Category: Technology

I have a Windows Surface with Windows 8.1 Preview. I learned that if I installed Windows 8.1 RTM that I would not be able to keep my programs and setting without reinstalling everything. This was not acceptable so I began to find an alternative. After three days of trial and error here is what I learned.

• You need ISO image of Windows 8.1 RTM
• 1 USB Thumb Drive 4 GB or larger
• Rufus http://rufus.akeo.ie/

All the web nonsense about editing ISO images is just unnecessary and a waste of time.

Create bootable drive per instructions at this website ( http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html ) but here are additional things that I encountered trying the procedure. (Remember Surface is UEFI computer select your computer type on line for Partition Scheme.)

The first time I tried this it did not work. My drive did not format correctly and Windows Explorer could no longer see the drive. Don’t panic. Go to Disk Manager in Windows and you will see the drive. Just format it with FAT32 and then you can try again.

My second attempt in creating a bootable USB device was successful. Since the USB image is just files and not an ISO Image then it was easy to edit the cversion.ini file as instructed here. http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-Upgrade-from-Windows-8-1-Preview-to-RTM-Guide-379950.shtml Ignore rest of this post as it is unnecessary.

Once the USB drive was ready, boot Surface or whatever computer that you have and insert drive into USB port. Use Explorer and double click on Setup.exe. It is not necessary to boot from UBS drive to run Upgrade. Enter product key. Eventually—if you edited cversion.ini correctly—you will be offered three upgrade options on Choose what to keep screen:
• Windows settings, personal files, and apps
• Just personal files
• Nothing

Of course the whole purpose of this blog is to get the option to keep Windows settings, personal files, and apps. Just follow any remaining prompts and you will have a happy computer upgraded from Windows 8.1 Preview to 8.1 RTM without reinstalling a single thing.

Enjoy.

Last year my daughter hijacked my Acer laptop to take to college after she broke the hinge on her HP. (HP laptops don’t like going past 90 degrees when opening the screen.) Recently, I decided that I needed a replacement for my laptop so I could take a few college classes necessary to get promoted at work. After much debating and searching I decided to purchase a Surface Pro from Microsoft.

I looked at the RT version but I wanted to run PC programs as well as apps. My general opinion of apps is that they are buggy and tend to be unstable. This is true of Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8. (Apple burned their bridges with me a long time ago so they aren’t even part of my world.) PC programs are just more robust than apps. Also, PC programs don’t require Internet access and many apps are just front-ends for cloud data. Without Internet access most apps are useless.

Since Microsoft sets the sales price for Surface, it didn’t matter where I purchased it. Generally, I like shopping at Fry’s but their credit card is terrible. You can only make payments via snail mail. You used to be able to make payments on the Internet but they discontinued that many years ago. Their website claims that they now take payments again but I have yet to verify if this is so. Worst of all, they will not accept payments are their brick and mortar stores for their credit card. As a result, I purchased Surface at Best Buy. Best Buy has a multitude of payment options. I got my Surface for 18 months interest free. Best Buy tried to sell me an extended warranty but their prices were extremely high. I registered my Surface on Microsoft’s website and they offer a two year warranty for $149. It sounds much like what Best Buy offered for about half the price.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on Surface.

microSD Card
When I purchase the Surface I bought a 64GB micro SD card to use with the computer. I planned to keep photos and music on it so I wouldn’t fill up the internal hard drive. However, I was unable to use the SD card for this purpose because the Library function in Windows 8 will not allow a removable card to be added to my music library. The Surface has about 85 GB of storage available and my complete music collection is over 35 GB. Windows Media Player will see the audio tracks but will not play them from the SD card. The Music app will play the audio files on the SD card but you must manually navigate to the SD card each time you want to play something from it.

Mouse
Best Buy only had one Blue Tooth Mouse in their otherwise huge store. The mouse was not even on display. It does work fine with the Surface but it creates a huge bulge in the storage case. The mouse is almost as big as my fist; it’s not a typical laptop size. I wanted my only USB port to be free if I needed it.

