Another reason why I don’t believe in music pre-order

I have mentioned a few times before on my blog that I am a non-believer in pre-ordering music CDs before they come out. While it fully makes sense to pre-order something like a DVD of a movie you’ve seen and enjoyed, or to pre-order the sequel of a book series that you are following, music can take a variety of directions, even coming from an artist that you have enjoyed for a long time.

A recent example of this for me is when one of my favorite electronica music groups, The Crystal Method, released their latest album entitled Divided by Night a few weeks ago. I have completely loved their first three albums, but was completely disappointed by their most recent effort. The tone of their music was way too much pop-ish, with guest vocalists ruining a lot of the tracks that are typically more instrumental in nature with the band. The rythms wre also way too light compared to their usual gritty sound. I had been tempted to pre-order a few weeks ago when I saw that you could get one or two extra tracks by doing so but resisted when I listened to the excerpt of the first single and was taken abak by the pop-feel of the track. My suspicions were confirmed when I listened to the full album on the AOL Listening Party Web Site.

The moral of the story is that I will stick to ordering CDs after they get released and I can at least get 30-second sound clips on all tracks, if not get the chance to listen to the full CD before I decide if I’m going to buy it. I did pre-order the new Dave Matthews Band CD that is coming out in two weeks but those guys have never disappointed me in about 10 CDs (studio and live) so I think that’s a pretty safe bet. Everything else will wait to get a good feel before I buy.

Trying out Windows 7 and enjoying it so far

If you haven’t heard yet, the new version of Windows is right around the corner. After having a ton of issues plague the Windows Vista operating system to the point that most people did not want to use it even if they had never seen it in their life, Windows 7 is trying to be a much more stable, more faster, more efficient operating system.

To create a buzz around the new OS and gather feedback, Microsoft decided to completely open up the download of their Release Candidate. You can download it for free from their web site (around 2.5 GB), burn it on a DVD-ROM and install it on as many computers as you want. Once this is done, you will be able to run the new OS until March 2010, at which point it will start shutting down after 2 hours of use. It will then completely stop working in July 2010. Still, from May to March is still a good 9-10 months of use!

After running the new OS for a few days, I can honestly say that I like it. It has not crashed on me once. Most applications that I have tried installing have worked without any hassle. Finally, the new user interface concepts that Windows 7 introduces are really enjoyable. For example, instead of having large buttons on the task bar for applications that are running, the new OS only shows the icons. Even more, if you have an application pinned to the task bar for quick access, starting it up will only change the color of the icon, not create a separate element on the task bar. Here is a quick snapshot of my desktop with a few windows up.

At this pace, I am going to really be considering getting an upgrade to the new OS when it’s released before the year is out. I just hope that they keep the upgrade price reasonable (CAD $100-130) as it currently is with Vista.

My Star Trek movie review

With two young kids, we don’t often get to see movies in theatres these days. However, we took the time to alternate seeing the new Star Trek movie when it came out this week. You can read my impressions, in French, of the movie here. If french is not your thing, then the short version of it is that is a great movie that does very well at respecting the original series while providing us with a very entertaining story line.