player, that way my iTunes library isn’t bloated with repeats.

The other thing to note is that different players read and organize the folders on data CD’s in different ways. When I burn a playlist to CD in iTunes, my Bose Wave presents and plays them back in alphabetical order ie: AC DC, Allman Brothers, etc. When I pop the same CD into one of our car players, they play back in the original playlist order, which is what I prefer as sometimes I put a lot of effort into the mood and pace of a playlist. Not a huge problem though. If the device starts playing back alphabetically and that’s not what you’re in the mood for, you just hit the mode button on your player and select shuffle disc.

So, it’s an easy and painless way to have your music for the ride, the party, and as an added bonus, you can leave the CD behind as a little thank you gift for your host’s hospitality when you do finally bug out.

Good Tunes For A Good Cause

iTunes is offering The Hope For Haiti Now live performance album and TV special at a great price, with 100% of the proceeds going to the relief effort.

The live and studio tracks are available for .99 each, or for just $7.99 you can download the entire album (20 tracks).

A Season Pass is also available for the TV special for $2.99. It includes the 2 videos now available, as well as free downloads of subsequent releases.

It's a great collection of performances, and a great way to show your support for the enormous humanitarian effort now underway in Haiti.

Here's the links:

Hope For Haiti Now Album

Hope For Haiti Now TV Special

Don't have iTunes? No Problem, here's the link to download version 9.0.2:

iTunes version 9.0.2

Remember, you don't need an iPod to enjoy iTunes music and videos. You can use it as a media player on your PC, and even burn music or mp3 jukebox CD's from your library.

I know times are tight, but don't cheap out. Buy the entire album and the TV season pass. You'll enjoy it, and you'll feel good about it.

Here's a little preview of the concert:

Update On iPod, iPhone Syncing Problems

I haven’t seen much in the forums on the syncing problems that seemed to abound last week. Since users across multiple platforms were experiencing the problem, and Apple released a notice that users should deautorize and reauthorize their systems to clear the problem, I’m assuming that the root cause was related to changes in the libraries associated with DRM removal, not the 2.2.1 firmware, and that Apple has since cleared it up.

Although I didn’t experience the iTunes freeze ups, I had noticed an oddity in my syncs last week. iTunes showed a 1 on the app folder, indicating that there was 1 new app available for syncing, and after I synced by USB it was still there. When I disconnected, there was a corresponding 1 on the Touch’s app icon. I tapped it and the iPod told me that I had a version upgrade for Labyrinth to download. I did, and the app updated wirelessly and worked fine afterwards.

iTunes still showed 1 new app to download, so I synced it again via USB, just to see if it would go away. Nope. I did see a copy of Labyrinth in the trash though, indicating that iTunes had replaced it with the upgraded version.

Through subsequent syncs, the 1 stayed on the app folder in iTunes, but didn’t reappear on the iPod. This morning, I synced again, and once again there was no change to iTunes, but the iPod had now gotten its “1 app download” indicator back. I went through the steps to upgrade the app again, and viola, the “1 app download” indicator finally went away on both iTunes and the iPod. There was also another copy of Labyrinth in the trash.

Perhaps Apple has reissued certain downloads that weren’t playing well with the libraries. Who knows, I’m just happy that everything is working.

I’m still holding off on upgrading to 2.2.1 though, just in case…

Apple Gives Us A Reason To Whistle A Happy Tune In The Post Holiday Season

Earlier this week at Macworld, Apple announced that they would now be offering iTunes Plus versions of their music, which are better quality and DRM free, as their standard 99¢ download, and that starting in April they would be shifting to a tiered pricing structure, 69¢, 99¢ and $1.29 per song.

This is great news for me. Santa brought me a fresh iTunes card, and I’m snagging tracks as I type. DRM-less, 256kbs tracks. Sweet. iTunes also gave me the opportunity to upgrade some of my existing library, for a fee, to Plus, but I passed for now.

While this is a big deal for me, and from what I read in the forums, for a lot of you out here on the interwebs also, the major tech sites have been bemoaning what a drag Macworld was. It’s a veritable chorus of “I flew all the way here and there was no unveiling of the Next Best Thing, no Steve Jobs. What a drag, man.”

You know what? I don’t care. Boo hoo. Apple just had a major product release in September. The accessory manufacturers can’t keep up with all the product changes, and people don’t have the inclination or the disposable income to swap out devices every 6 months when the economy sucks. I say this was another great example of Apple understanding what the market can bear, and what the public wants.

So, hopefully these reviewers have refueled their company jets and bopped on over to the CES to drink their fill at the trough of excess. I hate to see them so unhappy. As for me, I got what I wanted, and I’ll be doing the iPod happy dance (when no one’s looking, of course) throughout the long cold winter months. Thanks Steve. Much love.

