Category: Microsoft

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blog Microsoft Windows Live Writer

Trying out Windows Live Writer

With this post I’m trying out using Windows Live Writer to see how it fares versus using the built in features of WordPress in the web admin.

Well it turns out it can have plugins installed into it & also has a spell checker that initially freaked out on WordPress until I told it to not worry about that word, although I half expected that as most spell checkers by default don’t like the names of programs when they are not also already considered a word.

The next feature I hope it has is a grammar checker otherwise it is going to only be used to make draft posts so that I can have after the deadline check on it & fix them. I would also like it if it could be used to edit posts & pages as I have some that I did on the web interface & I’d like to edit them outside that interface. I say that mainly because the web interface hits the server I’m on hard & causes my site to be treated like a bad kid because WordPress is very server intense when on the page to edit or write a post or page.

After sending this as a draft I found out that it missed some grammar errors that “After The Deadline” caught. So I guess after this I have learned that I will use it to write the post then send it as a draft so I can catch any errors that I missed in the client.

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blog Microsoft Zune

More podcast issues with the Zune 4.0 software

Well I just realized that I had unsubscribed from a podcast after the 4.0 version of the Zune software was released, the issue was that I didn’t really want to unsubscribe I just did so by mistake. I ran into several issues when I did that.

  1. Even though I told the Zune 4.0 software to unsubscribe & delete the podcast the files were never deleted by the Zune software I had to do that manually.
  2. when I resubscribed to the podcast the Zune software had this crazy idea that the files for it were still on my computer & refuses to download previously downloaded episodes.

Yes I will be making a page with a list of all the podcasts that I subscribe that still have a valid RSS feed to subscribe to. That will take some time to compile as I know of 185 different podcasts that I subscribe to. I believe I have already weeded out the ones that are now dead from the list. Right now I just have a list of URLs, but I wanted to include a list of the names & just have the name point to the URL.

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blog Microsoft Zune

Still limited on the number of files on my Zune 120

Well Microsoft changed their error syncing page to no longer include a mention that the Zune will only allow a certain number of files that they don’t specify a specific number still. So I tried syncing a large number of audio only podcasts & I ran into the same issue I have had with the Zune 120, that is I have about 50% of the space unused & I can’t get the podcasts I want on it because I’m limited by something other than available storage space.

This is the 21st century last time I checked & we are not using the FAT16 file system anymore. Heck the most that FAT16 could deal with was 4 GB on Windows NT 4 (You could make a 4 GB FAT16 partition the issues were that no other OS at the time could read it & the cluster size was 64 KB, this was an issue because a file that was 1 KB wasted 63 KB of space.) They fixed some of the issues with FAT16 when they released FAT32 as the file size limit was raised from 2 GB to 4 GB, the limit of 512 entries in the root was raised to supposedly unlimited according to Microsoft.

Everything I’m seeing indicates that the current generation of file systems can deal with 120 GB of data, heck I have two 1 TB hard drives so it makes even less sense to me that they have a limit on the number of files. I really wish they would just fix this or at the very least admit that they have a limit & what the actual limit is.

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blog Microsoft Zune Zune software

A new feature in the Zune 4.0 software that I just noticed

In an attempt to check if they have done something about the file count limit that had appeared in previous versions of the firmware I decided today to test that by syncing all unplayed episodes of several of my audio only podcasts to my Zune. In doing that I discovered a new feature, it looks like the software gives a visual representation of what percentage the additional files will take up on the Zune that is being synced. It shows up as orange on my computer, & it doesn’t say what the expected space is in any way other than the way the bars normally show up using space.

This goes as one of the many features that was never mentioned. My only wish now is that they fix the issues that I’ve run into with the software so far.

I’ll make another post after I find out if it runs into a file count issue on the Zune when the sync finishes.

Categories
blog Microsoft Zune Zune software

More issues with the 4.0 software

Well I decided to do some pruning on all of the podcasts I was subscribed to so I un-subscribed from several podcasts & since I knew that prior version would leave an empty folder I decided to go & make sure the folder was deleted as it should be when I tell the software to un-subscribe & delete a podcast, but it turns out that for some reason the folder was still full of every episode I had downloaded. Why it makes no sense to keep files that I specifically told the software to delete.

Even more infuriating is the software then tried to download the episodes of the series I just deleted. Which makes me wonder if it is that ZuneStore.sdf file getting messed up. I hope it is I also hope they release a patch soon that fixes those issues.