Oorgo

Piece of s$#! software

So, I received a NetMD for Christmas last year, it's good, albeit a little slow to burn cds. Saturday after I zoomed through installing my new card stereo I figured I'd burn some minidiscs, as my new deck has an AUX input. Little did I know I had begun the journey of the damned.

Sony, in their infinite near-sightedness, provides a software called Sonicstage to use with your NetMD. The Sonicstage software also installs about 4 or 5 other products, updater, conversion program, the main program, drivers.

Here are the list of problems with the initial setup:
a) You can't select where 1/2 the programs are installing, they automatically install to C:
b) Even when you select the install location it still installs many files to C: (my C drive has limited space, and is primarily for OS use only).

Ok, so I was having some odd problems with the version I installed off the CD that came with the NetMD, so of course I logically thought to upgrade to the newest version. Downloaded 2.x from Sony, installed it, it ran for a good 30 seconds, then hard reset my computer. GREAT! I thought "well, it must be something I did", so I tried it again with the same result.
Uninstalled 2.x, cleaned it entirely off my computer, reinstalled it, started it up, same thing, hard reset after about 30 secs.

I proceeded to swear a blue streak, uninstalled and cleaned it off again (so I thought). Installed the OLD version again off disk, installed the next update, then the next update after that. Program starts up, seemingly runs ok, but then says it doesn't support mp3!!!! wtf... swore another blue streak.

Uninstalled, cleaned it off, ran a reg fixer program, rebooted (for the 40th or so time), installed the old version, made sure it worked, updated it, and now it works. I'm sticking to the old 1.553 for awhile, unless I feel like wasting another day, and trying to update it to 2.x.

Oh, and the first "Update" (full install) actually requires the old version to be there, even though it proceeds to uninstall it. If this is supposed to be some sort of security device I don't know why it's implemented, who the fuck would want to use this software for anything other than what they're FORCED to use it for, their NetMD.

SO far I think I've surmised that you must start from the beginning and proceed to each update sequentially... it would have been fucking nice to have been told that somewhere along they way by Sony.

Posted by Oorgo at August 9, 2004 09:44 AM