That is all.

Lost - Season 5

Season 5 of Lost is coming soon to a living room near you. Grab the Lost widget for your homepage or website, and you’ll be “in the loop” for all updates and teasers.

Also, iTunes has the new season 5 trailer and the new music video by The Fray, “You Found Me”, available as free downloads. There are a couple of Easter eggs hidden in the Fray video, a logo for Ajira Airways, and a Dharma Initiative logo superimposed on Jack.

If you Google Ajira, you’ll find it has a website that is announcing “The skies have no limit with our new destinations launching January 21st, 2009”, and suggests that you sign up for updates. Check it out.

And if you need a little brushing up before the main event, be sure to visit our Lost section on berryjooks.com for past seasons episode recaps, screen captures, theories and links.

An iTunes Mystery - Solved

Back in November I did a post called An iTunes Mystery - The Case Of The Disappearing Cover Art . I think I can finally say that the case is closed, mystery solved.

I was having problems with artwork disappearing from iTunes, and consequently from my iPod the next time I synced.

I won't bore you again with all the details, but you can read them in the link to the original post above if your not one of my three dedicated readers. The bottom line is that once I unchecked “Automatically download missing album artwork” on the General Tab under Preferences, it stopped happening. Although it was an intermittent problem, it's now been 5 months since I changed it and I haven't lost any artwork.

Now remember, this worked for me on a specific platform (XP Pro/Windows Media Center 2005), and in a specific situation (the disappearing artwork was all added by hand to ripped music when iTunes couldn't find it). This solution also has one obvious drawback. While iTunes purchased music is still downloaded with cover art, once you uncheck the "automatically download missing album artwork" box, music you rip and then import into iTunes won't have cover art. I think this is the lesser of the two evils. I'd rather add cover art once when I import a song, then constantly have to re add random batches of artwork. It was an insidious problem because usually by the time I noticed it I had synced repeatedly and then I'd have to go back through the entire library looking for the newly naked tunes.

I finally decided enough time had passed to give you an update on this one plus I noticed recently that the search keywords that bring the most traffic to my site are variations on "Missing iTunes Artwork". I guess there are quite a few others out there who have shared my misery.

You know, I'm almost afraid to upload this, 'cause I know that as soon as I do...

Nah. Never happen.

Adding New Tunes To Your iPod When You're On The Road.

The other day my wife and I were in one of the big box stores and we overheard a conversation between a customer and a salesman about the customer's iPod.

It seems that the gentleman was in town for an extended stay, had access to a computer, and wanted to add a few new tunes to his iPod. The salesman proceeded to tell this poor guy that if he tried it on a computer that didn't have his personal iTunes library on it he would wipe all but the new songs off of his iPod. He suggested that the only way to do it would be to either go home and copy his library onto a thumb drive, which he could then bring back and load onto another machine, or have somebody do it for him and mail it to him.

It took every fiber of my being to keep my mouth shut. The evil look from my wife helped also. She hates it when I stick my nose in where it doesn't belong.

What I hate is misinformation.

Now it's true that if you autosync your iPod with an empty library, you end up with an empty iPod. And it's also true that having someone go to your house and copy your library and then mail it to you is a valid solution, but there are some safe and much less painlful ways to accomplish the same thing.

First and foremost, when you connect your iPod to a new computer iTunes always asks if you want to sync it. Just say no (or more accurately, just hit cancel). Once you tell it not to autosync, you can open up the iPod control panel and set it for manual sync. At this point your iPod's onboard library is safe and you then have a number of options.

You can proceed to purchase or rip music into iTunes and manually add it to the iPod. Remember to leave it in manual mode when you're done, otherwise you'll loose your new music the next time you autosync back home. You could then use the thumb drive trick or burn a CD to transport the new music back home.

You can also use either iTunes or a number of third party solutions to copy your songs from the iPod onto the new computer to recreate your library. Starting in one of the early versions of iTunes 7 there is a command under the File tab "Transfer purchases from iPod" that will allow you to move iTunes purchased music only to the new library. This is a fine option if all you have is iTunes purchased music, stick with the third party solutions if you don't.

Here's a great article on iPod to computer transfer from iLounge. There's a really nice comparison chart of third party solutions and some tips and warnings. Be sure to read it before you try anything.

Note: Not all third party transfer software will work with the new iPod touch and iPhone as they have a different synching protocol than the standard iPods. Some that do are: CopyTrans, iPod Access, and TouchCopy.

An iTunes Mystery - The Case Of The Disappearing Cover Art.

I’m running iTunes on XP and I’ve got a problem with disappearing cover art. Songs I rip from CD’s and add cover art too mysteriously lose it. I’ll go to sync my iPod and notice track names flash by in the info box (i.e. syncing Boomtown) that I know have been in my library for months and I’ll know right away that it’s happening again.

