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Music is the one thing Microsoft could never seem to do ‘right’. Since Windows Media Player 7 for Windows Me, their activity center approach to music has always baffled me. I’m an audiophile, my collection is well over 20GBs, and spans well over 350 albums crossing every genre you can think of. Some days I lay captivated by Kanye West and Nelly, and some day’s you couldn’t pry my latest find – an obscure Jason Mraz live album – out of my sound system with a mushroom and three extra lives. Hell, every once in a while I just wish there was an automatically generated ‘UK Garage’ Play list so I could get down to some Daniel Bedingfield, Craig David and The Artful Dodger without having to think too hard about it.

That’s right… I’m a geek when it comes to dem’ beats. Since my humbled beginnings as a music pirate, My player of choice has always been Winamp; coupled with all my albums organized in folders so I can visually see them in Windows Explorer. However, even though my geekiness is firmly intact – I’ve been finding myself lately wanting to use my desktop as a gaming rig and a media center. Media Center, as a music player, has several debilitating draw-backs which keep it from being the best piece of software I’ve ever used: Namely; it bases album/artist information off of the Media Player database.

My biggest complaint about WMP is that Microsoft has demonstrated a complete and utter inability to organize my music collection in prior versions. Now, Windows Vi is suppose to change all of that – Meta Tag based searching and organizing are ‘going’ to replace files and folders, and one of the first things Microsoft has tackled in this dream utopia is Audio files. That’s right, WMP 11 is suppose to bring order to my chaos… at least that’s what I’ve assumed.

Now, saying I’m a little skeptical is one of the biggest understatements of the week – I flat ass don’t believe it. Every single time I use a program to try and fix my dysfunctional WMP database so my Media Center will work like it’s fucking suppose to, shit ends up worse than before.

Let me illustrate:

Highlighted are all the Nelly Albums I have on my system.

This is how many WMP says I have

Yeah, that’s right – 9. Let’s explore a little bit…

A _LOT_ more than 9. Technically, there’s only 6 – but they’re broken down in to different albums anyways, for whatever reason that makes sense to Microsoft. It would be one thing if this was just in Media Player, but no – the album view in MCE is the exact same god damned way! So, at 2AM, when I’m looking for that album I downloaded earlier to listen to as I go to sleep, I’ve got to keep in the front of my mind that the ID3 tags in the MP3s could be screwed up and the album I’m looking for might be in one of the 250 ‘Unknown Album’/’Unknown Artist’ folders peppered in to the mix as I’m browsing MCE. Do you know how Microsoft could fix this problem?! They could show me this:

Hey! Look, it’s organized!!

But no, They’ve got to show me this:

WHAT THE FUCK?!

Microsoft, for all it’s ‘competence’, has failed me again! Sonofabitch – This is the living end; For some reason, MCE 2005 is the only decent full screen remote based media player software on the planet, and since Microsoft knows that they have me by the balls because Media Portal, Meedio and Snapstream are absolutely horrible, and I _need_ my remote, they can just keep toying with me and my music.

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this shit either; My product ID for MCE2005, about two months ago, magically died on me preventing me from being able to activate my operating system – it’s like Microsoft is trying to lose me as a customer! They’ve been forcing me to use XP for the past 5 years, the Xbox 360 is getting bitch-slapped by a system with a forth of the power and at half of the price, the only wing of the company that’s showing me any real innovation is the one that does their Windows Live services, and those barely work in Firefox… Is it just me, or is anybody else just counting the minutes until Job’s announces that OS X.5 Tiger will run on any computer Windows will run on so the migraine will stop? I swear to god, all Jobs has to do is tell me it’s out, and I’ll buy a copy for my Desktop, My laptop, and one to frame on my god damned wall. Hell, if it’ll run Windows applications natively, I’ll buy a 100 pack and hand them out to all of my friends. To hell with money at this point: I’d rather be broke than miserable.

Microsoft: Get it right, or get out the fucking game. I’m sick and tired of your bloated incompetence making my computer experience a whole hell of a lot harder than it needs to be. I’m not asking for anything miraculous here, I’m asking for core features of your applications to work… Take this helpful tip to heart: If you’re going to call it a feature, MAKE SURE that it WORKS! I’m asking for, maybe, if you can’t get Windows Messenger, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, or Windows Media Player right, then don’t fucking release them! Not ‘release them and let me discover it’s shitty’… I mean DON’T RELEASE THEM! If WMP doesn’t do what it’s suppose to, send out a hotfix that removes it from my system! Better yet, Don’t release it in the first place! Hell, if I didn’t want it to work, I’d use Real Jukebox! Look at your Windows Messenger! How many times have you replaced that damned thing?! STOP!! Seriously. Stop it. I don’t even know if the damned thing works anymore, I’m on Trillian now because YOU can’t make good SOFTWARE!

Windows XP is a great OS most of the time, but it’s the shit y’all bundle in it that drives me completely Ape Shit. Office is the only thing y’all seem to be able to do right, and even then they feel a little too bloated for anybodies taste. Hell, I installed Open Office 2 on my father’s laptop just to let him play with it after playing with Office 2007 for a few weeks, and now he’s swore off Office forever! Wh… How? You’re losing steam, company – get off your ass and fix these problems. Six months ago, I would have told you that my buying Windows Vi Ultimate was a given – right now, I’m hoping Apple beats you to the punch so I can try not fuming over Media Player database issues for once. If you expect anybody to upgrade to Vista, then you’ve really got to sell this product to me, you’re pissed off OS evangelist. Because when the tech weaklings come to me for advice, I’m going to tell them that Vi is a nightmare, slow, bloated, and it’s $600 for the only version that’s decent – and I’m going to point to a nearby Apple store and tell them to go frolic. You’re seconds away from death right now, so heed some advice: go back to Redmond, go to your room for an hour to think about what you’ve done, and come back when you’ve got this shit fixed.

Know what’s really fucked up? I HATE MAC! Fucking Eh, I can’t even do a review of Media Player 11 without losing it over this shit. I’m going to go smoke a cigarette and OD on some razor blades. Think about that Bill, you’re shitty media player has driven me to suicide; I hope your ass is happy.

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