Ed Bott › Comments

Vista and Windows 7, both have UAC, both are secure -- - Bryce Campbell

All of them can be secure, it's more about the user. If you do stupid things then nothing is secure. :) But traditionally OSX has less people trying to break it. - Nick Young

Define "secure" -- do you mean idiot proof, virus proof, or hacker proof? If you mean the first, then maybe OS X gets to play. Windows 7 is definitely more idiot proof than those which have gone before. But when it comes to hackers and viruses and trojans, it seems like a toss up between 7 and Vista -- XP, of course, comes in barely above OSX in that department. - Joel Bennett

None of them is more secure... they all have their vulnerabilities. I feel bad sometimes for the people out there thinking that their OS is either "Hacker Proof" or "Virus Proof " .... No such thing guys unfortunately. To sum this up i will quote Chris Pirillo : " Every operating system sucks " ;) - Konstantinos Ntantoulis

n number of critical updates. Completely meaningless. XP or Vista, I've had to clean up conficker from both OSes recently and that sucked. - Paul Grav

To say anything is idiot proof is crazy. As OSX becomes more prevalent you will see it attacked. Right now it's not worth the effort for virus and spyware developers to bother. I would bet OSX is no more secure than any Windows version. Just no one cares enough to pound too hard on it. - BigMonkGames

The goal has to be to become a more secure *user*, and educate those that you have to support (though understandably that can be hard). When my dad's laptop was "MS Anti-Spyware'd" earlier in the year, I ended up putting Ubuntu on it. At least that way an entire class of viruses were no longer going to be a problem. - G. Sigh

I agree with G. Sigh. The OS and applications will always have issues - too many people with too much time on their hands attacking them. I think we as users need to take more responsibility for being safe in our habits on the Internet. - Sean Higgins

Leo Nailed it in the first comment. - Parth Awasthi

Security is a process... not a feature - Chris Heath

they all have bugs, but OS security doesn't matter anywhere near as much as it used to. what really matters: /passwords/ and a good eye for phishing/trojans. the most damaging attacks are the ones that enable identity theft, and those are enabled by using shitty passwords, or worse, using the same shitty password on many sites. - mjc

What's important is the user level settings. If you run as root in any BSD it's almost as bad as XP, where you need to run as admin to get anything done. OSX is more secure because it buries the root user deep within the OS. If you can operate as a limited user in any OS, it's more secure. - Robert Hafer from iPhone

OS X Leopard has had 23 major security updates in the same period of time, most of them fixing multiple vulnerabilities. Why is it inherently more secure? - Ed Bott

Ed, tiny market share, tiny target - Chris Heath

I don't know what Ed's been smoking, but it must be good. "To make your machine available for incoming Remote Desktop connections, you must be running Professional or Ultimate edition. OS X makes this feature available as an extra-cost add-on" VNC is free, and built-in to OSX. I use it all the time. - Paul Grav

@Paul: Did a Google Search and you're right. tweet him about it @edbott - LANjackal from IM

He responded too. I didn't expect that :) - Paul Grav

@Paul: yeah he does, apparently the technicality is that OS X includes a VNC *server*, but not a client - LANjackal from IM

Err no. The client is there. Finder, CMD-K, vnc://anybloodymachineintheuniverse Or open finder, click on a machine, click on "Share Screen" - Paul Grav

And if you really want to make trouble for yourself, you can go download a 3rd party vnc client. For free. - Paul Grav

@Paul: I think u'r right. I tweeted him this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... that shows that Screen Sharing is a for real VNC client - LANjackal from IM

The confusion is probably because VNC is treated like SMB or AFP or NFS in Mac OS X in that you don't need to open a specific application to screen share (or whatever you want to call it), it's just built-in to Finder. Ed's referring to an enterprise level solution that does indeed cost a ton of money but does a whole lot than just act as a VNC client. - Paul Grav

