DOH!
I have spent almost an hour this morning trying to fix my internal DVD player in Windows, which mysteriously quit working. And I am going nowhere fast.
The only reason I am in Windohs as the moment is because SONY is forcing me to (so much for the free market model). First, we bought their videocamera because it was supposed to have a GPS unit installed. Well, at least in China, the HandyCam HDR-XR500 does not have a GPS unit. Fine, we can synch up an external GPS unit.
Next, SONY now has its own exclusive video file format *.MTS and none of the free editting software can deal with it. Converting the files loses quality. Great. At least the trial version of the “Vegas” software (what a name!) is good for 30 days but it is horribly complex and it’ll take that long to master it.
So, all I am trying to do is install the viewing software that came with the camera and now, the DVD drive decided to not work. One of the very few times that I have ever asked it to work in Windohs.
The thing I hate about Windohs is that you have NO control. You use the little “wizard” but nothing changes, so your only option is to reboot and try the dumb little “wizard” again, which assumes the extent of my ability to use a computer involves choosing between “Next” “Back” and “Cancel”…
Anyway, I have now been using Ubuntu for two years and I have spent far less time fixing things than I have on Windohs this morning. And the amount of information out there about how to fix things in Ubuntu is amazing. Numerous times, I have encountered a problem and I search it on the internet, bingo, an entire thread of discussion pops up with a variety of options about fixes. Usually one of them works and I actually learned something about my computer, instead of simply punching “next” “next” “finish” no change <reboot> <repeat>
DOH!