... (more 20-something young people means more young, stupid, marriages means more divorce for a period)...
PS. I should add... Not that I think divorce is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, the best choice for a bad marriage is divorce (it certainly beats some of the other common options). Frankly, it amazes me that the worldwide divorce rates aren't much, much higher considering how unnatural life-long monogamy is among most primates and the strange, religion-based social system we live under. If anything, it shows the power of social conditioning and religion in aggregate.
I certainly agree with this, since I was one of them.
I have to say... I agree.
Windows 7 is worth every penny. Pretty much any machine that is still useful on XP will run Windows 7 just fine. OEM licenses of Windows 7 are only $100, and if you have more than one PC, you can get a three-license Family Pack for $160 (or split it with a friend or relative). I know that can be a lot of money, but it is worth it. Think about how much you use it, and how much you use other things you spent that much on. I don't know... To me it is a no-brainer.
Glynor, you're absolutely right. It's worth every penny, and I may eventually go that route (the hardware is new), but if I do, I will most likely go back to WMC unless I come across a benefit to MC over it.
A little history: I made a comment to my wife that I could build a new HTPC and get my good rig back at my desk for $200. She said that'd be fine, but expected the bill to be double that.
USUALLY I would have loved those words, and spent the full $400
but this time I took it as a challenge to meet my mark. In the end, it came out to $201.86 i think. Reused an old PATA hard drive w/ a SATA adapter, no optical, and the infamous old copy of XP. Add in $50 for MC, and I think it's a win.
Back on topic
...Why is it that MC checks the speaker setup in Windows? I'm sure this is a more "correct", or "elegant" method of programming, but it seems unnecessarily difficult. Seems to me that most other players allow you to just connect to the correct output
device and/or configure the speakers in the program itself i.e. WMC7(configured in the program), MPC HC(ignores speaker setup, just outputs).
After correcting my XP box, I moved on to my Win7 box and I'm having the same issue there. Unlike XP though, I can't manually configure the speakers, they have to be detected (due to HDCP i believe). Since I connect to a TV first, 2 speakers is my only option. Perhaps a new EDID as mentioned in the article above can fix me up, we'll see.