For years, I’ve relied upon the Sound Recorder application to edit and post sound clips for my blog — from phone messages such as this one from Jim Rex to excerpts from interviews, such as this one with John Edwards. Sound Recorder came free with Windows — it was one of those simple things you take for granted, like the calculator or Freecell — and it met my needs.
But now Bill Gates has gone to messin’. My laptop runs on Windows 7, which has a lot of nifty bells and whistles, but either won’t do certain things I took for granted in XP, or makes it a lot harder to do them. For instance: Windows Movie Maker worked fine in XP and even Vista. But with Windows 7, I had to go out and download Movie Maker via something called “Windows Live” (the purpose of which I have yet to figure out), and what I ended up with was less functional, and far less intuitive, than the old version. But I can still edit videos, after a fashion.
But yesterday, after a breakfast interview with Kirkman Finlay III, I went to edit a short clip I recorded using the new digital recorder I got for Christmas — and I find that there is no way to “open file” on the new, “improved” version of Sound Recorder. It assumes that all you will use if for is to record sounds, not edit sounds you already have.
Which is irritating.
So last night I edited the clip on Sound Forge on my desktop at home — which I got with my USB turntable I got for the previous Christmas — and one I get that Finlay post written, I can include the audio.
Then this morning, I broke my fast with Steve Morrison, and also recorded part of the interview. And once again, I’m faced with waiting until I’m home to edit it…
Not wanting to accept that, I went to the Sound Forge site and am as I type this downloading a free trial. (Unfortunately, I can’t just put the software I already have on the laptop, because I can’t find the disks.) Which I hope won’t get me into a situation where a month from now, when I’ve forgotten this, they suddenly debit my account for $54.95.
Dang. Why do people have to mess with stuff that works, and has worked for years?
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Brad you’ve hit on one of the failures of capitalism, Microsoft. Worst damn company ever. They make everything hard to use. I’ve got a Microsoft webcam that worked fine until the computer crashed and I had to do a system recovery. I was able to recover all the NON-Microsoft peripherals just fine but not the webcam. I’ve spent hours researching the technical solutions. Nothing works. So now I don’t have a web cam that will allow me to Skype my daughter when the new grandson arrives. Damn Microsoft.
Bud,
Microsoft is just like the government. Once it gets too big, it becomes increasingly less effective. And in a free market, Microsoft will go the way of other large companies that were unable to change with the times. But unlike the government, which has the power to tax, tax, and tax again to cover its inefficiencies, Microsoft can disappear and be replaced by another company that can do it better.
By the way, how much did you pay for your last PC versus one you bought several years ago? Bet it was at least half the cost with twice the power. THAT’S capitalism.
Doug, there you go again (imagine me doing my Reagan impression there).
Microsoft is FAR more entrenched than the government. The government changes every couple of years. All of us who own PCs are stuck with Microsoft.
Microsoft is a monopoly — that is, a monopoly for most practical purposes (Mac and Linux users aside). Therefore, while the more powerful computers we have are cheaper, Microsoft software never goes on sale; it still costs an arm and a leg because we have to have it.
And Doug, I don’t know what country you’ve been living in, but the government does NOT get to tax, tax and tax more to bring in revenues. Our state Legislature has raised a general tax ONCE since 1987, and that was an increase in the sales tax to partially offset a gargantuan property tax rollback (one of the VERY stupidest things I’ve ever seen these guys do; one of the reasons we have to keep cutting essential state services is because of that switch to a more volatile tax). In that same period, I’ve lost track of how many tax CUTS the Legislature has imposed.
Local governments, badly strapped and being obligated to provide very basic services that their citizens demand, DO occasionally raise the few taxes that they have control over, when the ideological extremists in the Legislature allow them to. But never fear; lawmakers have just about succeeded in putting a permanent stranglehold on local governments to where they can’t do that anymore. Local taxes, by the way, are state legislators’ very favorite kind of tax to cut — they get the credit from voters for cutting it, and don’t get the blame when local governments can’t afford enough police or fire protection. This is one reason why I think it would be good if every state legislator first served in local government (as too few do), so they’d have an understanding of that fundamental level of government, where you have to deliver or hear about it from your neighbors. Too many of them dwell in a Sanfordesque ideological la-la land, where “government” is just a word you say before you spit on the ground…
The most telling tale Jenny Sanford has told is the one where Mark sent back her birthday present necklace (which he had had a staffer pick out and had not seen) because it wasn’t worth what he paid for it. She seems to have found it indicative of how little he knows about how much things cost.
It really does show how one might have the best of intentions, but without any real world experience (George H.W. Bush buying socks at J.C. Penney and marveling at the “newfangled” scanner),not realizing how much it truly costs to pave a road or feed a family of four or hire a cop or firefighter….my dear frugal dad suffered from that a lot–not having any idea how much things cost because he never shopped for them. It’s easy to push economizing when you can just pull the price of things out of thin air.
and get a Macintosh….
Brad,
Like almost every other software need these days, there is a good, free solution for sound editing and recording.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I don’t have any references handy but as I understand it, a major cause for features going missing in included software is anti-trust legislation. Since there’s a free alternative for virtually anything, I don’t see a problem. In the meantime, the OS is getting better and better, driven no doubt by the increasing market share of the competition. XP was pretty darn good, and 7 is great.
Microsoft is just like the government. Once it gets too big, it becomes increasingly less effective.
-Doug
In the meantime we’re stuck with this bloated, inefficient monopoly that makes crap stuff.
PCs are cheap because there is competition. Microsoft office is expensive because there are few good alternatives.
Capitalism works well sometimes, sometimes not so much. The analogy I like to use is this: Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is what makes capitalism work. But that “Invisible Hand” has a bad case of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Sam can provide Smith’s ‘Hand’ medication to stop the shaking and hopefully make it work better. But sometimes the medication has unintended side effects. If Dr. Sam prescribes the right treatment the shaking will stop and the ‘Hand’ will be more efficient and hopefully won’t knock stuff over like it did with the ENRON spasm. The wrong treatment, on the other hand, may end up costing too much and cause the patient to become weak. Too bad Dr. Sam is controlled by a bunch of idiots. Otherwise treatments could be used that work. Often times though Dr. Sam is a quack.
Office is the standard, for good or ill– everybody wants Word documents, not Google docs or even pdfs. Hence, they can charge monopoly prices.
Add Quicken for the Apple Mac to the list of good programs gone sour.
Brad – delete last message. Bad link.
Try http://www.openoffice.org It will do everything Office does for free and you can set the defaults to save in Microsoft formats. Ten minute install.
Powerpoint and Word are junk products that allow people to think fonts and pictures = intelligence. Both products should be banned at all schools. All kids need is Notepad.