Start-up & Configuration
I logged into the Surface with my Windows Live account. I was going thru my initiation of Windows 8 when I was asked if I wanted to Trust this computer. I said YES and an email was sent to my phone. I typed in the code from the email and all my settings were copied from the Internet to the Surface. The desktop background on the Surface was the same photo as on my desktop. Additionally, all my Favorites from Internet Explorer and passwords were copied. The email app was also configured to match my desktop computer. While I thought this was cool, it did make me wonder how much the NSA is really watching us.

I like the touch ability in Windows 8 but there is one thing I cannot do successfully without the keyboard or mouse, I can’t get the right click menu to come up for a tile on the Start Screen. You can touch, hold, pinch or do any gesture that you can imagine but it won’t work. Nothing beats a mouse for customizing the Start Screen.

Mount ISO & MS Office
I did install Microsoft Office on the Surface but when doing it I did encounter a bug/glitch in the software. Every time I tried to mount the ISO image of Office that I downloaded from Microsoft I got an error. The error was that the ISO image could not be mounted. After some research on the Internet I found that the best thing I could do was ignore the error since the ISO image was really mounted even when the error said otherwise. I followed this advice and was able to load Office without any further issues.

Old PC Games
As an experiment, I downloaded Diablo 2 from the Internet to see how it would run. The download from Blizzard’s Battlenet website was painfully slow. Wi-Fi speeds are significantly slower than wired speeds. The program installed OK but when it came to running Diablo 2 I hit another snag. The only native resolutions for Diablo were 640 x 480 and 800 x 600. Running Diablo in a window the size of a large label is not my idea of gaming. I tried the fix for bigger resolutions suggested on the internet—this is a third party program that allows more resolution choices—but it would not work. By adding –w to the end of the target line of the desktop shortcut I was able to get a larger windows but still not the correct height. In the midst of learning this, I accidently changed the resolution for the Surface to 640 x 480 more than once. Correcting that problem was another challenge. Even rebooting the Surface would not restore full screen operation once the resolution was changed. This was another time when touch was not precise enough to change settings.

After much trial and error, I did get the Blizzard games to run at full screen. As usual, you had to blend parts of different procedures found on the Internet because none of them was correct.
The first part was posted at Surface Pro brightness bug
It was to download the full video driver from Intel. Use this one unless this is fixed in the Windows 8.1 update. downloadcenter.intel.com

The second part was a completely undocumented key combination that I found. Here is the full post. I FOUND A FIX FOR OLD GAMES ON SURFACE PRO WITH SMALL SCREEN   After loading the video driver mentioned above, start game then simultaneously press CTRL+ALT+FN +F11. When this works, the game will go to full screen. Then you must exit game in the normal way. When you do screen resolution will be wrong. Then set screen resolution using Control Panel or Right Click. After that the games will be full screen when started again and desktop will be correct size.

The other game franchise that I tried without any success on Surface was Command and Conquer. I went on Amazon and despite the bad reviews I bought the C&C Ultimate Collection. This is a downloadable only collection of all 17 Command and Conquer games. They don’t require a CD or DVD to run them. Total downloads are over 60 GB. Before I gave Amazon my money, I actually installed the disk version of Command and Conquer Generals on the Surface through my external DVD. It worked without and patches, or tweaks necessary on Windows 7. After I proved it would work, I gave Amazon my money and downloaded Generals. It would not work. As a form of troubleshooting, I downloaded it on my Windows 8 desktop and it worked great. What I learned was that the Origin software (cheap knock-off of Steam) would not bring up the menu to let me start the game. I uninstalled it on both machines and tried it again with the same results. The biggest difference that I noticed in hardware was that I have an NVIDIA video card on the desktop and an Intel one in the Surface.

