OK so I’m not going to get an Apple iPod Touch today after all like I’d expected … turns out they’re not going to be in stores till the end of the month. D’oh! As recently as yesterday the Apple store were expecting them to be on the shelves before the weekend.  I was so excited.  I had dreams about it last night.  (Which is really weird because just the day before neither I nor the world even knew they existed – hmmmm the Apple hype machine must be set on hyperspeed this time round!)

Synching the Creative Zen with Vista

So to avert the waves of disappointment I figured that instead I’d synch my old Creative Zen Touch. I’ve added a fair bit to my library since I upgraded to Vista and I just haven’t got round to installing the Zen driver yet, but I got a new Creative X-XFI sound card just the other day and I noticed it had installed all the drivers and software to go with their MP3 players (normally I’d find that sort of presumption offensive, but just this once I thought it was convenient).  As it turned out though it wasn’t just a matter of plugging the Zen into Vista as it gave me the “unrecognized USB device” message. Just dandy! 

Get the latest Zen firmware!

A little research led me to the conclusion that not having the latest firmware on my Zen was the problem stopping Vista from recognizing the Zen.  Of course there’s no way to install the new firmware via Vista as it won’t connect.  Lucky for me I had an XP machine as well, but not everyone will. (If you do have access to an XP computer you’ll need to install the driver so it recognises the Zen.) 

Bricking it when firmware update goes wrong!

But that’s where things started to go really wrong.  Installing the firmware starts out OK but after 20 minutes it was still not finished so I came to the conclusion that it had hung because the Zen was showing the dreaded “Recovery Mode” (I’ve seen friends’ Zens do this before and it wasn’t a good sign as they were just the owners of Creative Zen Bricks after that).   Choosing the option to Reload Firmware first deletes the firmware then gets ready to reload at which point you connect it to your PC.  But while Windows recognises that the Zen is connected the firmware installation program returns the message:

“Your player is not connected, please connect your player”.

This problem is caused because the PC you’re using has Windows Media Player 11 installed.  So now I had to find an XP PC that was still running Windows Media Player version 10.  (This is because of issues with PlaysforSure in version 11.)

Luckily Adrian doesn’t play music on his laptop much and so still had the old version and the firmware upgrade went through successfully in seconds. 

Vista Woes instead of Wows!

So alls well that ends well it works fine on Vista now, but it’s yet another in a long line of Vista-related woes (although not really Microsoft’s fault this time) and another in the collective sigh that it isn’t really Wow.  Yet at least… but I’m still hoping. (Update: OK, when I plugged in the Zen Vista started synching it straight away without me having to tell it to… so yeah I’ll give it a bit of a Wow! for that. For now… )

Luckily for me I was able to borrow a second XP PC to do the firmware upgrade.  Again not everyone will have access to an XP computer with the right version of Windows Media Player.  If you’ve only got a Vista PC it’s a big problem for Zen owners. 

And likewise for XP users with Windows Media Player 11 it’s ridiculous that the firmware installer will delete your firmware but not allow to install the new version, effectively leaving you with a bricked player.   Creative need to get their act together to address both these issues.

OK it’s official – Vista is driving me insane!!

It’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back.  That single extra User Account Control prompt that tips you over the edge into thinking “Vista Sucks”  (along with the 150,00 other people thinking it) and “hating Vista” (which nets 14,000 hits at the time of writing). 

What tipped me to type those words into Google to see just how many other people felt the same way was installing my brand spanking new scanner.  My anger was prompted in part I suppose because my old scanner didn’t work under Vista, but then again I have a shiny new Canoscan LiDE 600F – what have I got to complain about?  It’s a great piece of kit!

But, then when I’d finished admiring it I noticed that under All Programs on my Start Menu I now have 3 new items all relating to the scanner.  Now I don’t know about you but I like to keep my Start Menu organized – hunting for things among all those folders that are put there by installs takes time - and time, as I’m sure you know, is money. 

So every time I install a new program or piece of hardware I go in and move things to where I want them.  Yes me!  It’s my computer after all, I’m the person who has to work with it every day and therefore I should be the person who decides how the shortcuts in my Start Menu are best organized.  And no matter how important he thinks it is that there should be three folders for his one piece of hardware, this decision does not belong to the developer writing the installation software, it belongs to me. (Once upon a time not so long ago install programs ask you which Start Menu ‘group’ you wanted them to be installed under – where did that little courtesy disappear to?)

Under Vista however, moving or deleting shortcuts from your Start Menu is an occasion for UAC to jump in every time which is bad enough.  So each time I try to move Real player back to ‘Accessories’ where it’s out of my way or to move all those Canoscan folders into one folder under ‘Hardware’ I have to go through two prompts for each link – first the one that warns me I will need to go through UAC and then the second one which is UAC.

But that’s not the end of it yet – it seems there’s more to moving those Start Menu links under Vista.  In Windows previous versions you had links in ‘your’ Start Menu folder and also in the ‘All Users’ Start Menu folder.   If you wanted things moved you sometimes had to do it in one or t’other, sometimes both.  In Vista though it seems to be additionally stored in some third place.   There’s no option to Explore on the right click (only Expand or collapse).  That place doesn’t seem to be a folder that’s exists within Vista’s new file structure somewhere and likewise searching the hard drive for the application shortcuts doesn’t get yield me any locations that I could move or delete them from.  So I’m guessing these links are hidden in the registry somewhere … but right now I’m too pissed off to go searching. Someone somewhere thinks that it’s not my Start Menu – it’s theirs.  And that’s just wrong!

