Microsoft Windows 7 Media Player

Microsoft Windows 7 Media Player made famous for not being very good and not playing very much. Ironically, more often than not, if you just need to get something to play, no messing around, it’s easier to just install VLC and get on with it. Well, Windows Media Player has had yet another redesign, once again, someone somewhere had spent some time thinking about it. It is a vast improvement. They have removed all unnecessary permanent controls and also spend time thinking about the fact that how peoples content is organized is just as important as playing it. But, they still haven’t yet cracked it in my opinion. Whilst it is better than it has ever been, if you have a lot of stuff, it is still not easy to find it using the current layout system.

Windows 7 Libraries

Windows 7 Libraries are another new addition that in my opinion is as yet unfinished. What they do is allow you to label locations under a common name so that where ever they happen to be they are always available. It is like mapping network drives but even when it is on the same disk and with this several locations can be mapped under the same library name. Except if you have lots of content it just gets messy. The real answer is to make sure that the Meta data on all the data is correct and that things are stored accordingly more with a database mindset than a file system mindset. For instance if I have a series consisting of many videos grouped by subject and sub subject, I want to be able search them appropriately. I want to start with the main subject then if I want, drill down. If I have an Album, I only want to see the Album, then, if I want, drill down and see the individual songs. It does none of this and for what it was designed for, it just falls flat. Actually, it was quite a disappointment, because I could have really done with this feature.

The Backup Feature in Windows 7

The Backup Feature in Windows 7 was something that I got to sample, which was particularly important after I cleverly screwed up my partition table. I sighed, took another breath, and then became very philosophical. I went to reinstall the system, thought that I might try the system backup feature, didn’t expect much and WOW! It restored my partition table set my system to almost exactly how it was before the debacle, I say almost because, even though it restored a lot of my personal data on my Ubuntu ext4 home partition, it didn’t do a perfect job (I have since moved it to a ext3 partition and I DON’T want to put it to the test!). And of course, it rewrote my boot sector to boot straight into Window – this is a Microsoft standard procedure, the way I see it. It took 15-20 min’s to complete and I had a running system. That set the pattern for me. I now have a snapshot of a well running system backed up just in case the unconscionable ever happens again. Or just in case I install something that leads me to really regret doing that, or the system becomes virus infested, etc.