Weight and Usage
The Surface weights two pounds. It is heavier and larger than my Kindle Fire. I have not tried Netflix on it yet but holding it above my head to watch streaming video or surf the Internet the way I do with Kindle is more of a challenge. I think I will have to park it on the table next to my bed to use it for longer periods of time. The jury is still out on this aspect of the Surface.

They type keyboard is wonderful. It is thin and reliable. Having it cover the screen when not in use is an added bonus. The click in place feature is clever.

So far I like the Surface. If you get one, get a small Blue Tooth mouse and seriously consider the optional touch keyboard. The on screen keyboard is ok but sometimes covers the part of the screen that you are trying to type in.

Today, Microsoft announced that it was terminating its TechNet subscription service. It will stop new subscribers and renewals on August 31st.

I have periodically been a subscriber since the 1990’s. I still have the old library of TechNet CDs that I collected every month back in the old days. I have found it an economical way to keep up on the latest innovations in software and maintain some proficiency on my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. I will be sad to see it go away.

I wonder why MSFT is making this change. Is this part of a move for MSFT as they move from a PC software company to hardware and tablets? Does this mean that the licensing model will be changing to an Adobe subscription model? Is this a loss leader in their eyes? Is everything moving the “the cloud”?

I’m writing this blog to chronicle my attempts to run this Windows 98 game from 1999 on a modern PC. Nothing that I could find on the Internet seemed to have all the answers in one location. I hope this will help others wishing to run this program.

First off my equipment.
• I own a licensed copy of Ultima IX. Due to some bugs at the time of its release, I also have a second install disk that was sent to me by Origin. This is an installation disk of the final version, 1.18.
• I also have access to two PCs, I will explain why in a short while.
• I found VMware Player a necessary asset but not for the reasons that you think.
• Lastly, I had a full version of Windows 98 Second Edition and a bootable DOS 6.22 CD.

Summary of my adventures.
First, Ultima IX Setup will not run at all on my Windows 8 PC. Not straight out of the box and not in any compatibility mode that is offered in Windows 8. I had feared that I might be dealing with the fact that 16 bit code won’t run on a 64 bit OS but Ultima seems to be a 32 bit game.

I kept reading on the Internet that people were able to get it running. Of those that said it worked on newer versions of Windows none ever mentioned that they actually owned the game. I don’t make a habit of stealing games or getting them from illegal download websites. Also, many websites mentioned a home brewed patch dubbed 1.19 which I did decide to try.

Since Ultima was made for Windows 98 SE, I decided to try VMware to see if I could get the old OS to run. Windows 8 comes with Hyper-V virtualization software which I had used to setup Windows XP. Hyper-V will not support old Microsoft Operating Systems like 95, 98, ME. Unfortunately, VMware cannot exist on the same PC as Hyper-V unless you want to crash your operating system or create an environment that looks a lot like a dual boot OS.

As a result, I installed VMware Player on my Windows Home Sever 2011. The install was quick and I knew enough about virtualization that running it was rather simple.

Getting Windows 98 installed was a relative pain. I could not boot off the 98 CD even though it is the full version for new PCs. My recollection was that you needed a DOS boot disk to start the process. Believe it or not, I actually created a bootable CD for DOS 6.22 about the same time as Ultima was actually released. I popped the disk into the DVD player and then ran FDISK to create a partition and then ran FORMAT /S to get thing going. Then I put the 98 SE disk into the computer and ran Setup.

This worked well until it was time to detect hardware and the associated registry entries and then I got a message that the computer could not read from drive A. (Bootable CDs are treated as the A drive.) I terminated the install and rebooted the virtual machine. The 98 installation resumed and finished with no further problems.

After starting 98 in VMware; however, my virtual machine had no sound. I hunted online and found that installing a driver for Creative Labs Sound Blaster fixed the problem. http://www.techbug.com/en/knowledge-base/289/

Now I was ready to install Ultima. I was able to get thru the two CD installation. The last step is configuring the video and that is where my hopes were dashed. After several days of hacking and searching on the web, I was crushed to learn that VMware does not support 3D video rendering in Windows 95, 98 or ME.

