Grrrr...

[fajrdrako]

I just spent more than two hours on the phone to one of my tech-support friends trying to get iTunes to install on my computer. With no luck whatsoever. It isn't the first multi-hour session spent working on the problem, either.

I want to kick the comptuer. Which is a wonderful computer in every other way. Does everything I want or need. Except this.

I'm going to go read some fanfic now. Or maybe write some.

Comments

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

I can't scan on my new laptop cause the scanning software isn't compatible with Windows Vista. So now I have to borrow my old laptop back just so I can scan stuff.

Computers can be really dumb.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Annoying, isn't it? All this lovely hi-tech stuff and we can't use it.

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

I know.

At least I'm back on Word and writing (or looking at the document and timelines again).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a start.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

I'd ask you which o/s you're running, but I can guess. I'll never go to Vista.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The smug smile is because I'm a Mac-head.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That works.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll never go to Vista either. I'd probably go to Linux if I thought I could do all the things I can do with Windows XP - and if I wasn't afraid of changing over.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

You just about can, these days. XandrOS and the Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu cluster, among others, are particularly user-friendly. It's not like it was four years ago when I first played around with SuSE.

Still takes a little work to get things set up, and one has to pay attention to things like only using peripherals which have Linux drivers written for them, and finding the proper codecs for multimedia files, and work-arounds for things like shockwave. There are still programmes that have no Linux equivalents, that's why there's WINE; but I cannot get Mobipocket Creator to run under WINE, so I still keep my old Winbox.

If you have enough room on your harddrive you could dual-boot while you got used to it. Were I in Ottawa I could set up XandrOS in a partition on your harddrive inside an hour.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I wish you were in Ottawa, to help set me up like that! I don't quite have the nerve to do it on my own. How much room does one need on a hard drive to add Linux?

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

You can do a full usable install on a 20GB partition. And you can still run XP on the other 20 if you have a 40GB harddrive. What size is yours? They're incredibvly cheap these days, depending on the machine you're running on of course ...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I have a 40 GB hard drive. Though it's a little full up with stuff at the moment.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Right, you'd need to put some of your files elsewhere ... burn to CD or something. Or buy and install another harddrive. Run the Windows harddrive as master and a second one with Linux on it as slave (not my terminology, mind you.) There are utilities available for Linux these days that will let Linux read and write to the NTFS filesystem XP uses.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I do have an old hard drive that I could put some of those files on. Not a large one... 8 gig, I think. I've been ignoring it for years.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

That hard drive could still be useful if it's fast enough. You could have it installed as a slave drive, or put it in a powered enclosure to use as USB storage.

[ingrid-m.livejournal.com]

A friend had this problem. You have to make sure you have the absolutely latest version of Quicktime installed or iTunes won't install.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, that's exactly what I can't install - in fact, I can't install any version of Quicktime at all, or get it to work. Everyone is stumped as to why.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Now that's just weird. Quicktime really ought to be a snap on an XP box.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So you'd think!

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Getting back to your original problem, you really need to have that buggy DRM-driven software installed? There are other utilities which will sync to your iPod. Of course they don't link to the iTunes store, but hey, in a way that's a plus, no?
There's myPod (http://mypod.sourceforge.net/), and EphPod (http://www.ephpod.com/) ... on my Linux box I run Amarok, which would be capable of loading my iPod if I had one.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'll probably go to one of those.