@Paul: I was beginning to suspect that was the root of the confusion. Thanks for clearing it up - LANjackal from IM

I've corrected the chart and added a note. However, Apple's documentation on this feature is disgraceful. If you go looking for information on VNC, good luck finding it from Apple. - Ed Bott

@Ed: thx - LANjackal

personally I would advise everyone to stay away from anything but the ultimate versions.. I despise this concept of a crippled "home" version when it's basic functionality (capacity to network and share files) has been shafted so badly as to be a total PITA to deal with. The amount of times I have had people ask me "how do I get files from this PC to that PC?" and they resort to things... more... - alphaxion

@alphaxion: What you've just said is the exact myth the article debunks *rolls eyes*. Try reading it. - LANjackal from IM

What about the users testing Windows 7 right now? Didn't they say we would get a discount for testing? - Manuel Mas

@LANJackal I base my opinion on having dealt with XP, vista and win7 (in my own testing both in and out of a domain) as an administrator. I'm sorry but the experiences I have encountered and how much they have crippled the basic function of sharing in "home" versions of the OS to the point where most home users simply can't get it working due to obfuscificated and convoluted menu... more... - alphaxion

@alphaxion: Well no shit dude, if you're using the OS on a domain/IT environment then *obviously* Home editions won't suffice. You might as well try boating in a Honda Civic. That's why they're called *Home* editions = not meant for IT departments. No one in their right mind could seriously expect otherwise. I don't call that "crippling" by MS, I call that a cheap IT department trying to save on licensing fees. - LANjackal from IM

The guy at Best Buy told me that I'll need 192gb of ram go on internet and email my family, so im getting the ultimate edition... ;) - Cassidy

@Cassidy: As much as that's a joke, in my experience Best Buy is staffed by fucktards. I can almost see that really happening - LANjackal

Needs "Provides a comfortable environment for people familiar with UNIX", "Security architecture that isn't 100% Swiss cheese", and "A decent OS-wide scripting architecture"... Although that's just trollbait, now. ;) - Tyson Key

Alphaxion. The features that Ed is describing are enterprise level features. There is no way that the majority of users would use, think about using or even understand such features as "Branch Cache, Direct Access", "AppLocker", "Presentation Mode". From a practical perspective, I'm not sure that even I would want to have such features installed in any install of Windows that I would use. I'd rather save on resources. - Paul Grav

++Paul - LANjackal from IM

What I do think is ridiculous are the versions below Home Premium. Home Basic and Starter. Now, those SKUs are hobbled. I feel sorry for the poor saps that will buy a netbook with Win 7 Starter and afterwards realise that they have to pay for an upgrade in order to change their desktop. That's just sad. - Paul Grav

@Paul: I think that's a deliberate move by MS to strangle the netbook device category. Personally I don't mind it, screens smaller than 15.4" annoy the crap out of me unless they're cellphones - LANjackal from IM

LANjackal. Absolutely. But your typical netbook buyer will be someone who isn't able to afford a proper laptop. A lot of users do like to change their wallpaper. It won't be a good experience for them to be denied that. More precisely, it won't be a good 'Windows experience' for them. The up-sell is obviously very important for MS, but I think the user experience ought to be even more so. - Paul Grav

I'm on about simple file sharing - tho I do think there is a good case for a very stripped down and wizardised "AD lite" in the home, but that's a tangent ;) And I'm on about the impression that all of the other IT pros I've known when they have dealt with friends at home not in their workplace. When you've been to a lan party and watched users trying share files between home editions, you'll see how much it can frustrate a person not used to it. - alphaxion

@Scott: Would you use it if it did? Why port to haters? - Jemm

@Jemm. That's a bit of a sweeping generalisation. I'm sure MS has better reasons for not making cross-platform versions IE. Personally, I'd applaude MS if they were to make IE cross-platform. Would I use it? If it had good web standards support, good performance, and were to integrate nicely with my chosen OS, then I would certainly consider it. - Paul Grav