Ok, so here I am with Windows 8 not letting me install the program one my computer and Ultima on my Home Sever installed in a virtual machine that doesn’t support the game. It was enough to break my heart. And then yesterday I saw a post that was my epiphany. I then knew how to turn my lemons into lemonade. Here is the post.

Re: Autorun problems – can’t install Ultima 9
________________________________________
Problem is still not solved, but I found a workaround (at least for my game). Installed Ultima 9 on my wife’s computer and then copied the 1+ gb Ultima directory onto my 2gb flash drive and moved it to my computer. Works fine. In fact I don’t use or need the game CD in the drive.
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f149/autorun-problems-cant-install-ultima-9-a-221631.html

 

Old games don’t modify Windows registry because back in the day there wasn’t one and they often did not copy files to C:\Windows\System. I knew this guy was right. I copied the entire Ultima IX directory from my virtual 98 machine to a flash drive. Then I copied it to the root of my C Drive. This is why bit torrent folks could run it and those of us with the physical media could not.

Things I did to modify the install before I tried to run on my Windows 8 computer.
• Modify Option.ini file per http://ultimacodex.com/topic/possible-fix-for-high-crash-frequency-in-ultima-ix/ I recall modifying this file when I ran the game when it first came out. A similar modification is need for some of the Command and Conquer games.
• Patch 1.19 http://ultima9.ultimacodex.com/forgotten-world/

Ultima worked just fine and at a much higher resolution than the 640 x 480 listed on the box. The only catch is that the play disk needs to be in my Blue Ray drive to run the game. I haven’t found a tweak yet to fix that requirement. Perhaps I will mount an ISO image and see if that satisfies the program.

Moving my email from Hotmail.com to Outlook.com has involved some preplanning and a few minor heartaches. Here is what I have done and experienced thus far. I hope this will be helpful to others that plan to do likewise in the future.

I use my Windows Live account—or whatever Microsoft wants to call it these days—on my Windows 8 PC and my Windows 8 Phone. I found an article that claimed that by following their instructions that you can switch to a new Microsoft Account and keep your app purchases. Their method was to transfer everything from one Live account to another via an XBOX 360. I followed the instructions on the article found here
http://www.wpcentral.com/guide-how-get-new-live-id-and-keep-all-your-windows-phone-app-purchases

After following the instructions in the link above, this is what I experienced.
My XBOX points moved from one account to the other but moving the phone purchases was a bust. Only two apps have moved from the old account to the new. One was an old version of angry Birds which says it is no longer available for download and a tower defense game called SwampDefense. I had made a list of all apps on my phone prior to moving accounts so I know what I should have. After doing the Factory Reset as instructed in the link above, I found and installed the free apps that I had previously had on my phone. Many of my paid apps were originally downloaded at times when there was either a free introductory offer or they were on sale in the Store. Some posts I have read said that it can take up to three days for apps to be moved. I don’t think this is going to work, but I’m only halfway thru the three day time period.

*****
Update #1
About three and a half days after the switch, another group of old apps appears on my purchase history. However, there is still a gap from August of 2012 to June of 2013.This of course is the period that I most want to reinstall. Also, note on old entries that while the apps are on the list, the word “Purchase” does not appear in the payment column.

Secondly, when I log into Hotmail—my old phone account—I see all purchases for both the Outlook and Hotmail accounts. Also, the Hotmail log in shows Other Phones as an option on the account. This gives me some hope that the switch is still in progress.

Upon further review however, I found the other device listed was my old HTC Trophy phone. It was not removed from my Hotmail account when I bought the HTC 8X.
*****

Other posts that I read said that you will have the apps available but must go thru the motions to purchase the apps again and once you hit buy, the phone will say you have already purchased the app and can then download it without paying. This has not been my experience. I tried and ended-up buying an app that I had previously purchased.

