iPod registration Woes

My wife just bought her first iPod. A refurbished 16GB latest gen Nano in bright orange.

First thing to do, of course, is download iTunes. I know Apple want you to download the latest version, but would it hurt to put a copy of the installation files on the iPod. We only got broadband a year ago, and the new people down the street can't get anything but dialup (as the exchange is "full"!! We're just outside the suburbs.) 95MB can be a lot on a slow connection.

First thing iTunes wants to do is register. This is her first Apple product, so fill out the registration screen. It says use email address for user ID, and fill in lots of other fields, including secret question.

"That username is already in use. If it's you, then login." (paraphrased).

OK, we realise she registered with Apple when ordering the iPod. Start the whole process over again, and login this time.

"Sorry, there's not enough detail with that account, you'll need to fill in some more data" (paraphrased again), and here's a link to open in your browser.

Now we're at a login screen on the Apple website, wishing we didn't have such a long email address to use as a login name. Log in again, and we find that it now wants a secret question and answer (didn't we do that already?)

Having done that, it's back to iTunes, to try and log in again. At last it accepts it and we're in.

Now, if we want to get album artwork or podcasts, you need to have an iTunes store account. (We'll probably never buy a song from iTunes. Almost all the music we get is on CD.) So here's another registration screen, which (as far as I know) needs a credit card even if you never plan to spend a cent.

OK, plug in the iPod at last (we really wanted to have this charging for the last hour).

And what do we get? Another #%$$% registration screen!!! We just want to load on a few songs and try playing them!

There were other problems as wll along the way, as she's not really tech savvy, so it was some hours getting going, compared to your normal drag and drop of folders and files on the average non-Apple MP3 player. But that's part of the price with going "iPod". However, this registration business could do with some streamlining.

Office 2010 beta (pardon my French)

I joined the Windows 7 Beta programme last year and tried the Win7 RC. Microsoft sent me regular emails about the product. Mostly forgettable emails, but they must have worked as I eventually bought an upgrade to Win7. (Not a bug surprise, as I've had every version of Microsoft's OS since PC DOS 1.1 except ME and Vista.)

This year I tried the Office 2010 Beta. Not too bad, but I wasn't sure how much it differed from Office 2007 as I'm still using Office 2003. I installed it on a virtual machine rather than under my main OS as I'd heard how Outlook 2010 doesn't play well with previous versions.

I quite like One Note. It could replace some freeware tools I use, and handles internal links better. Now I'm finally getting used to the ribbon, it might be worth my upgrading from Office 2003. But I expect I'll still be using Word 2003 compatible files for a few years until everyone can read .docx files.

And as expected, Microsoft sends me regular emails about the Beta... but all in French!

I haven't a clue what they're saying, nor how to change what language they use.

"Consultez et partagez vos ressources pédagogiques où que vous soyez, ou presque‏" says the latest. I could google translate it. But I'm not expecting anything earth shattering.

If they're doing this to everyone, I don't expect they'll get a lot of useful feedback.