It’s usually only a handful of songs and it only happens once a month or so, but it’s frustrating because I spend a fair amount of time copying cover art from Amazon or elsewhere and adding it to the tracks.

For a while I thought it was related to a particular version of iTunes and that the next rev I downloaded would clear it up, but it’s dogged me through every upgrade (I’m at 7.5.0.20 now). I haven’t been able to rule out the platform I’m running it on (XP Pro/Media Center 2005) but I think I’ve finally found a pattern and may have figured out what’s going on.

It seems to only happen to ripped songs that aren’t available through the iTunes store, never to ripped tunes that are part of the iTunes catalog and never to iTunes purchased songs.

I noticed that on the General tab of the Preferences box I had “Automatically download missing album artwork” checked. I think iTunes looks at the non purchased songs in my library and says “Hmm, I’ll get you some cover art for that.” then looks through its catalog and doesn’t find any. Somehow in the process it displaces what you’ve put there. I’ve unchecked the box, so we’ll see if I’m right within a couple of weeks.

In the meantime let me know if you’ve experienced anything similar, and if so, how you’ve gotten around it.


Check out the latest update to this post: An iTunes Mystery - Solved for more info.

My PC is Gone, Baby, Gone.

I’m a pretty careful guy when it comes to caring for my systems and preserving my data. I’ve seen enough “data disasters” to last a lifetime.

You know the drill. You get the call from a relative or friend who has been dumping digital pictures onto their PC for the last 2 years and has never backed it up. Their hard drive is clanking, the PC won’t boot, and they’re frantic. “Oh my God, little Nell’s first communion pictures are on there!” they wail.

Usually you can recover some or all of their stuff but it’s always a pain in the butt and your friend or relative always stands behind you the whole time, wringing their hands and asking “How’s it lookin’?” every 5 minutes. Such a fun time! Once I even had to resort to a trick I learned from one of my coworkers to rescue data, freezing the hard drive. If you pop a bad drive in the freezer overnight sometimes it will work for about an hour after you take it out. It worked, but just barely. The drive started clanking again about halfway through the copy and died for good right after I finished.

I actually think there was divine intervention on that one. The drive belonged to a loved one who was particularly distraught and close to tears as I left for the evening with the dead drive in hand. I was flying home the next morning and although her computer was working, she had no hope of ever seeing her pictures again. Man, would I have loved to have seen her face when the FedEx guy delivered the DVD’s I created a few days later. That would have been priceless.

Anyway, we all say “I’ll never be that guy!” but it’s almost impossible not to be that guy.

I have a laptop, an iMac and a honkin’ Media Center PC at home. Any digital pictures and videos we take get loaded onto both the PC and the iMac, and they all get copied to a portable hard drive also. In addition, once every couple of weeks I burn a copy of the My Pictures folder onto a DVD. Same with the My Videos and the My Music folders and just because I’m totally anal, I also run the iTunes backup routine once a month and rip all purchased tracks to CD.

So, you would think that with all this preparation a machine meltdown wouldn’t be such a big deal for me. Well guess what? Even when you’re prepared it still sucks.

The other night, right after I finished the previous post, my PC went into a coma from which it still hasn’t recovered. It froze and that was it. I couldn’t even get it to POST, let alone reboot. Fried motherboard. Gone, Baby, Gone.

Luckily it’s still under warranty so we made a copy of the hard drive (told you I was anal) and off I went to Buy More. The store was great. They popped the hood, confirmed my original diagnosis, then packed it up and shipped it off on its long trip home to the manufacturer.

Beautiful, right?

Not exactly.

Now I’ve got to wait for its return, which could take up to a month, and when I do get it back there’s a good chance I’ll have to reload everything. A small price to pay, especially if I end up with a brand new system, but a time consuming hassle nonetheless.

In the meantime although I’ve still got my laptop and iMac, I’m out of business on a lot of fronts. My laptop isn’t powerful enough to process video and doesn’t have a video capture card and PVR software like my desktop. The iMac can process the video, but the video projects that I had already started on the PC will need to be restarted from the raw video files on the Mac, or they’ll just have to wait. Also a lot of the software I use regularly on the PC isn’t on the laptop or iMac, which means I’ve been busy loading software.

The coup de grace is that my iTunes library is on the PC and my wife’s is on the iMac. Both are radically different and if you’re familiar with iTunes you know the hassle of transferring to another computer.

On the plus side, this will force me to do some things I’ve been putting off. I’ll probably run all my music through a leveling program and then re-import it into iTunes with sound check off. As you may know, the iTunes sound check software really sucks. My levels are all over the place.

And then there’s…

and…

Ah nuts, there is no plus side. A PC meltdown is just no fun at all.