As I ranted about two days ago, my wireless in my notebook isn’t working.  yesterday I rang Compaq and they told me to do useless crap that I had already tried. I told them I had done it but they insisted that I tried it again. Anyway, without luck, I was told that I would have to restore my system. I backed up my files and waited for the call center to open up the next day.

They walked me through restoring it with their recovery software and I had no luck with that. The software stalled at the par where it re-installs the operating system. I tried restoring from the recovery disc but no luck, same error.  Now I had no way of restoring my computer. The hard drive had been reformatted so there was nothing on the disc. I then had to drop my laptop at the HP certified repair center for them to put Windows Vista back on it and test the wireless adapter and replace if need be.

I have no laptop now and I won’t be getting it back for at up to seven days. That is a long time to wait for her I miss her already. Now I am resorted to a slow, crappy Windows XP desktop. I hate this machine! It will do though, better this than nothing at all. I’m going to have to convert my TV Shows to watch on my PSP because this stupid computer doesn’t play well with Divx. Poor Me!

In 3.71, Sony added theme support. Initially you could only use themes Sony had created but they shortly released a kit for people to make their own themes. I tried out some of the themes and some are pretty good, but most suck. If I want a theme on my PSP, it would have to be slick and nice. Most of the themes have jaggered icons, some even have icons that aren’t transparent so you can see white, very lame and unprofessional.

I have found a handful of decent themes. I’m sure everyone can predict the types of themes people will be creating, and yes, you are right. The good thing is most of these cliche themes are pretty decent, its the other stuff that is amature. Windows theme is a theme using the basic Windows icons and such to help you identify features on the PSP, for example the Internet Browser is the IE logo. The Mac theme is pretty similar but the icons are replaced with their OS X counterparts, lie the file specific folders and the music and photos menu icons. Vista theme features all the slick icons from the new Windows operating system. This is the best theme I have seen so far (in terms of looks, nothing to do with the actual computer operating system.) Last but not least, iPhone. There had to definitely be an iPhone theme. It has the iPhone icons associated with PSP features, Music, Pictures, Internet ect. ect.

The themes I have mentioned were all made at a high standard and anyone with the PSP with 3.71 (or 3.71 M33 custom firmware,) should definitely check these themes out. I have attached the themes I have mentioned plus a few extra one so now you have no excuse not to check them out. If you find any good ones, please lead me onto them, also tell me what you think of the ones I have attached.

• Windows XP
• Mac
• Windows Vista
• iPhone
• iPhone (2)

Note: Themes posted here are not mine. I take no credit for them. All rights belong to their original owners.

Most Windows users update their systems using Windows Update. Its nice and easy and does it automatically, sometimes. That is great. But… there is one thing I dislike about updating, and that is restarting my computer. I dislike restarting, or even shutting down my computer. I prefer to hibernate at night so it is using no power and I can just resume where I was when I left it.

Generally Windows Update give me the option to postpone restarting the computer, which I do. I also select it to remind me again in 4 hours, the maximum time it allows. I do not get why there is a low limit of 4 hours to remind me. Why can’t there be the option to remind me in 6, 12 or even 24. More conveniently, how about the option NEVER reminding me that Windows needs to restart to finish installing updates. Does it think I will forget to restart? Does it think I don’t notice the little Windows Update icon in the taskbar? I think it not giving me enough credit there.

But wait, there’s more! After about 12 hours without being restarted, it now also counts down when it’s going to restart automatically. Okay, this is a useful feature for some people, getting the computer to restart when they are not using it. You are given the option to postpone it more if you are there, but that’s the problem. Sometimes I live the computer for more than 5 minutes for various reasons, some people leave it on so it can do other tasks (for example Virus Scans and Legal Torrenting) while they are not using the computer. A restart at this time is annoying and kills what we are doing.

I should be telling the computer what to do and what not to do. I am the boss of it, I am its controller, I am its master. It shouldn’t tell me what it feels like doing and doing it without me giving the command. I don’t care if its something as basic as restarting but if computers can do that without user prompt, imagine if it decided to format the C: drive, now that would be a problem. I know, I’m being over-dramatic, but who knows what computer are going to do next, we are living in the matrix!

The other day when I tried to open a movie in Quicktime, my computer crashed. Quicktime is a frustrating piece of software for me, it doesn’t do video very well for me. It can play video on an external source, whether its a USB Drive or a Network Drive or a Memory Stick of some description. The only thing it can’t do it play videos that are saved onto my hard drive. I just don’t get it and why, 6 months later, it hasn’t bean fixed.

After some searching on the internet, apparently Apple blames nVidia for a bad driver for its Serial ATA driver and nVidia blames Apples bad software. No one seems to want to take responsibility for this and it is a pain in the arse for me and other people with this problem. People have been somewhat forced to use Quicktime alternatives. I eventually gave up and decided to take that route too.

I downloaded VLC Player and it pissed me off from the word go. It played video fine but it done annoying things that pissed me off. First off it made itself the default for all video formats. It would have been nice if it asked me first and not just presumed that I would want it like that. Trying to get it back to my original configuration was a pain in the neck and resulted in my uninstalling it and fixing settings individually to get it back exactly to the way it was.

After reinstalling it, I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC. Another tedious thing is the volume control in VLC which is not simple to use and also thanks to Vista, makes it animated, which can be distracting when watching video at times.

Everyone is going to blame Vista and say thats what I get for being an early adopter, or a user in general. Yes I accept that but that is not going to make me switchback to XP. My XP days are over and I am only looking forward now. On the Quicktime problem, I have two options, put my videos on an external drive and play them from there in Quicktime, or play them with VLC but suffer because if degraded quality. I guess I’m gunna have to live with an annoyance either way so it’s whatever one is more convenient so VLC it is, unfortunately!

UPDATE: I have made a retraction to one of the things mentioned in this post. You can find it here.