if you purchase music from iTunes I don't think anything else will handle it reliably. If you just use MP3s there are many programs. I believe WinAMP one of the favs. I actually used iTunes so I am stuck.

I believe Quicktime is now required to be installed for iTunes to function properly. I believe there was a time when Quicktime could be uninstalled and iTunes would still function.

Unfortunately if you use an iPod Touch or an iPhone then iTunes is your only option right now.

Apple has sent DMCA takedown notices to all efforts trying to reverse engineer the hash that would allow syncing with other music players. Linux users can't sync iPod Touches or iPhones at all without serious hacking.

Also if you downloaded music from iTunes with Apple DRM then iTunes is probably your only choice for those songs as well.

Note: It is possible to sync some other iPods with 3rd party players such as Songbird, Winamp, etc.

Great post man

Thanks

Nice post.

Is Pidgin better than Trillian? If so, can you explain why?

I use Trillian most of the time, & have that on my desktop. I have Pidgin on my laptop. I prefer the way Trillian works, but if there's a good reason, I would switch.

I know trilian has had some security probs.

http://ninite.com/ seems like a handy tool for installing software as part of this.

Quick noobish question regarding page files; I have recently upgraded most of my computer, I have a new mobo, CPUs, more and faster RAM etc but for now, I am still using my crappy old hard drive which was budget when bought 4 years ago. Could using my page file a lot slow down performance when my hard drive is so old and slow?

LDO

Seriously, a new hard drive is cheap. Keep the old one, but put in a new 7200 SATA as the C: drive and move the OS there. (With 4gig ram, I don't think the page file part is going to make much of a difference, but it will speed up all the rest a lot!)

----------Kitty

Yes but this isn't something you need to worry about unless you have insufficient RAM. If you have enough RAM your computer will rarely, if ever, touch the PF.

Even a computer with a 10,000rpm Velociraptor would seem slow if it were frequently accessing the PF Hard drives are very slow compared to RAM.

nice post. great job on the vids! i've downloaded avira, and now i keep getting popups asking me to upgrade. any way to turn these off? also, what firefox add-ons do you recommend?

There is a post in this thread that details how to disable the Avira nag screen

For security, I recommend NoScript.

Some people also recommend Web of Trust.

Dave - this is a good thread about firefox addons:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/48...dd-ons-352912/

Obviously the ones listed by Funkyworms are excellent, but there are lots of other great ones that I & a lot of other people use in addition to those.

So is AntiVir more lightweight than AVG? Is it the most lightweight anti-virus out there? I'm using AVG right now. Should I switch to AntiVir?

Yes and it has much higher detection rates.
Can't answer that for sure. ESET Nod32 is definitely lightweight, but they don't have a free version.

yes

Thanks for these vids Funkyworms.

Any chance of a Win 7 version coming soon?

A new Hard disk is on the agenda. I got a new one about a year ago but it is currently back at the manufacturers after it just stopped spinning one day . Hopefully the data will be recoverable, most but not all of it was backed up. (I know, pretty stupid)

My computer now has 4GB RAM yet it seems to use the page file more than I think it should and lowering how much it uses the page file has no effect. It uses close to 1GB when idling and will go up to 1.3GB+ whenever asked to do anything remotely strenuous. At the same time, it only uses a max. of about 30-40% of my RAM.

I have tried lowering the page file but it doesn't seem to have any effect. I type in a lower amount, click OK and nothing happens. I don't get told that the system needs to restart and the size of the page file remains exactly the same. It is determined that the initial size will remain at 900MB and that the maximum size will be 3072MB. Any ideas?

What are you using to determine this how much swap you're using? Plz post a screenshot.

Win7 is on the horizon. You'll appreciate it more if I make you wait.

everyone should rate this thread btw

5 stars this was awesome, never knew about pidgin

Looks like part 1 and 5 on youtube are broken, anyway to quick fix this, I really want to check out part 5.

Working now

Just checked this and I got an error message on Part 5 too. It fixed itself when I refreshed the page.

WIch i forgot to do earlier on when fun just posted this thread
But I gave it 5 stars now obv!

I really appreciate the effort put into this. Great job.

I'm going to watch the videos now and see what I can do in w7. Needless to say, I will patienly wait for the w7 version of your videos.

It seems to be a lot of interest for pidgin itt, what do you guys think about Digsby? It also supports the social networks. www.digsby.com