I will not say that this method never worked but it certainly does not any more…at least as advertised.

Changing the login on the Windows 8 PC seemed easy enough. I changed from a Microsoft account to a local account. Once that process was completed, I then attached the computer login to the new Live account. The first change that I noticed was that my list of recent documents in Microsoft Office was reset and I had to setup my email accounts again. I don’t have any purchased apps in Windows 8 so I don’t know if they followed or not. If the few apps that I have installed still function and update then I think it is safe to assume that they are OK.

I went thru my list of usernames and passwords and updated my email information. In some cases, I could update them using the PC and test the change by logging into the app on my phone. An example of this would be Amazon.com where your email address is part of your login to the site.

The other issue I have with Hotmail is that there is no way to cancel the auto renewal of the account using any Microsoft website. You can either plan ahead by setting up the default credit card with one that will expire before the renewal date or outright cancel the account. There is no way to revert back to a free account without contacting MSFT. I am trying to use an email support feature buried deep in the bowels of the support website to see if they will cancel the automatic renewal but I have yet to hear from them.

*****
Update #2
Surprisingly, within about an hour, I received a reply from Microsoft and with a few more emails was able to cancel the auto renewal of my Hotmail account.
*****

The other Windows Phone question that I had was related to phone updates to the BIOS and Operating System. What happens when you do a complete reset of the phone? Do updates need to be installed again—like I would after using a PC restore disk—or do the master restore files get updated as part of the updating process? Surprisingly, the updates appear to be permanently installed. I never needed to update the BIOS or Operating System following the reset. Manually running the Check for Updates feature for the phone OS, states that the phone is up to date.

About twenty hours after I did the phone reset, I got a batch of updates that were phone specific for audio and other features. This update notification was via the Store.

Transferring my TechNet subscription was the simplest part. I just clicked on a link for this purpose and followed the steps. This was the most painless part of the whole process. My only concern was that after I was done, I could log on with my new account but the box with my name in it still was showing my old email address. Changing the TechNet login however does not change the email address of any Microsoft newsletters to which you may have subscribed.

Ice Age Village, based on the popular movie franchise, is a fun way to waste hours on your phone or tablet device. It is a game that is fun for the whole family. Best of all, it’s free.

I’m running the game on both my Windows Phone and Kindle tablet. The Android version is a bit slow on my first generation Kindle Fire. The game has a slight lag and catching Scrat is difficult. The experience on the Windows Phone is smooth and the display allows you to see more of the village on your screen at one time.

You purchase or earn various little animated animal families or entertainment venues for the animals in your village to enjoy. Based on your village configuration, you earn revenue from each thing in your village except items that give you bonuses. A family is complete when you have two adults and two children. It is somewhat disconcerting that all animals reproduce from eggs in this game but it does allow for conversations with children when you explain that Pandas and Llamas don’t really lay eggs.

The Social Network portion of the game is buggy and does not work as it should. Also, if you get your village up to a Five Star rating in all areas, it will reportedly crash the game. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Getting acorns in the game is difficult and clicking on items that you can’t afford will take you to a screen offering to sell you acorns for cash. Password the ability to purchase via credit card before turning the gaming device over to your children.

Below are two links with further information and cheat codes to get some quick cash early on in the game.

http://www.wpcentral.com/ice-age-village-guide
http://www.wpcentral.com/ice-age-village-review-windows-phone

A few weeks ago, my wife spilled diet cola on my good ‘ole Microsoft keyboard. My keyboard was about 15 years old and well loved. It was white in color. I replaced it with the bottom of the line keyboard from Best Buy.

The Best Buy keyboard turned out to be junk. Every time I typed on it, I had to move it to a new USB port or the characters that it typed were different than the keys that I would press. After struggling for a few weeks with this keyboard, I loaded the family into the car and went to Fry’s to get a better keyboard.

