October 1st, 2008

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

The National Music Publishers’ Association wants to see an increase in the royalty rates paid to its members for songs purchased through online music stores (the association wants the rates raised from 9 cents to 15 cents a track). Apple doesn’t like the sound of this and is willing to shut down iTunes rather than raise the 99 cents a song price or absorb the higher royalty costs. Is this all just hot air, or could Apple really shut down iTunes?

Here’s what Apple said to the Copyright Royalty Board (PDF, page 4):

If iTS were forced simply to absorb any increase in mechanical royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss — which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate iTS if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.

Apple doesn’t seem willing to make a compromise there – it’s Apple’s way or iTunes gets the bullet. But how likely is it that Apple would pull the plug on iTunes?

Note: Let’s ignore for now the side argument of the dangers of letting one outlet grab too much of the market share and be allowed to dominate the discussion …

How likely? Highly unlikely. iTunes accounts for some 85% of the digital music sold, so that’s not something that Apple is going to give up without a fight. Also, the tie between iTunes and the iPod is strong, and there’s little doubt that one appeal of the iPod is how easy it is to buy music for it through iTunes (Apple would also be handing all those customers over to the likes of Amazon). On top of that, Apple is unlikely to want to bring upon itself the wrath of disgruntled customers (imagine the screams if Apple pulled the plug on the DRM servers …). On the other side, you have the music industry. No one here will want to see 85% of digital sales evaporate.

Number crunching: Let’s put the numbers into perspective. Out of ever dollar collected by Apple, 70 cents goes to the record company, out of which 9 cents goes to the copyright holder.

Put simply, Apple’s statement is full of puff, and a deal is certain, and it’s likely that royalties won’t increase. In fact, I’d go further to suggest that is this a PR trick by Apple to make the music industry seem grabby (while making Apple seem like buy cialis online the protector of the consumer).

Posted by Ed Bott

Fellow ZDNet blogger Jason Perlow helped a friend and colleague buy a new PC and migrate her data and settings from the old machine (Windows XP) to the new one (Windows Vista). He documents the process in The New Adventures of Christine’s Old PC.

I tip my hat to Jason for his dedication to a friend, but as someone who has been doing this for years, I shook my head at the way he turned what should be a straightforward procedure into a weekend-long geekfest, complete with the transformation of the old, slow, obsolete, spyware-ridden computer into a virtual machine on the new one. In my opinion, that’s overkill for everyone involved. (Update: Jason defends his approach in this follow-up post.)

Over the years, I’ve done this process dozens of times for business clients, family members, friends, and neighbors. I’ve got the process down to a series of checklists, all built around some core principles. First, this is a great opportunity to get rid of clutter and get a fresh start. Second, the best way to transfer data from the old machine to the new one is by physically attaching the old hard drive to the new PC. Anything else, as Jason discovered, is likely to bog down. And finally, spending time upfront figuring out what needs to be transferred and what doesn’t can save hours of time and headaches later.

Jason brought along a huge USB hard drive and a thumb drive. I agree that a USB flash drive can be useful for some small tasks, but I prefer to skip those intermediate transfers whenever possible. Trying to do large-scale data transfers with USB flash drives and cables can be problematic, especially on old, slow, problem-plagued machines, as Jason discovered. Why spend hours moving tens or hundreds of gigabytes of data from the old machine to a USB drive only to have to do it again with the new PC? Skip the two-step and do what I do: bring along a SATA/IDE-to-USB converter. Newegg sells Syba’s version of this device for around $20 including shipping. I own a couple and can recommend them without hesitation. An external power supply feeds the DC connector on the drive, and a two-headed adapter lets you connect any SATA or IDE drive directly to a USB port on the new PC. While the contents of the old computer are transferring to a folder on the new PC, you can tackle other tasks.

But before you do any of that, sit down in front of the old PC and talk to the client about what they want to accomplish with the new system. The steps in this phase are designed to make sure you don’t get stumped somewhere along the way with a detail you overlooked.