@ Paul & Jemm: Saying that IE8 should be ported to other OSes is just armchair arguing for its own sake. Not to mention the fact that if MS did that, Google and Opera would whine about MS' "abuse" of the browser market as they already are - LANjackal

With all the alternatives there for those platforms, I don't see much business reasons why Microsoft should port IE as they don't ask money for it (and nobody would pay, if they did). Too complex test-matrix for the Windows-only versions already. Better investment would be to port Silverlight for even more platforms. - Jemm

im loving 8, with no complaints - chaz2b

@LANjackal. I'm not all saying that MS should port IE to other OSes. The general argument for market abuse revoles around MS leveraging it's dominant position in the OS market. I can't see how MS could possibly use its dominant Windows position to leverage browser market share on *other* platforms. - Paul Grav

Apropos business reasons. How about increasing its search engine usage and possibly showing Mac & Linux users that MS produces quality products and that there might be a reason to switch? Right now, MS is a walled garden for non-Windows users, you can only have a peek in by using stuff like Silverlight and the crappy Flip4Mac. - Paul Grav

Actually, Opera and Google are up in arms about IE shipping as Windows' default browser. I'm pretty sure they'd prefer to see it gone altogether than spreading to other OSes. As for walled gardens, ever heard of Office for Mac? And there WAS an IE for Mac in the past, but it got killed due to irrelevance. As for Linux, last time I checked Apple doesn't develop desktop apps for it either, so ... - LANjackal

Apple develops plenty of apps for Windows. "Opera and Google are up in arms about IE shipping as Windows' default browser", and what would that have to do with a cross-platform IE? - Paul Grav

MS used to have a version of IE for the Mac. It was the default browser until Apple decided to create Safari. Shortly after that, MS wisely stopped development of IE/Mac. - Ed Bott

If memory serves right, they had a version for Unix, but the lack of ActiveX controls made it a second class version of itself. - Trey Crossan

I can't believe people benchmark by how fast a page loads, and not how fast they can get their daily in-browser work done. - Matt Cutts

Trey, MS certainly did have a version of IE for e.g. Solaris. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... for example. - Matt Cutts

@Paul - "actual" ?!? WT?? - Glen Roberts

it has choice.... and apples. - Electronic Punk

Yeah poor kid.. still speaks better than Ballmer. - Xin Li

Actual kid as opposed to...? - Jonathan

as opposed to an "un-actual" 12 year old girl - Jim Adams

she's doing alright - notta

Robert Benchley once walked out on a stage show when the kid walked on. I emulate him now. Bye. - Ed Bott

LMAO! - Kevin

Apple??? LOL - Tom

what did he think she was doing? - Thomas

this just makes me feel old. - Electronic Punk

I would be up there with an oxygen tank if that was me - notta

to be honest... I have no idea she was doing... maybe I'm old... - Sam

Yeah, Robbie would be having a real hard time doing that... XD - Jonathan

is this what they call programming? okay... - Brett

they need a 12 year old girl playing left 4 dead, on expert - Electronic Punk

from the looks of things it really, really needs a mouse. - Garrett

Maybe if you were an actual 12-year-old - Carl Siechert

its a wisp - Brad Green

<shamelessplug>I have a Boku in-depth preview with the game's creator http://www.istartedsomething.com/2008120... - Long Zheng

