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KozmoNaut posted:Oh yeah, definitely. But we could have had affordable decent-capacity removable storage way before we actually got it, had it not been for Sony's customary pig-headedness. Sony seem to be their own worst enemy: Buy a laptop with pretty nice hardware and it comes with enough crapware to make it unusable. Or the potential iPod-killers that required you to slowly reencode all your music.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:48
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spog posted:Sony seem to be their own worst enemy: Yes, an mp3 player that wouldn't actually play mp3s. Sony's steadfast refusal to learn anything, anything at all, from Betamax, is a monument to staggering corporate stupidity. Hey, remember UMD? And Memory Stick (okay, that's still around, for the time being)?
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Jun 30, 2014 14:29
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spog posted:Buy a laptop with pretty nice hardware and it comes with enough crapware to make it unusable. HP is doing something similar, so many crap "HP Scanner Assist" or something on it. But it's not hard to just format it, generally speaking. And gently caress Sony's re-encoding noise. The program was slow, buggy, and pretty much unusable for anything other than transferring music to my NW-1000A, and the later "updated" version was even worse. The player itself was very good, but it was a real pain to edit the library because of SonicStage.
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Jun 30, 2014 14:32
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Phanatic posted:Hey, remember UMD? And Memory Stick (okay, that's still around, for the time being)? Sony has thankfully been quietly shoving Memory stick off the stage for a while now, most of their stuff has a combi-port of SD and MSpro duo.
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Jun 30, 2014 14:37
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Elliotw2 posted:Sony has thankfully been quietly shoving Memory stick off the stage for a while now, most of their stuff has a combi-port of SD and MSpro duo. That doesn't include the Vita, does it? I've been thinking about getting one (especially since my PS+ subscription is getting me several free Vita games I can't play,) but I hate that I'd have to buy a memory stick that's two to three times the cost of an SD/microSD card.
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Jun 30, 2014 14:56
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Lest we forget Sony's DRM scandal. Vague EULA's meant you were at liberty to have XCP, a DRM watchdog, installed that was designed to keep your CDs from being copied, usually intercepting the audio and turning it into a hissing mess if attempted to be ripped or copied. I don't think it actually stopped "what you hear" recording so it was still very possible to dub/copy a CD the long way around. Said program also was tricky to uninstall, I think the player was able to be but not the actual rootkit which was kept around. People were alerted to it by reports of something crashing, but said file couldn't be found on the system anywhere. Trying to get rid of it was fraught with peril as XCP installed over the drivers for your CD-ROM and would remove access to that drive entirely if the driver was installed. Stopping it from activating was easy, you just turn off auto-run and it wouldn't sneakily install the software. For the more game; drawing a black line around the edge of the CD to hide the data track. Being a rootkit it operated at the highest system security allowance and started creating gaping security holes in all manner of systems which virus writers started taking advantage of as it created %sys% folders that you could store all sorts of nasties in which virus scanners just skipped over. It became a popular spot for MMO hacks to reside in as well. The Government wasn't too pleased to hear this and Texas and New York soon sued Sony BMG to start replacing consumer's CDs with ones that didn't have the software. Sony didn't help matters by being sluggish to respond or even tell people what CDs had protection, but painfully conceded.