After browsing the selection at Fry’s I discovered two facts. First nobody seems to make a white corded keyboard and second Microsoft no longer made the style that I had been using. After 45 minutes, I finally selected the ROCCAT ISKU/FX Multicolor Gaming Keyboard.
http://www.roccat.org/Support/Gaming-Keyboards/ROCCAT-Isku-FX/

This keyboard is way beyond what I need but I like that the keys are lit and that I can pick colors for the keys. I don’t need the programmable macros for gaming. I like that I don’t have to use my Ikea desk lamp to be on my computer at night.

The software driver is quite versatile. The only change that I needed to make other than the key color is the software does not default with the Cap Lock key being functional. It must be manually set in the software to behave normally. It was a pain to log into my Windows 8 PC without the Cap Lock key.

I once went to an estate sale near my house. It was the afternoon of the third day when I finally wondered over there to see what all the fuss was about. All the rooms of the house were arranged in a logical fashion but most of the contents had been stripped to the bone. Only a few crumbs remained. Any hope of finding a treasure that would make you a star on the Antiques Roadshow had faded days ago. This is the feeling that I have when I wander through the Windows 8 Store. All the rooms are there but the contents are sparse.

I realize that the Store for all intents and purposes is still a beta but I doubt there are five hundred apps in the whole thing. Many apps appear to be in other languages which further reduces the number that I would be interested in using. Some apps are just long form commercials—“crapware” that often comes preloaded on PCs—only this stuff has a different wrapper on it. One example is a Kaspersky app that looks like a free anti-virus beta.

Another disappointing app is the Kindle Reader from Amazon. You can’t direct it to your existing Kindle library and can’t add other content to it. Not even pdf files. I downloaded the Windows 7 Kindle Reader and no longer have these problems.

Some apps are great but others are unfinished or even lame. My other complaint is that if I try an app and don’t like it, I can’t find how to get it off my list of apps that want to be installed. One support thread said try going into Power Shell and remove the installer package. …OK; so nobody at Microsoft ever thought of this before? Don’t they have children in Redmond?

Speaking of children, my seven year old wanted a faster computer to play games with his brother. His little XP box could not handle the games in a networked play environment. Command & Conquer Generals and Diablo II were ok but Minecraft was beyond what his little PC could handle. I figured that this was daddy’s excuse to upgrade and give junior the old stuff. My upgrade went fine. Windows 8 didn’t skip a beat with a new motherboard, CPU and more RAM. It booted right up. I did not get a pesky message that my license was invalid and I needed to register the software again. Just for the record both boards were from Gigabyte.

However, getting my son’s computer to run and keep running was a major project. After installing Windows 8 three times from the install DVD and twice from back-ups, I threw in the towel. The motherboard, CPU and RAM from my computer plus the old hard drive I found in the garage did not exist in harmony. I experience corrupted files and bad registry hives. My first thought was that hard drive was in the garage for a reason so I bought a new drive and tried again. The installation still got corrupted. I put a new power supply in the computer and still the files were getting corrupted. Soon the operation system would give me the sad screen of death—a modest improvement from the dread blue screen of death (BSOD).

To get Minecraft to run on Windows 8, I needed to use beta drivers from NVIDIA. I didn’t know if it was the video drivers or the hardware. Finally, frustrated beyond “R-rated” words, I put the Windows 7 install disk in the computer with the intention of wiping the drive and going with a more proven OS. Not satisfied that this was going to work, I rejoiced to see the Memory testing utility as the other choice besides installing Windows 7. I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to run this silly program. The diagnostic program got to 9 percent complete before I saw the message that I needed to contact the PC manufacturer because a hardware problem was detected.

YES Finally I was vindicated. It was a problem beyond my control. I was not sure if the problem was the RAM, motherboard or CPU. I talked to a guy at Fry’s and he told me of a similar problem that he had experienced. He found that the culprit was the motherboard and not the RAM. After wasting a week on this computer already I decided that I was beyond “plug and pray” repairs and opted for a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. After my son went to bed, I assembled the components and then installed them in the case. Then I loaded Windows 8. All while he slept peacefully a few feet away. Things have been great since then.