I start by sitting down in front of the old PC with the client. And yes, I make them do this with me, because it’s a great way for me to learn what they think is important and for them to learn that the inner workings of their computer are not a mystery. Here’s what we do:

• Open the Programs window from Control Panel and take inventory of all installed software on the old PC. Decide which programs you want to install on the new machine and which ones will be replaced or completely scrapped. Make sure you verify that the old programs are compatible with the new hardware and OS and that there are no known installation or upgrade issues.
• Create a new folder on the client’s desktop and call it NEW PC. You’ll use this folder to store drivers, program updates, and exported settings that can’t be easily copied as files from the old PC.
• For programs that will make the leap from old PC to new, gather installation media. If installation of any program requires serial numbers or other information to complete installation or activation, write that information down in a text file and save it in the NEW PC folder. If any programs you plan to install require updates or patches, download them and save them in a subfolder of the NEW PC folder.
• Write down login information for e-mail accounts and other online services. Save this information in a text file in the NEW PC folder.
• If you need to use custom settings to connect to the Internet or to a local area network, write down those settings and save them in the NEW PC folder. This is most common for notebooks, where setting up a wireless connection requires that you enter a network encryption key.
• Take inventory of external hardware (scanners, printers, MP3 players, and so on). Verify that any device you plan to connect to the new computer is compatible with the new hardware and operating system. If necessary, download the latest driver and any required support files and save them in the NEW PC folder.
• Find all digital media (photos, music, home movies, etc.) that the client considers valuable and make a note of their location. Consolidate them in a single folder with subfolders, if possible.
• Identify all digital music that the client has downloaded or purchased. If any of them are from the iTunes Music Store or another source that uses DRM, make sure that you know how to transfer licenses to the new PC. (For iTunes users, now is a good time to deauthorize the old computer.)
• Open the client’s e-mail program and export the address book to a file buy cialis no prescription that can be imported on the new PC. Save this in the NEW PC folder.
• While that e-mail program is open, make a note of where e-mail messages are stored and in what format. If necessary, export the messages to a file and save that file in the NEW PC folder. (For Jason’s friend, this step wasn’t necessary, because the data was in an Outlook PST file. If she had used Outlook Express, I would recommend the procedure in this Knowledge Base article.)
• Open the client’s preferred web browser and export all bookmarks to a file that can be imported on the new PC. Save this file in the NEW PC folder.
• Burn the contents of the NEW PC folder to a CD or copy them to a USB flash drive. For this job, I actually prefer a CD, which can then be stuck in an envelope along with program disks and manuals in case the client needs it again later.

There. Now you can shut down the old PC, use the SATA/IDE adapter to connect its hard drive to the new PC as a USB drive, and begin selectively restoring your backed-up data and settings, taking advantage of this opportunity to clean things up thoroughly. Here’s the order in which I do things:

• First, I remove all crapware and trial programs from the new PC. If the system came with an antivirus program and the client plans to use a different security solution, get rid of the old one first, before going even a single step further.
• Set up the Internet/network connection and download all available Windows updates.
• Set up the client’s e-mail on the new machine and verify that you can send and receive mail. I prefer to start with a completely clean inbox and leave the old mail in a separate PST (for Outlook users) or in an Old Mail folder for any other program.
• Restore the e-mail address book from the old machine.
• Reinstall the programs that you decided were worth keeping from the old machine. Be sure to install any updates or patches for each one, and then open the program and verify that you can create and save data files.
• Set up your external hardware, using the drivers and support software you downloaded previously.

This is usually the point where I stop and do an image backup using Complete PC Backup from Vista Business or Ultimate. If this option isn’t available, I like Acronis True Image, which is available in a 15-day trial version. If the PC in question has a Seagate or Maxtor drive, you can download the free OEM version of Acronis’ software (Seagate DiscWizard or Maxtor MaxBlast 5, respectively).

Finally, I’m ready to begin moving data from the old system to the new one. You can use any of the third-party programs I listed in the previous paragraph to repartition the main drive on the new PC and then clone the old drive to the new partition. (This works best if the old PC has a relatively small hard drive and the new one has a much larger drive, which is likely to be the case with most consumers upgrading a four- or five-year-old PC.) I prefer to clone a drive rather than simply copy files, because it guarantees that every file from the old PC will be available on the new one, even obscure settings and data files buried in hidden subfolders.

Because the new PC has up-to-date antivirus software, you can scan the old drive for viruses before or after transferring data files. Then it’s a matter of identifying the user’s documents, digital pictures, and music, and putting everything in the right place.

And we’re done. Disconnect the old drive and put it back in the old PC. I usually leave the old system around for a week or two until the client is confident that the new system is working properly. Once it has passed muster, I return and wipe the old system clean, restoring the original operating system and getting it ready to pass along to someone who can use it.

That’s how I do it. This rarely takes more than a few hours, and when I’m done the client has usually learned some important skills along the way, making it more likely that they’ll be able to steer clear of trouble in the future.

So, what tricks do you use to make this chore faster and easier?

Jack Wallen

Published: 24 Sep 2008 17:22 BST

I have gone through many browsers in my IT lifetime, from Lynx to Mosaic to Mozilla to Netscape to Firefox to Internet Explorer to Safari to Flock.

