Friday, February 10, 2006

Honey, get me tech support!

We have a couple of iPod contraptions around the ole Casa Podunk, which means any time I come across an article that expresses concerns about the juke box to go I automatically check it out.

There's a hilarious article from the Chicago Tribune that I came across yesterday that expresses both wonderment and consternation about the cutting edge in music storage. Steve Johnson, an internet critic for the Tribune recounted the travails of installing his wife's iPod Nano system onto his windows based computer platform. His article No, No Nano will hit a cord with anyone who ever finds that the software doesn't quite load as easily as described.

Now I haven't had quite the nightmarish scenario that he creates for us in his piece, there have been the odd glitches from time to time at our end, as the Nano here refuses to upload our recently purchased tunes. But on the whole I'm actually more or less satisfied with the Nano culture and how it's ruling the world at the moment.

The same can't be said for Johnson who has tales to tell about installation nightmares to scare off the most hardened veteran. He travels down the apple road and finds it to be a hard road to traverse, but the real entertainment comes when the readers weigh in with their comments.

Setting himself up for some serious abuse, Johnson quickly found out that the readers of the Tribune don't hold back. My favourite quote came from a web poster named Derek who said "I find it hard to believe that the Chicago Tribune employs a man who struggles to set up and iPod as a tech writer."

He addresses one and all with a follow up article the day after his email box had become clogged with snarky comments from all corners of the earth. Johnson opened up a wild battle of the Apple cult versus the windows pragmatists. It's well worth reading through the commentaries for both entertainment and education!

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