I have been running a Media Center PC as the hub of my home media network for a few years now - first MCE 2005 and then VMC (Vista Media Center) once it became available. In fact, I am about to install my 3rd XBOX 360 in my house (I use those as media extenders wherever I have a TV). I love my media setup - and more importantly - so does my wife.

I pretty much just let things run and don't think too often about it... but this week I ran across this completely awesome application which makes my setup even better... Lifextender.

Lifextender has a very simple premise, which is stated on the home page of it's website: "Lifextender is a dead-simple commercial-removal application". The program basically runs in the background where it monitors your system for new recordings. It then analyzes those recordings and removes any commercial pods that it finds. It is pretty good - I would say the success rate is about 95%. When it makes it mistake, it seems to always err on the side of caution and has never removed something I didn't want it to. The modified recordings are about 75% of the size of of the originals - which means it is literally giving me back 15 minutes of my life for every "hour" of commercial-infested programming that I watch.

And oh did I mention - It's also FREE (free as in beer)!

A few weeks ago, for no obvious reason, I lost the ability to multi-select files in Windows Explorer. Control-Click, Shift-Click, Control-A, none of those hotkeys would work. The mouse "rubber band" selection tool was non-functional, and even the corresponding selection options from the View menu were disabled.

I never realized how dependant I was on the multi-selection feature. Tasks that were normally simple were suddenly monumental. Lucky for me, a little bit of Live Searching helped me find a solution: apparently the per-folder settings that Explorer likes to save can get corrupted. The fix is to delete the folder settings data. For some people, you can simply go to Folder Options under the Tools menu, and click the button to "Reset Folders". That didn't work for me though. I had to manually delete the folder settings data from the registry.

Warning: Messing with the Registry is Bad mmmkay

At this key location, you can find a few sub-keys filled with lots of nasty gobbledy-gook data values and nested sub-keys:

HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\

Deleting the BagMRU and Bags subkeys here (and obviously all of their contents) corrected the problem for me (for now).

Your mileage may vary.

I have been using Vista RC1 and now RC2 (havent loaded RTM yet) for a while. I have liked the interface and speed (yeah - it's actually faster than XP was on my laptop). I have also been getting used to some of the "weirdness" such as the new explorer interface and control panel wizards. Overall I think its a good O/S, but nothing has really made me say Wow. Until today.

Background: My old printer, a DeskJet 895Cse finally died on me, and my fax machine has been unreliable for years. So I decided to just get one of those "all in one" printer, fax, copier, scanner do-hickeys. I picked up an OfficeJet 6310 from Fry's. I really had low expectations for the thing. With a price under $200, I really wasnt expecting anything more than a crappy install experience.

So here I go. Power it on. Plug it into the ethernet hub. Installation works fine on my wife's XP laptop. Then for the real test - I inserted the install disc into my Vista machine. As expected, the installer freaks out and refuses to run. A quick check on the HP website confirms that there are no public drivers for Vista yet. I didnt really expect to find any, to be honest. I even fired off a quick email to support to inquire about Vista drivers. To my surprise, I got a reply within 10 minutes. And it wasnt just "so sorry, vista not supported"... they actually gave me a workaround using an older XP driver for another printer that was compatible enough to enable simple printing - if I was OK with connecting via USB. Which I didnt want to do.

But that got me thinking... I wonder if I can convince the printer to work as a regular TCP/IP print server. I have configured plenty of LPR ports in 2000/XP, so I figured maybe I could get a few of the config parameters right by guessing, and coax it into working for me.

First thing that came to mind - I remembered being surprised by the network browsing support in Vista a few weeks ago when I noticed how it detected my router, and even knew that it had an admin page (hth did it know that?). Just browsing the "Network" desktop icon had revealed that the usability team has been hard at work improving the previously horrible network browser feature. With that experience in mind, I tried a quick network browse to see if Vista would spot the new printer out there. I was amazed to see that not only did it spot the printer, but it also knew that it supported a web-based admin page (I didnt even know the printer had that feature!).

Seeing that Vista obviously was playing very well with the printer as a networking peer, I figured I might as well try my luck with adding the TCP/IP printer port. I was very surprised to discover that what used to be a tedious and easy-to-screw-up process was now very streamlined... I simply went to Add New Printer, chose Locally Attached, and then Add New TCP/IP Port. So far, pretty much what I expected. Then on the next wizard page it asks for the printer's IP address. I thought "cool, it looks like it will be smart about prompting for the port config details".

Clicked Next and totally expected to see a screen full of configuration settings and printer queue names, etc. Instead, the wizard asked if I would like to let it try and figure things out on its own. Nah, it won't work. But I try it anyways... Trying to locate printer... Found printer... detecting manufacturer... detecting model... installing drivers... finished - would you like to print a test page?

Wow. I am totally impressed with how well this worked. Network printer configuration used to be a royal pain in 2000 and XP. Sometimes it's the little things like this that make a difference.