Supremely cool but slightly complicated birthday present

[charliesmum]

Well, not complicated so much frustrating.

My friends (the mommies of Charlie's best friend) got me an MP3 player for my birthday! It is a Memorex MMP3642 and it is made of awesomeness, but the problem is my home computer is made of suckiness and won't download the software because it needs upgrades, or something.

I'm trying right now to download some windows updates that the thing is saying it needs, but it is taking foever and ever and ever, and it is rather frustrating.

And what's the deal with downloading music? Still illegal is it? To do it for free, I mean.

At any rate, it is a really super cool present, and I'm very excited, and hopefully I'll get the software to work and then I will have lots of songs to listen to on this little tiny thing.

And Dave and Busters was fun, and Charlie played this one game that was kind of a wheel of fortune type of thing, and he wound up getting a bunch of tickets.

Charlie wants to type something.

244 tickets is alot to win a prize . But I was tierd .

Comments

[bookgrrrl.livejournal.com]

It is still illegal, but if you're library friendly and your local library has a CD collection, you can get a lot of happy free MP3s by ripping tunes from there.

[fourthage.livejournal.com]

Today is your birthday? Happy birthday!

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

My birthday is Tuesday actually, but we celebrated last night because everyone is busy tonight, and next weekend is the 'holiday' and Tuesday is a 'school night'!

But thanks!

[jessii-6.livejournal.com]

it is legal to give a friend a listen (evil laugh)
that's the coolest gift.
after Microcrap will download all it's updates (you'll probably have to restart your computer five times in the meanwhile as well)
The important question is ... do you have a burner? 256Mb isn't much, and it's not permanent.

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwwwwwww. Charlie posted!

Hullo, sweetie! *waves*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CYBER- MOMMY!

[purplemer3.livejournal.com]

It's still legal in Canada to download music! (Just illegal to knowingly share it, though people still do that too.)

If you've got CDs that you really like, or if your friends have CDs that you really like, or if the library has CDs that you really like, rip the music onto your computer using a program like RealPlayer. (RealPlayer is a free download.) Then upload that music, which is now saved to your hard drive, onto your MP3 player.

It'll probably hold like 50 songs. When you want to change the songs, you can delete them off your MP3 player (just be sure they're still saved on your hard drive) and put new ones on.

[jessii-6.livejournal.com]

actually you don't want to use RealPlayer.
there are *real* programs that meant to rip CDs and who do that quite well. (real Player is okay to play real content but it's terribly heavy and I can't be sure about the configuration of MP3 ripping it allows)

good examples: CD-DA Extractor & CDex both of which are free under GPL licence (so if you'd know programming you'd know *exactly* what you're getting)
Audiograbber is also not too bad.

[purplemer3.livejournal.com]

Cool! So assuming you're speaking to someone who knows very little about computers (hypothetically, of course!) why are these programs so much better than something like Real Player or Windows Media?

[jessii-6.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Windows Media player - there have been rumors it makes 'protected' files - I haven't a clue as I didn't check. I have an automatic dislike since it's microcrap, but Real should be okay.
It's *heavy* 'though. So very very heavy on resources. Carol always complains that her PC is slow anyway.
Plus, those programs are free and open-code. you know what you're getting and you know there isn't any spyware in them to track what you rip, and how much (paranoya is meaningless to me since I'm out of IRAA's reach - but not to Americans)
I forgot I use Quitessential Player as my player of choice, which also happens to have ripping application inside it. I am pretty confidant winamp does, too. But on my PC Winamp is slower as well
sigh.. having P3/500 and winXP is not easy :)

[vampirehobbit.livejournal.com]

Sounds great! I wish I had an mp3 player I wish mine worked.

Charlie post, yay! Happy Birthday, in case I'm not on to wish it on tuesday.