Vista is driving a LOT of people crazy and my stats show that my websites are getting a lot of hits from people searching for solutions to their Vista problems.  This is the first operating system since Win 3.1 where I feel guilty that I haven’t managed to help people out – mostly because I can’t even help myself out yet.  

Everywhere blog posts proclaim user’s dissatisfaction.  Web forums are bulging with posts from people desperately looking for solutions to all manner of Vista problems but there are so few answers out there.  It’s frustrating beyond belief. 

But it’s not just third party sites (like this one!) that can’t offer any concrete help to Vista users in trouble.  When Vista has a problem it helpfully offers up codes (like “0×80070456” “Media has Changed” when you use card readers with Vista) which at first glance looks like a useful nugget of information that you could search on and quickly get helpful advice and support with your problem (like you could with XP) but as yet if you search Microsoft’s site for those codes there are absolutely no answers to be had.  It’s more than frustrating – it’s heartless.  These consumers are all good people who have paid good money to buy Microsoft’s product in good faith.  They deserve better!!

So, that’s how I feel…  The BIG question is whether or not I go back to XP.  But even if I do decide to stick with Vista, that isn’t an endorsement of the product and no, Microsoft, it doesn’t make everything right.

The case testing posts have finally gone live on Adrian’s Hardware 2.0 blog on ZDNet.  They’ve been a good few weeks work but as usual it was a lot of fun. 

As usual I had the honor of doing the filming.  The cliff drops were very cool as I got to watch the cases crash (and sometimes break), not to mention throwing big rocks up at me and digging themselves into the ground.  I had setup on the beach and was already to go when the video camera conked.  Luckily I had a low res digital that takes video which I was able to substitute in time for the testing to start.  It only took a few test drops to get the positioning right and then we were away. 

Adrian thought he was doing the hard work throwing the cases off the cliff but really I had the hard job running the cameras down below and recording the condition of the cases on landing.  When he finally came down to the beach he was amazed (horrified? impressed?) how close I was filming to the impact area.  Then when he saw the footage and some of the boulders getting chucked up I think he thought I was nuts.  But I knew I was well protected and, according to my math at least, sufficient distance away to be out of harm’s way. Personally I’d been more worried by the crush tests (as you can never tell if something’s going to give under the weight and it’s hard to predict which way a car is going to move if that happens).

The next round was more usual stuff … fire and explosions.  We’re still not quite finished with the testing – I won’t be happy until I know exactly what it takes to destroy those cases.  I’d kinda like the Storm Case im2050 to survive. I’m impressed and sort of attached to it by now…  We actually have a wager between us whether or not it will be destroyed in the final round.  I’m betting that it won’t be (after all I’ve seen how that thing performs first hand!) which is especially good because as usual if it survives I get to keep it AND for once he’s going to buy me a new one as well. (Hey I wonder if Hardigg make a pink one??) 

But if I win the wager and I do get a new one I’m definitely going to drag it along behind my car for a bit – I like that roughed up look.  Well, they say chicks dig scars – even on Storm Cases!

Like many others I’ve had my doubts about iPhone for a while, but I guess my concerns are more personal.  I just can’t see this thing working for me. 

At the moment I have a Motorola Razr v3i and I am continually having to clean the screen off.  The screen on that phone is quite small in comparison to the iPhone.  It really only touches my ear and a part of my cheek when I’m using it.  Nevertheless I still have to clean makeup off it every time I use it.  The iPhone is ALL screen so it would get a full face print on it every time you use it.  Gross!

(Take a look at the iSmudginator iPhone simulator for a hilarious take on this!)

Likewise looking at the Apple keyboard video today I can see there’s no way I’m going to be able to type on that keyboard with my fingernails either.  Fingernails are quite good for typing on small keypads but you tend to use the side of the nail rather than the tip.  The keyboard reminds me of punching a number pad on a wall … it’s designed for chunky male fingers and it’s just not sexy to type into something like that. 

I think they’ll need to do more than bring out a pink one to make the iPhone appeal to the ladies … it will need a complete rethink! 

Likewise most kids use their thumbs to text.  I’m not sure how that’s going to work out with the iPhone, especially as teens are so familiar with typing fast without looking at the keyboard.  

The iPhone’s predictive texting will be a big turn off for them – most kids think it’s really uncool to use predictive text.  It’s the first thing they switch off on their phones.  (“Predictive is for parents and old people.”)  Apple’s claim that they included a whole dictionary in the iPhone won’t mean anything to kids … even if the dictionary includes text speak (and I doubt that it does) it still won’t work for kids because txtspk it’s all about using the accepted language – and that changes daily!

Another thing that kids won’t like is the lack of MMS (and the inability to record video on the iPhone). Multimedia messaging is a $10 billion industry in Europe alone.  I just can’t see the phone companies accepting that kind of loss.  And I can’t see kids wanting to wholesale ditch their culture which is based around sending photos and videos to one another. 

I think the iPhone will very quickly be regarded as an ol’ folks phone!

Like it or not, with the exception of the Blackberry, nearly all mobiles are marketed towards teens and young people.  Can Apple really hope to change that? I seriously doubt it.

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