I think mindstorms NXT has got some real competition from xbox now with Kodu - Thomas

i havent got a clue what this is - Jamie

join the club... - Brett

that's a grown man - notta

"It's all about the Mob." They say this in Vegas? SHEESH. - Ed Bott

Mob is fickle. They should have learned that by now. - Adi

Head slamming into desk - Ed Bott

@Ed - LOL!! (and too true!!) - Glen Roberts

Apollo? - notta

C! I know it :) - Dan Z

This is something that should be on Wii... - Brady Kuenning

Hey! I love my Zune :) - Chris

Paul: Yes, I agree. Zune is awesome. - Jonathan

This year Zune was great...except for day 366. - wasserja

I love my Zune too. Paul its okay to say it :) - Dan Z

Except for on Dec 31, then... not so much. - Michael Stanclift

Now nobody at TWiT will talk to you anymore! - Mike Galos

agreed. zune 30 here - Thomas

hope we see a zune phone!!! - Brian

Zune users hug!!! - Long Zheng

Agreed - Jordan Hofker

I love my Zune...thanks to w00t - Adi

The best thing about Zune is the subscription service. - Xin Li

That was over blown! - Brian

UK Zune user, but sometimes wondering why - Electronic Punk

Long you're here?! awesome :-) - Glen Roberts

I love Zune, but I feel like the era of the music-only device is over. - Mike Cerminara

Entertainment == Porn - Xin Li

With Apple's iTunes DRM-free announcement yesterday, I'm considering buying my Zune music from iTunes. - Long Zheng

Ok, but can't MS integrate MCE and Zune? - Jonathan

Agree!!! - Brian

Paul. Theres like 20+ Zune users here, your going to have to increase your sarcasitic number on your joke :P - Dan Z

What does he mean average session? Do they track usage? - notta

See Europe Mediaroom is your Zune. No dibs here in the US. - Adi

Windows Blog: "available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta." Huh? Huh??!! Why on earth would MS want to limit exposure in any way? - Brian

@notta: Customer Experience Improvement Program - Jonathan

Uverse is pretty sweet too (and my parents can figure out how to use it). - Brad

Like they couldn't torrent it - Benjamin Perdomo

Please announce something that doesn't relate to the Xbox in the US only - dammit - Electronic Punk

Heck, even Hannity is better than this.... - Adi

This guy looks a little like one of the beegees... no reason to try to go sounding like them, though. lol. - Stephen Chapman

I'm positive this is a Flight of the Conchords song?!?!? - Glen Roberts

If these girls call me "suga" one more time.... - Eric Geller

TURN OFF THE MUSIC!!!!!! AGHHH! - Tom

is ballmer gonna come out with a gutair hero gutair and start jammin? - Dan Z

Where's a fast forward button when we need it. - Kevin

Holy crap, this is awful - Ed Bott

Robbie is next - Jordan Hofker

Glen, This is a parody of a Flight of the Conchords. Well, a style-parody anyway. - Mike Cerminara

Thank god these guys are gone - Ryan Versaw

yes, this is a booring keynote.! - Qbat

It sounded like they were applying random innuendo and MSFT PR to a tune. - Eric Geller

FINALLY, THEY'RE GONE! - Jonathan

wtf is this - Jamie

No Touch? - Brady Kuenning

Flash...thats another bag of hurt - Adi

you're an idiot mary - Ryan

WAIT. Treo Pro is not a new Windows Mobile phone. How the hell does it get the new PocketIE? - Long Zheng

How did she know where to stand so the long-range camera could get a tight closeup of the phone? - Eric Geller

i've tried this ie6 for winmo and it is so slow...still unusable - wasserja

I think touch is ridiculous on a PC. It makes sense on a phone. Just my opinion - Mary Jo Foley

@long: i'm amazed how you see these things... wow. :) - Zack Whittaker [ZDNet]

Works perfectly fine on my HTC Touch Pro - Glen Roberts

You need a PC with the right form factor, MJ - Ed Bott

@MJ: concur 100% - Zack Whittaker [ZDNet]

Mary: multi-touch will be great for tablet PCs, however - Garrett

@MJF: Come on, you know you want to touch your wide-screen monitor, especially while in InPrivate mode..... - Rafael Rivera

R O F L - Thomas

@Raf - LMAO! - Glen Roberts

*faceplam"* and lol at Rafael - Dan Z

I hope someone will take a pic of the "touch-ified" screen after showing on the demo floor... - Sam

