Just a quick note about something that just rubs me the wrong way, I’ll setup a scenario.  You are a Vista user, you are listening to some MP3s in Windows Media Player.  You are having a great time.  Time to leave, so just close WMP and off you go…but wait, why is the music still playing?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938415


SYMPTOMS: When you exit Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista, Windows Media Player may not completely shut down. For example, if you are playing music when you exit Windows Media Player, you may continue to hear music.

Well, that seems easy enough right?  Microsoft’s solution:

WORKAROUND: To work around this problem when it occurs, follow these steps to shut down Windows Media Player:
  1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
  2. Click Start Task Manager.
  3. Click the Processestab.
  4. Click the wmplayer.exe process.
  5. Click End Processes, and then click End process.
And that’s it; no more info from MS except that, yeah, we know its a problem.  Have fun using Task Manager!!

I always seem to not have a direct example to point people too when they question why I think Apple’s OS X could probably overtake Windows as the consumer-level operating system of choice in the coming years.  This is just such an example. Sigh.