1. It crashes all the time! How much you ask? Well, luckily Vista makes it easy to go and see how often an app crashes. All in all, in the past 60 days, I’ve experienced about 58 crashes. Of that, Media Center (ehshell.exe) has crashed 20 times, the host module 9 times, store update 27 times, and finally the receiver service twice.
2. I’ve have to unplug my extender in my one room about every other week because it is locked up.
3. My Extenders report network issues, but I have the same network as I did before I installed the TV Pack, yet it never had problems before. Not to mention the network test always says I have 100% of what I need to do HD.
4. I’ve missed a few recordings, to which the Media Center says were “canceled by another component.”
5. I’ve had to reconfigure the EPG four times, which takes over an hour to re-enter my 70+ series recordings, not to mention remap all my channels.
6. Experienced the mysterious blue bar, about 4 times.

And this doesn’t even take into account the weird bugs like the info and mini guide bug, the scrub bar and worst of all the Media center has to change the channel to record even though there is another tuner that is idle. There are more documented at The Green Button, but I personally havent’ seen them.

At this point I’m convinced that I’m the only one left using the TV Pack and that the Nievies and S1 Digitals of the world are smart enough to skip it until Windows 7.

Not sure how new this is, but with the first NFL pre-season game kicking off this weekend, I wanted to quickly check who was playing, and to my surprise the useful — but ugly — m.espn.go.com was replaced with a down right cool website. I wasn’t sure if this was iPhone specific, so I checked on a co-worker’s Blackberry and it didn’t look the same. This might work out better for checking scores than SportsTap, either way I’m happy to have another option.

Here is a free solution, I take no credit and anyone can use it without any compensation.

Take the same machines you have now and add reciept printer to it — you know, like the ones attached to ATMs and every teller’s computer in the US — when I cast my vote, print out a receipt which will state who I voted for and have a bar code that is encoded with the same information. As I walk out of the poll, have me drop this receipt into a box — you know, like the old ballot boxes that are probably still in storage. Then we can have quick access to the results, thanks to the electroic systems and if someone demands a recount, it can be done manually or by just scanning all the bar codes.

Not real hard is it? Maybe Diebold and others will get a clue.

Thanks Apple for the notice, but how about a discount of some kind to make up for the delay.

Either way, I can’t wait to upgrade from 15Mbps to 30Mbps and pay $2 a CableCARD instead of $4, not to mention the extra HD channels. The guy laying the conduit said they would be done in a month or so, so I guess all I can do now is wait.

The problem with my laptop hard drives is that they are too slow, man 5400rpm really feels like it is holding me back. Maybe it’s just in my head, but everytime there is a delay I can blame on my disc access speed, I do. I would love to buy a bigger/faster hard  drive for my MBP, but they don’t really make one. Every few months I look for say a 160gb 7200rpm 2.5 drive and no dice. Why is this? What does speed have to do with size, why can’t they make a 160gb 7200rpm laptop drive? You almost never see this in desktop drives, when the latest large capacity drive comes out it is almost always available in a 7200rpm variety. I guess the same can’t be said for 15000rpm, but still, I don’t get it.