Hahaha. Yes, I have been using that porn mode in IE 8 a LOT! - Mary Jo Foley

After working with tablets all day, i find myself attempting to tap the screen of my desktop at home pretty regularly - Tim

Thanks for the exclusive, MJ! lol - Stephen Chapman

IE 8.0 is terrible BTW they need to fix it... it has crashed a good ten times tonight on regular sites ...... - Ryan

@ryan: see, i use firefox - it's a pretty nifty alternative :P :) - Zack Whittaker [ZDNet]

IE went downhill after IE 4.0. - Kevin

been using IE8 all the time regularly since i downloaded win7... speed kinda iffy.. no crashes or problems otherwise though. - Tim

In my experience with win7 everything worked fine except IE8, which crashed upon opening it, and never worked since. - Brady Kuenning

I've had no such problems with IE8 - Cody

My wife will be very happy to hear about this - Ed Bott

@ed: hey-ho :-) - Zack Whittaker [ZDNet]

ed. go back to the beach! :P - Dan Z

Tom, I can't tell what your point is (is the word "not" missing?) - Ed Bott

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Originally, Microsoft wanted people to opt *in* to "super standards" mode. Everybody raised holy hell for purist standards reasons. Then they said "ok, we'll make everybody explicitly opt *out* of standards mode". Now huge numbers of sites are broken on IE8. Personally, I think they should have stuck with the original plan. It was solidly pragmatic, whereas the current plan is just silly. - Joel Webber

If you've built your website properly, using conditional comments aimed at, for example, ie7 or ie6, then ie8 will ignore those "hacks" and use the same code as you are sending to firefox, chrome, opera, safari, et al. From what I've seen of ie8 the rendering engine is pretty good and your site will look fine. - David Owens

If you have been ignoring standards compliant browsers, and couldn't be bothered to use conditional comments (as recommended by microsoft for at least the last year or so), then you need to add one line of code and IE will act like it's 2007 everytime somebody visits your website. - David Owens

Oh yeah, and <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ /> doesn't fix the problem, it hides it. You would be better advised to use this as a temporary solution while you learn how to make the page render correctly without compatibility mode. - David Owens

Yes, I'm well aware of that, David. But I'm not a web designer and I don't have the time to learn CSS and rework the theme I've used for the last two years. So the compatibility tag is a good temporary fix. - Ed Bott

Sorry if that was a little strongly worded. I appreciate that these days more and more people use blog templates and other solutions to get their websites online. In these cases the x-ua-compatible meta tag is a great solution. I would be concerned if the people creating templates, etc. use it as a get out of jail free card though. Another worry is dishonest designers charging a whole lot of money to add that line of code. Hopefully your blog post will empower more blog owners to make the change themselves - David Owens

Shhh, nobody tell my aunts and uncles about this guy. They believe enough crazy bullshit as it is. - David Wilson

I believe disaster is also going to befall some damn kids if they don't get off his damn lawn. Does this guy look the very picture of "old coot" or what? - Ed Bott

Freeborn sprawled in a stuffed chair, directing the discussion and sometimes correcting his acolytes. It was a congenial group, but not much given to small talk. As the night wound down, Freeborn returned to his core prophecy. "I really believe we are out of time," he said. "I really do." Freeborn conceded that he'd issued similar warnings many times before, and still the world kept... more... - Thomas Hawk

gotta go see this guy ASAP (grabs tinfoil hat and heads out the door) - MikeAmundsen

I'm sure the 2012 folks will eat up this guy's end times prophecy. All of which makes great marketing for Roland Emmerich's newest movie, "2012" (coming soon to a theatre near you). - Victor

I always said I was going to try 1password. I guess their idea to give the iPhone client away for free was a smart one. I downloaded the iPhone client and almost immediately downloaded the local client. - Dan

I store all of my passwords in Firefox. I have never found a use for password management software - Mike Fruchter