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Jun 30, 2014 14:58
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DrBouvenstein posted:That doesn't include the Vita, does it? I've been thinking about getting one (especially since my PS+ subscription is getting me several free Vita games I can't play,) but I hate that I'd have to buy a memory stick that's two to three times the cost of an SD/microSD card. The Vita memory card is special and exists entirely because PSP piracy was too easy.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:09
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Gotta give it to Sony that anti-piracy was never an afterthought. They had products designed around it, oblivious to any other concern, user convenience and non-content profit margins be damned. That's dedication.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:31
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I think a lot of Sony's apparent stupidity when it comes to media products stems from their different businesses being natural competitors. Sony Pictures and Sony Music wants everything locked down tight and riddled with DRM, while Sony Corporation wants to make products that appeal to the market. Those factors are often mutually exclusive. The ipod obviously had DRM functions as well, but none that stopped you from just dumping your mp3 collection into itunes.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:37
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Serperoth posted:HP is doing something similar, so many crap "HP Scanner Assist" or something on it. But it's not hard to just format it, generally speaking. Not sure if it is still true now, but back in the XP days (last time I touched one). You had the added bonus that some of the drivers weren't available, except as part of crapware. so, you would flatten and install, go through the whole process of getting it up and running, only to find out that the soundcard would never work unless you undid everything and went back to the crapware install.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:46
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Speaking of Sony screw-ups: The hardware was awesome and since it didn't have wifi or a touchscreen the battery lasted a month easily. It had a cool pleather cover and - get this, SD card support! It was Sony hardware without Sony proprietary poo poo! Except for the Sony book store, which was a terrible piece of crap. I remember trying to take advantage of a 30 free book offer (all public domain classics) and being unable to complete it because everything was listed alphabetically and each page took about 20 seconds to load. And when you picked a book the list went back to the A's. I think Sony creates products by writing 'functionality', 'compatibility', and 'design' on a whiteboard and then tells their designers they can only pick 2. Collateral Damage posted:I think a lot of Sony's apparent stupidity when it comes to media products stems from their different businesses being natural competitors. Sony Pictures and Sony Music wants everything locked down tight and riddled with DRM, while Sony Corporation wants to make products that appeal to the market. Those factors are often mutually exclusive.  Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 15:55 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 15:47
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WebDog posted:I don't think it actually stopped "what you hear" recording so it was still very possible to dub/copy a CD the long way around. You could avoid getting it by disabling autorun and just use the CDs like any other CD.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:55
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Winks posted:You could avoid getting it by disabling autorun and just use the CDs like any other CD. True, but there's something really special about DRM that installs even if you refuse the EULA. Sony's first uninstaller, by the way, only un-hid the rootkit files, while collecting your email address for mass marketing, plus it installed additional insecure software. I'm pretty sure if you had an Aibo it would try to maim your vocal chords so you couldn't violate their copyright by singing.
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Jun 30, 2014 16:12
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spog posted:Not sure if it is still true now, but back in the XP days (last time I touched one). You had the added bonus that some of the drivers weren't available, except as part of crapware. I've used Win7 laptops with all that junk in so it's definitely still a thing. Don't know if the driver issue is still there, but it does sound super scummy, thanks for letting me know (a friend is looking to get a laptop).
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Jun 30, 2014 16:38
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WebDog posted:Throw UMD into that mix as well. It pretty much was only designed for the PSP with no way the average consumer could create copies for themselves. Beyond Sony games it suffered from a poor adoption rate across the industry with few titles being released for movies or TV show. Japan (as always) did release some porn. Oh man, UMDs, what a shitshow that was. My favourite part was one of the third party protective cases that had you put pressure on the transparent plastic bit to extract it, ensuring that it would break, which for some reason would lead to the disk not reading, despite the surface being fine.
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Jun 30, 2014 16:40
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Serperoth posted:I've used Win7 laptops with all that junk in so it's definitely still a thing. Don't know if the driver issue is still there, but it does sound super scummy, thanks for letting me know (a friend is looking to get a laptop). Most laptops have unbranded drivers now, so you can get away from the junk easier. Nvidia, Realtek, and Intel all offer drivers for most laptops at their websites.
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Jun 30, 2014 16:48
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KozmoNaut posted:Oh yeah, definitely. But we could have had affordable decent-capacity removable storage way before we actually got it, had it not been for Sony's customary pig-headedness. The absolute best thing about mini disc is how you felt like some L33T hacker for using them. See The Matrix, Strange Days, and too many other 90's Sci Fi movies to count.
