Just another gripe about computers. Don’t get me wrong, please. For the last 20 years of my life (well, the most recent 20 years–I’m not sure yet that the last 20 years will be MY last 20 years ;-)), computers have become integral to my daily life–work, play, even personal interactions (send an email or IM to a family member in another part of the house? Sure do. *heh*). But the things just naturally irk me from time to time as well.
Take my exploration of media center apps. As I’ve catalogued, the best of the lot I’ve tried to date has been MediaPortal. Works fine, but. *sigh* OK, I’m using it on a fairly capable computer: AMD 64X2 5600+ with 4GB RAM and a 1GB vidcard driving a nice 22″ “widescreen” LCD, etc. Heck, the TV tuner card I’m using is about $100 discounted at Newegg. Nice card there, too. But. If I have MediaPortal running (or any of the others I have tried to get working), that’s it. I can’t run it in a Window with some TV show on (MythBusters, for a recent exampe) and actually DO anything in other apps. Now, I have no problems watching a TV show while typing away on a blog post (What? You thought I was putting actual, well, thought into these things? ;-)), but noooo. Not when MediaPortal’s running, even thoiugh there’s plenty of room on this monitor to size the show in a window and have a workable-sized window to browse or manage email or even do remote support at the same time. (It’s not like a TV show is going to take up much mental effort on my part to watch, now is it?)
*sigh* Oh well. I guess I can just do as I did for years before I began using computers: read a good book while watching TV (and sometimes listening to music as well). I just need to use those extra “CPU” cycles I have laying around.
(Just to be fair, I do get better video and sound from my computer system than from our main TV and stereo system–for TV at least, though certainly not for music. There, it’s very nearly a push with the edge going to the bigger system in the bigger room.)