Not only do I store all my pw's in firefox, but they are usually all the same thing. Unless it's the bank or something. I think life would go on if somebody hacked my Myspace profile :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

I want to use 1Password for everything, but you can't define your own wallet items, which really stinks. Instead, I use Wallet (url: http://waterfallsw.com/wallet/). Cross-platform clients would be nice, but the only ones I've found are really, really, junky. - Mark Trapp

+1 for 1password here - h1ro

I let Firefox hold them for me (using a Master password) but I store them all in Outlook as contacts. Probably not the best method, but it works. - Shayna

@Aura Mae - yeah the fingerprint readers work well, my computer has one and it's great for logging into windows. The software sucks for web passwords though, but that could be just my system. - Royce Mathew

I use PasswordSafe - Bob Gannon

KeePass, because I can use the same file on my Windows PCs, my MacBook, and my Windows Mobile phone. It also runs on other systems. - MiniMage, sheeple of FF from NoiseRiver

RoboForm and RoboForm2Go. The latter fits on a USB flash drive, encrypts its contents, and works on just about any PC with both IE and Firefox. Worth every penny. - Ed Bott

i used spash id for phone and desktop untill a fatal crash ruined everything. now its all in firefox or in notes on my phone - nick

I may need to try KeePass. Works with PC, Mac, Linux and mobiles. Good find, MiniMage; thx! - Kevin C. Tofel

Another vote for 1Password. Fantastic app. - Wes Justice

1Password all the way - Jay

I use Myvidoop for all my passwords - Jean-Charles

If they could both get over their silly snubbing of each other and start working together, serious awesomeness could ensue. - Chad Myers

Silly snubbing of each other? Which company has licensed its ActiveSync software to the other? Which one refused to license its Fairplay DRM to anyone? Which company has a vicious ad campaign that bashes the other one's products? I do believe that Apple is the bigger offender here. - Ed Bott

Agree with you here. I think Louis looked at it only from a traffic view point, but links are a discovery tool as well. Just because one link doesn't deliver a ton of traffic doesn't mean that it won't help your traffic in the longer term via new subscribers + regular readers...it's just harder to directly measure - Duncan Riley

Links are the veins of the Internet. Blood (read: content) is nothing without veins. ;-) - AJ Batac

links are a discovery tool, period. the moment you start likning for traffic is the moment your site/blog/feed/tweet ceases to matter. - Jim Hearts FF from feedalizr

Links are a meaaure of respect. 9 time out of 10 I link to something because I respect what the author wrote. Why shouldn't I encourage other people to read it? (The other 1 in 10 is when I'm mocking some fool. But they deserve to be read so that others can mock them too, - Ed Bott

What you'll find is that Steven and I agree on this 95% of the way. The headline of what I said did not say they were unimportant. I said it "seems" they are getting "less important". I believe in linking and do it aggressively. What I was referring to mostly, as Duncan mentions, was traffic expectations. It was not looking at search, but it was looking at the rising importance of aggregation and social media tools, when compared to blog links. - Louis Gray

Cont: I don't declare things "dead" or say one thing will "kill" another, as that's superlative. I also included quite a bit of data and transparency to say how I came to my conclusions. But over time, as I watch this closely, there is a shift, and I wanted to highlight it. - Louis Gray

I don't think Louis was suggesting links weren't important overall, just that their influence on traffic is declining. Yup, I see it Duncan's way. Links are also important to SEO as well and we shouldn't underestimate the increasing role of Google Juice. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Maybe I missed it, but I thought Louis's post was really about the declining "importance" of *blogs* as drivers of conversation in the infosphere -- links are still the medium of relaying information, but the linking is migrating to the social net sites. - Sprague D

Seems everyone is getting pretty bent up about that post Louis did. To quote the comment Louis just left, which sums up the general idea of the post very well I think; the post was about 'looking at the rising importance of aggregation and social media tools'. Now as any blogger who wants to generate traffic does Louis took this to a little bit of an extreme causing a lot of talk around the subject which is great. - John Duff