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Jun 30, 2014 16:55
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Lowen SoDium posted:The absolute best thing about mini disc is how you felt like some L33T hacker for using them. Absolutely, I'm convinced Sony's product designers got their inspiration from sci-fi. And they came in all kinds of colors! Only Sony could mess something like that up.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:27
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Keiya posted:That... is one of the most meaningless statements I've read all day. I mean, somewhere in the range of GBA carts to NeoGeo carts?  Apparently, they're about the size of an old 9V adapter, so roughly as big as the palm of your hand? Maybe less if you have big hands? Pretty sure there are different kinds as well, which makes things more confusing and muddled.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:33
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Elliotw2 posted:Most laptops have unbranded drivers now, so you can get away from the junk easier. Nvidia, Realtek, and Intel all offer drivers for most laptops at their websites. Webcam is often the exception here. Went to download hp webcam driver the other day. 367mb. Idiot company.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:45
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An important thing to remember about format wars is that if you win one, you win big and for a long time. The floppy disc, the CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and Betacam (Betamax's broadcast & professional brother) formats were all from Sony or Sony coalitions. From a business POV (but certainly not the consumers') it makes perfect sense to try and foist a proprietary format onto everyone else, because if you win then you can just sit back and reap the licensing fees for a good decade or more.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:47
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Aurora-Capitah posted:Webcam is often the exception here.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:13
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minato posted:An important thing to remember about format wars is that if you win one, you win big and for a long time. The floppy disc, the CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and Betacam (Betamax's broadcast & professional brother) formats were all from Sony or Sony coalitions. From a business POV (but certainly not the consumers') it makes perfect sense to try and foist a proprietary format onto everyone else, because if you win then you can just sit back and reap the licensing fees for a good decade or more. But when they screw up, they do it spectacularly. The Sony Memory Stick launched in 1998; SD cards in 1999. I don't know which, if any, was faster - but Memory Sticks looked cooler and found their way into consumer electronics much sooner. But only Sony consumer electronics. SwissCM posted:SD cards are simply an extension of MMC cards, which were launched in 1997. They're even cross-compatible to some extent. Well there you go. I never used a MMC card so I didn't realize they were related. Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 19:27 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 18:37
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Krispy Kareem posted:But when they screw up, they do it spectacularly. The Sony Memory Stick launched in 1998; SD cards in 1999. I don't know which, if any, was faster - but Memory Sticks looked cooler and found their way into consumer electronics much sooner. But only Sony consumer electronics. SD cards are simply an extension of MMC cards, which were launched in 1997. They're even cross-compatible to some extent.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:08
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Aurora-Capitah posted:Webcam is often the exception here. HP in general. Looking at the business printer we've got, there's a 20MB "driver, no installer", an 86MB "full driver and software", a 17.6MB "universal driver" (presumably with an installer), and a 184.6mb "Europe/Middle East/Africa - Full Software and Drivers Solution". I swear I had to dodge a 200mb+ download for one of their printers now too long ago.
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Jun 30, 2014 20:58
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WebDog posted:The Government wasn't too pleased to hear this and Texas and New York soon sued Sony BMG to start replacing consumer's CDs with ones that didn't have the software. I still can't find a definitive list of those. I think I mentioned this in another thread or this one a while back, I found three different 'official' lists of Sony CDs with those issues and no list was identical, numbers quoted at X-number of affected titles but none of the lists added up to that many, different titles on different lists, and I even think one of the archived lists even vanished. Another thing about shutting off autorun was that I didn't think that was really an option until post-XP Windows, was it? I guess you could hold down a key on the keyboard and force it bypass autorun that way, but I could never get it to not-Autorun in XP on its own. I seem to recall there was a UITweak tool you'd have to download to shut off autorun, but I might be misremembering.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:15
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Computer viking posted:HP in general. Looking at the business printer we've got, there's a 20MB "driver, no installer", an 86MB "full driver and software", a 17.6MB "universal driver" (presumably with an installer), and a 184.6mb "Europe/Middle East/Africa - Full Software and Drivers Solution". I swear I had to dodge a 200mb+ download for one of their printers now too long ago. HP also has utterly miserable customer support, often boiling down to "either update your driver, or buy a new machine."
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Jun 30, 2014 21:33
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John Liver posted:HP also has utterly miserable customer support, often boiling down to "either update your driver, or buy a new machine." I have an HP laptop with a Blu-ray drive. I can't watch DVDs or Blu-rays while the WiFi is active. The drive gradually churns more and more until I am watching the movie in 1 second chunks every 5 seconds. Turn on Airplane Mode? Problem disappears. Support eventually just stopped responding to me.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:41
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Honestly, if you are an HP shop, find an HP partner that will do repair work. We have a local company that is an HP partner and any time I have any sort of warranty issue, be that laptop, server, or desktop, I send them an email and they fix it ASAP. poo poo, they come and pick up the laptop and or workstation to fix. Doesn't cost me a dime.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:45
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John Liver posted:HP also has utterly miserable customer support, often boiling down to "either update your driver, or buy a new machine." I did incidentally just need some warranty-covered repairs on a printer. Friendly and reasonably competent phone support, repair guy from some subcontractor showed up and did what he was supposed to and a bit more (and it worked afterwards). Shame it took two weeks for him to arrive on what's supposed to be a "within three working days" contract, though. I've got Lenovo business support on my private laptops, which is notably better. It's still included in the basic package for most of the T and X models here - and they actually mean "next working day onsite repairs". Low threshold for sending replacement parts for things you'd rather just swap yourself, too. Shame the PCs at work are Dell and HP ... and we're a 35-man department at a 50 000 employee government healthcare/research organisation. I'm not really in a position to renegotiate our support or supply contracts. * One good thing about being in Norway is that the language is rare enough that the call centers are typically in-country. Computer viking has a new favorite as of 22:54 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 22:36
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JediTalentAgent posted:Another thing about shutting off autorun was that I didn't think that was really an option until post-XP Windows, was it? I guess you could hold down a key on the keyboard and force it bypass autorun that way, but I could never get it to not-Autorun in XP on its own. I seem to recall there was a UITweak tool you'd have to download to shut off autorun, but I might be misremembering. TweakUI wasn't some scary or unattainable thing though. A bit beyond mom and dad maybe.