One last word of advice is that in Windows 8, System Restore is off by default. Turn it on and run it occasionally. While it didn’t help in my situation it might save your bacon with other PC problems. Oh, and good luck finding the Control Panel. When you do, pin it everywhere.

Yesterday, I downloaded the final code for Windows 8. As a Microsoft TechNet subscriber, I have access to most of the software produced by Microsoft. I chose to upgrade my main desktop machine just to see what the experience would be like.

Unlike other recent versions of Windows, the installation procedure did not run a compatibility check. With only a few prompts, the software seemed to run on its own. Only at the end of the procedure did I encounter problems. Toward the end of the procedure, the user starts getting prompts to select theme color, some default settings and then tie the installation to your Windows account. (For many years this was called the Windows Live account.) It was at this point that the installation process crashed. I got a message that Windows could not be installed and then the program removed Windows 8 and a few minutes later my computer restarted into Windows 7.

My first thought was that my Kaspersky internet security program was responsible. (I am aware that no existing antivirus product works with Windows 8 but it was part of the experiment to see what the average user would encounter.) I uninstalled the program and did the suggested restart. Again I ran the Windows 8 DVD and about 25 minutes later I was running Windows 8.

The final code provides a much clearer interface than previous versions. Before when I ran betas of Windows 8, every item in my start menu appeared as a tile. It was just a cluttered mess to wade thru but the tile experience on the final code is much simpler. I also installed the beta version of Microsoft Office 2013. (I may blog on this at a later date.)

So far I like the program. I did shrink many of the default tiles to the smaller size and add a few but otherwise everything fits onto one screen. The best thing I found in the marketplace was the app to let me run XBOX programs thru my network on my Windows 8 PC. That looks interesting.

Lastly, on my desktop view, all my stuff is there except my Gadgets. I had read that they were deemed a security risk and MS was planning to end them.

I still haven’t checked out dual monitor capability because my other monitor is the TV and Chef Ramsey does not like to be preempted.

My final word is uninstall your antivirus program and the take Windows 8 for a spin.

After my first attempts at uploading music failed, I decided that the only way to get further into the uploading process with any prospect of success was to convert all songs in my library to mp3 files. Most of my library is in WMA format. It took two days to convert all songs in my library to mp3 files. I used the conversion utility that comes with the free version of Real Player (http://www.real.com).

I then tried to upload music to the Amazon Cloud. Thus far I have uploaded about two thousand audio tracks. Amazon never recognizes all the songs—ever when they sell the identical songs on their website and I ripped them from a factory CD. On average, out of a block of 200 or more songs, the cloud service will identify about 35 to 40 percent of the music. Just as a test for this blog posting, I tried the Grammy Award winning album by Bob Dylan Slow Train Coming. As you can see in the attached screen shot, Amazon correctly identified only six of the nine songs; the other three had to be uploaded individually.

Once the music is uploaded, other catastrophes were waiting to be worked-out. Many songs from the same CD were split into five or six “albums” even thought they were ripped from a single commercially purchased CD and uploaded at the same time. Trying to fix these errors is frustrating and very time consuming. Whether you use the back button or other navigation links in the Cloud Player, you end-up not where you were just working but at the beginning of the list of albums. In addition, the suggestions from the Cloud Player for artist, album and track number are frequently wrong—even when Amazon sells the same CD on their website. Perhaps working in multiple monitors and multiple browser sessions would allow fixing these errors quickly.

Once you think you have all the bugs worked out on a particular album, you have no visible indicator to let you know if Amazon matched a music track with their library or what bit rate a song is in unless you actually download it. I have gone to great lengths to use correct year for album release dates in my library however this information only confuses the music identification routine used by Amazon’s software. Amazon favors the date they made something available for download not the year the album or CD was released originally.

So far I have mixed opinions about the Amazon Cloud Player.