Cont: The thing is you need links to generate traffic to your blog, these links are coming from social media more and more rather than from bloggers linking to one another is all. - John Duff

Making a 5 star play list won't work? - Andrew Smith

Andrew a 5 star playlist in WMP doesn't do me any good. The files are locked in WMP. MSFT doesn't allow you to search by ratings outside of WMP from within Windows. They'll allow you to sync the music with a Windows phone from within WMP but no luck on the iPhone of course. - Thomas Hawk

you might find this useful. MusicBridge, it syncs metadata between WMP and iTunes Libraries http://is.gd/MX4 - Rahul Das

Apple hates MSFT, MSFT hates Apple and the consumer who wants to use both loses. - Thomas Hawk

I wish song ratings, playcounts, and date added were part of an ID3 tag. I'm also addicted to organizing my music and have written extensively on the topic at my blog: http://softwarereflections.wordpress.com/2008... - trextor

Rahul thanks for that. I knew that you could 'extract' the infos from itunes via xml but not this. - Nicole Simon

Can you burn the list to DVD first to separate them from the others then add them to mac? - Andrew Smith

Rahul, my problem is that my library is too big for iTunes. iTunes chokes on large mp3 libraries. I simply need to be able to identify all of my 5 star songs outside of the WMP silo where my ratings are all locked up at present. Then I could import that smaller library into itunes and synch my iphone with it. - Thomas Hawk

I don't think so Andrew, too many songs for a DVD. - Thomas Hawk

Hey Thomas, that's not quite right. After you rate them in WMP, go to Tools and click "Apply Media Information Changes". Do a search for all of your music (make sure you have the Rating column displayed) and click the arrow next to "Rating" and then "Group By". Or just do a search like: is:music rating:5 - Jordan Hofker

If MSFT simply allowed you to do an advanced search in Vista by mp3 rating this could easily be done. But they'd rather lock you into MSFT portable devices than let you have access to *your* ratings outside of a MSFT device. By only allowing you to sort your music within WMP they get to lock out competing devices. - Thomas Hawk

well a long way of doing it could be to make a playlist of all the 5 star songs, and sync the playlist to a portable device. You can then get them all together in one location. If there are too many songs do it little by little. - Rahul Das

not sure how the naming is in english (i have a german windows) - you can make your intelligent playlist with the rating, save it as .3u which should be importable into itunes. - Nicole Simon

Thomas, give "Apply Media Information Changes" a try. I'm interested to know if it works for you. - Jordan Hofker

Jordan how do I do a search for all of my music? - Thomas Hawk

Ok doing an advanced search in my music folder for all files modified before 7-8-2008. Will see what comes up this way. Hmmm it seems that searching with Windows Explorer is limited to 5,000 items. - Thomas Hawk

is:music (Are you using Vista?) (If you hit the 5,000 limit, click "Show All results") - Jordan Hofker

I think MediaMonkey may solve your problem. It should automatically recognize all the ratings you made in WMP, and I think it will sync your iPhone. Not certain on the iPhone though...I know it syncs my Nano perfectly. - Matt from twhirl

Not portable? In WMP Options, Library tab, make sure you enable option to "Maintain star ratings as global ratings in files." Voila. - Ed Bott

Ed, I've already done that. So tell me now, how do I copy all my 5 star rated songs into a folder that I can then copy over to my Mac? Love seeing you on FriendFeed by the way! :) - Thomas Hawk

For those of you who don't know Ed Bott, he's one of the top Microsoft Windows bloggers out there. Definitely worth following: http://friendfeed.com/edbott - Thomas Hawk

That's why I stick to using iTunes. Makes my life a whole lot easier. - Matt Donders

I ditched WMP years ago. Haven't looked back either. - Granteezy

Thomas, I'm here because of you! To get your 5-star list, click the Music folder (or wherever you have your music stored) and then enter rating:(5 stars) in the Search box. You can even save that search. - Ed Bott

