me, matt cole – you, not matt cole

Browsing the interweb I came across this incredibly useful setup. I finally installed my Windows 7 disc after being tired of the RC shutting down every 2 hours and the biggest reason I lagged on doing it is because I HATE having to reinstall all the applications that I once had. This makes it flippin’ easy.

http://ninite.com/lifehacker

With just a few clicks you can install any of the apps below without having to click through each installation wizard.

Notepad++
Texter
Belvedere
SumatraPDF
Pidgin
Thunderbird
Skype
Flash
Flash (IE)
Chrome
uTorrent
Dropbox
Mozy
ImgBurn
CCleaner
Revo
7-Zip
VLC
Picasa
iTunes
Paint.NET
Firefox
OpenOffice
Office (2007 Trial)
Office Viewers
.NET Framework
Silverlight
Java
Recuva
TeraCopy
Everything
K-Lite Codecs
foobar2000
Songbird
Winamp
Adobe Reader

Recently Nohemi and I got ourselves some new gadgets. I got myself a Zune HD and Nohemi got an iPhone.

Let me start off with the reason for getting a media player to begin with – I’m a geek and like my gadgets; now that that’s out of the way we can move on. The G1 offers media playback after a few slide, scroll and taps you can get some music going with a hideous interface and lack of function, this is definitely something Google has continued to overlook on Android. Not to mention HTC made a piss-poor decision by putting a miniUSB port and no 3.5mm headphone jack. No one likes 12 foot of headphone cable. Also, G1′s battery life is garbage especially with media playback. I was definitely sceptical after the 30gb Zune I bought that was trash from the day I bought it. Before my purchase I was a little torn between the iPod Touch and the Zune HD, Best Buy didn’t have the two available to compare side to side so I went out on a limb and went with Microsoft; hopefully there wouldn’t let me down.. again. They did the complete opposite of that, Zune offers an incredibly awesome interface with an awesome processor. Everything is so smooth, the downside? The app store has 6 apps, not the biggest deal my Android phone has plenty of applications. Microsoft is standing strong on the fact that the Zune is meant to be a media player, and it’s definitely superior to the iPod. The OLED screen of the Zune offers deep blacks versus the iPod’s LCD with gives grays instead of solid blacks. Overall navigation is easier including the recently added and Quickplay.

My biggest gripe about the iPhone is the ridiculously clunky garbage software that needs to be used, iTunes. I have very little experience with the Zune software and iTunes. Within 5 minutes I totally had the hang of the Zune software and was dragging/dropping media with no hickups. iTunes? I spent a few hours previously trying to get this nonsense to work with Nathan’s iPod Touch with little success, I THEN spent another few hours trying to get the same garbage software to work with Nohemi’s iPhone. It is THE reason I wouldn’t get an iPhone. It’s cool and all and apparently thousands of people have been able to deal with the nonsense software that’s included.

Installed the Windows 7 RC last night and though I haven’t had a lot of time to use the system yet, so far so great. I’ll post some more details on my experience soon.