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Jun 30, 2014 22:52
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And yet with all this talk of crappy HP drivers (it's true), their OEM Win7 discs contain absolutely 0 bloatware. They have 2 folders for Korean website links which are promptly dropped to the recycle bin to reveal a pretty much blank Win7 install. Windows update picks up almost all of the hardware. You can go to the hardware vendors website for the rest. I also have a little HP laser I rescued from work. Like all network printers it picks the drivers up off the device, a much better option if you have the choice. I was setting up an acquired IBM server on the weekend, and they had a great solution which was to pack all the drivers on an ISO and have you download and burn that instead. Good solution but likely something that will take a while to make it down to consumer level. Likewise with a Motion tablet I had, they had packed all the drivers in a cab file. Nice.
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Jun 30, 2014 23:52
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My tablet did something like the ISO idea, except in a single zip folder. They had the crappy installer, but the actual drivers were unbranded and there wasn't any junk as part of it.
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Jun 30, 2014 23:56
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JediTalentAgent posted:Another thing about shutting off autorun was that I didn't think that was really an option until post-XP Windows, was it? I guess you could hold down a key on the keyboard and force it bypass autorun that way, but I could never get it to not-Autorun in XP on its own. I seem to recall there was a UITweak tool you'd have to download to shut off autorun, but I might be misremembering. Yeah, hold down the 'shift' key when loading, rip the media to your hdd for using, and then throw the CD into a drawer, never to be seen again because gently caress that anti piracy software. Sony always stuffed up because they wanted to own standards, ie tried to make everything proprietary and profit from licenses or sales. Most technology that has stood the test of time usually was a genuine advancement, rather than focusing on locking down poo poo. Except sony, sony was all about "gently caress you, buy this", unless the tech was developed in partnership with another company. Fo3 has a new favorite as of 00:11 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 00:02
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Computer viking posted:* One good thing about being in Norway is that the language is rare enough that the call centers are typically in-country. Outsourcing phone support is rare in Canada. The worst I get is Americans who are much more reluctant to refund/do things that cost them money and have no idea what a postal code is and/or can't understand why I'm not American when I sound like one.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:39
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I remember (probably incorrectly) that when USB was first announced it was going to be the end of trying to find drivers, all driver info stored on the device itself and OS independent (for the majors). On UMD MiniDisc chat, I was an idiot and assumed UMDs were just MiniDiscs in a different package and actually searched to find a MiniDisc data drive 
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Jul 1, 2014 02:23
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leidend posted:Outsourcing phone support is rare in Canada. The worst I get is Americans who are much more reluctant to refund/do things that cost them money and have no idea what a postal code is and/or can't understand why I'm not American when I sound like one. People would make fun of me for my Canadian accent and I'm not even from Canada.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:02
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MondayHotDog posted:People would make fun of me for my Canadian accent and I'm not even from Canada. "There's nothing funny aboat my accent!!"
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Jul 1, 2014 03:19
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Keiya posted:That... is one of the most meaningless statements I've read all day. I mean, somewhere in the range of GBA carts to NeoGeo carts? Haha sorry, I was thinking TV consoles. Most Sega/Nintendo carts are about the same dimensions. I didn't even consider portable stuff.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:41
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Humphreys posted:On UMD MiniDisc chat, I was an idiot and assumed UMDs were just MiniDiscs in a different package and actually searched to find a MiniDisc data drive MiniDisc data drives were a thing
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