Also, you can use Details View and add the Ratings column in Explorer. Then click the arrow to the right of the column heading and check boxes to filter. - Ed Bott

Ed, when I do that search rating:(5 stars) in the search box I only get 381 results when I've got 6,328 tracks rated 5 star. Any idea why? "Maintain star ratings as global ratings in files," is enabled. - Thomas Hawk

Thomas, click the arrow to the right of the Ratings column and use the Stack By Ratings feature. Now make the File Count column available. That will show you results for all ratings. - Ed Bott

PS: I'm planning a big how-to article on Vista Explorer for publication at ZDNet this Friday which will cover several of these techniques... - Ed Bott

when I click "stack by ratings" it changes the view to show the "5 star" stack, but still only 381 songs if I explore that "stack." I'm running the same search in advanced search mode including hidden and system files and that's been running for about 20 min with 0 results returned yet. - Thomas Hawk

looking forward to Friday's article! - Thomas Hawk

Searching hidden files won't help. Also, you need to start from scratch with your search scope. Your stack is based on the existing search of 5-star ratings. - Ed Bott

Wow, someone actually uses WMP? - Marcos Marado

I have taken backwards solution to your problem. I refuse to use Apple products and I get along just fine. - Toby Graham

Marcos, WMP works with Windows Media Center, which handles all my music at home -- through three Xbox 360 extenders connected up to plasma displays. I've never been able to get iTunes to load my entire sizeable library, it chokes every time -- especially on gapless playback and loading album art. WMP is a more robust player as far as I'm concerned. - Thomas Hawk

...but I like my iPhone much better than my former Windows Smartphone and need to figure out how to get my 5 star songs isolated outside of WMP in order to import just those songs into iTunes where it shouldn't choke -- which is what I'm working on. Just wish it wasn't so difficult. - Thomas Hawk

Great discussion on this btw. I am in the same boat, I use WMP to listen to the large music collection and have it save my star ratings with the update process described here. One way I can think of to get your files (without maintaining folder structure) is to search for *.mp3 in your music folder, then sort by rating. You may need to turn on that column. Then just highlight (shift click a span) the 5-star files and then drag or copy-and-paste to your destination. - Jeremy Hall

I do a manual update of media files to my iPod anyway, so I don't have any files in my iTunes library; it is just a media uploader to my iPod. If you are set up this way, then just have the iPod screen open on the iTunes and drop all of your files directly onto the screen and it will copy to the device without having to add to iTunes. - Jeremy Hall

Don't watch much television so TiVo is out but a big check mark on everything else. - m.0 from fftogo

Mobile Phone, iPod, Tivo and PC. - Mike Wills

WiFi - Pat Hawks

Five technologies I can't live without: RSS, Google, Macbook, iPhone, bookmarklets. - Steve Rubel

RSS, SMS, IM, EVDO and HTML! - Marshall Kirkpatrick

DirectTv (the Nfl package is a must), PC, Mobile, iPod, GPS - Mike Kavis

WiFi, dSLR, my Mac, Plumbing, Electricity (low tech is still tech) - Jim Goldstein

PC, GPS, Phone. The iPhone will be all 3 in several years. - Russellreno

Mobile Phone/Email, my Mac, Wifi, iPod, Digital Camera - Stephen Terlizzi

HDTV, Windows Media Center, mobile phone/email, broadband, online maps (more useful than GPS to me) - Ed Bott

iPhone, digital photography, laptop, high-speed internet, *nix - Jeremy Brooks

laptop, SMS, the Internet, Open APIs, portable mp3 player - John F Morton from twhirl

TCP/IP, XHTML, CSS, POP3, and HDTV - Andrew Smith

Xbox 360, my laptop, camcorders, DVRs, mobile phones - Roger Benningfield

mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile - Mary Jo Zilveti from twhirl