But there's another browser that peeks its head in and out of that cycle: Opera.

Opera is a browser that gets little press in accounts of the battle for internet supremacy. Yet it is a browser that is making huge waves in certain arenas (for example, mobile) and is always a steady player in the browser market.

Here are 10 reasons why you might want to use a browser that is often overlooked in the market.

1. Speed
It seems no matter how many leaps and bounds Firefox and Internet Explorer make, Opera is always able to render pages faster.

In both cold and warm starts, Opera beats Firefox and Internet explorer. I'm not talking about a difference the naked eye is incapable of seeing either. The speed difference is actually noticeable. So, if you are a speed junky, you may want to use Opera for this reason alone.

2. Speed Dial
Speed Dial is one of those features that generally steals the show with browsers. It's basically a set of visual bookmarks on one page.

To add a page to Speed Dial, you simply click on an empty slot in the Speed Dial page and enter the information.When you have a full page of Speed Dial bookmarks, you can quickly go to the page you want by clicking the related image.

For even faster browsing, you can click the Ctrl + * key combination (where * is the number 1-9 associated with your page, as assigned in Speed Dial).

3. Widgets
Opera Widgets are like Firefox extensions on steroids.

Widgets are what the evolution of the web is all about: little web-based applications you can run from inside — or, in some cases, outside — your browser. Some of the widgets are useful (such as the Touch The Sky international weather applet) and some are just fun (such as the SimAquarium.) They are just as easy to install as Firefox extensions.

4. Wand
You can save form information and/or passwords with this useful tool.

Every time you fill out a form or a password, the Wand will buy cialis generic ask you if you want to save the information. When you save information — in a form, for example — a yellow border will appear around the form. The next time you need to fill out that form, click on the Wand button or click Ctrl + Enter, and the information will automatically be filled out for you.

5. Notes
When browsing, have you ever wanted to take notes about a page or site (or something totally unrelated to your web browsing)?

Opera comes complete with a small Notes application that allows you to jot down whatever you need to jot down.

To access Note, click on the Tools menu and then click on Notes. The tool itself is incredibly simple to use and equally as handy.

6. BitTorrent
Yes it is true, Opera has a built-in BitTorrent protocol.

The built-in BitTorrent client is simple to use: Click on a torrent link, and a dialogue box will open asking you where you want to download the file.

The torrent client is enabled by default, so, if your company doesn't allow torrenting, you should probably disable this feature.

When downloading torrents, you will continue to share content until you either stop the download or close the browser.

7. Display modes
Another unique-to-Opera feature is its display modes, which allows you to quickly switch between Fit To Width and Full Screen mode.

Fit To Width mode adjusts the page size to the available screen space while using flexible reformatting.

Full Screen mode gives over the entire screen space to browsing. In this mode, you drop all menus and toolbars, leaving only context menus, mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts.

Full Screen mode is especially good for smaller screens.

8. Quick Preferences
The Quick Preferences menu is one of those features the power user will really appreciate.

I use it quite often to enable or disable various features, and not having to open up the Preferences window makes for a much quicker experience.

From the Quick Preferences menu, you can alter preferences for pop-ups, images, Java/JavaScript, plug-ins, cookies and proxies. This is perfect when you are one of those users who block cookies all the time, until a site comes along where you want to enable cookies.

9. Mouse Gestures
Mouse Gestures is a built-in feature that applies certain actions to specific mouse movements or actions. For example, you can go back a page by holding down the right mouse button and clicking the left mouse button.

This is pretty handy on a laptop, where using the track pad can take more time than you probably want to spend on navigation. Even for those who prefer to keep their hands on the keys and not the mouse, the feature can still save time.

Instead of having to get to the mouse, move the mouse to the toolbar and click a button, you simply have to get your hands to the mouse and make the gesture for the action to take place. Of course, this does require learning the gestures.

10. Session saving
I am a big fan of this feature. All too many times, I have needed to close a browser window but didn't want to lose a page. To keep from losing the page, I would keep a temporary bookmark file where I could house these bookmarks.

With Opera, that's unnecessary. If you have a page or a number of pages you want to save, you just go to the File menu and then the Sessions submenu and click Save This Session. The next time you open Opera, the same tabs will open.

You can also manage your saved sessions so that you can save multiple sessions and delete selected sessions.

The upshot
From the above list alone, you can see how easily Opera separates itself from the rest of the crowd. It's a different beast in the web-browsing arena. Opera is fast, stable and cross-platform, and contains many features that other browsers can't touch.