Vista tips...

[Bobbias]

I did run the auto recovery tool a number of times, and the first couple times, it just failed saying the system didn't boot, and the last one said there were missing OS files, and still failed.

I will admit, it's definitely an improvement over XP's "well, if you fucked it up this bad, either you need to be an IT guy, or a power user to fix it".

In any case, it's nice to see my computer not crashing every time I right click anything. That was getting REALLY frustrating. You have no idea how hard it is to do some things without being able to bring up a context menu, or even delete things normally (just hitting delete caused it to crash, as did operating any of the cut and paste shortcuts). I had to drag files to the recycle bin, and then shift+del them from there, since the "empty recycle bin" button crashed as well.

[Spectere]

I just realized that Vista has batch ID3 tagging built into Explorer.

Make sure that the folder with MP3/WMAs are displayed as a music details folder.  This will add a metadata display both in the browser area and in the status area at the bottom.  Select the tracks that you want to change, then click on the appropriate field in the status area.  It will change the ID3 tags (or whatever Windows Media uses) for all selected files.  Very nice.

I doubt that there's a way to do somewhat more advanced things like renaming files based on tags or tagging files based on file/directory names, but that's what tools like Mp3tag (and friends) are for.

[Bobbias]

I just realized that Vista has batch ID3 tagging built into Explorer.

Make sure that the folder with MP3/WMAs are displayed as a music details folder.  This will add a metadata display both in the browser area and in the status area at the bottom.  Select the tracks that you want to change, then click on the appropriate field in the status area.  It will change the ID3 tags (or whatever Windows Media uses) for all selected files.  Very nice.

I doubt that there's a way to do somewhat more advanced things like renaming files based on tags or tagging files based on file/directory names, but that's what tools like Mp3tag (and friends) are for.

It works with ID3 tags for sure, since I've been using Foobar2k for a while and I've been editing my tags in it. And yeah, I didn't realize at first what sort of improvement that was, but it is definitely helpful. Probably even more helpful to someone trying to manually rip music off an ipod.

[Spectere]

Probably even more helpful to someone trying to manually rip music off an ipod.

You'd still need something like Mp3tag or fb2k's tagger for that.  The one in Vista doesn't rename files to match tags or vice versa.

It's very handy if you need to modify the album or artist name for whatever reason (inconsistent capitalization, typo, etc) but more advanced stuff requires the use of another application.

[Bobbias]

I just meant the ability to easily see and locate your files. XP was terrible for trying to locate the proper files on an ipod. Renaming them was painful, but locating them could be almost impossible without listening if the tags weren't properly set. XP was VERY picky with that stuff. Vista just seems to support it a lot better.