Update:
I gave up on the Music Library software. I found that it just wasn’t user friendly enough for my limited software skills, patience and general dislike of computers. The way you configure the changers and the SAVR seamed to be problematic as well. The software tried to ‘assist’ the changers instead of taking complete control. The software and changers just seamed to fight one another. There may be ways around this, but again, I’m not patient enough to screw with the software.
So I figured after dumping this much time and money into a PC controlled system for these changers, I might as well try the software from Panther Studios. They have two versions that they sell. Title Track Jukebox and Music!. A few emails later, I found out that they are discontinuing the TTJ software and recommended that I try Music! Plus, Music! Is on sale right now for $75 down from $109. A few minutes later I had it downloaded and installed on the laptop.
I had horrific troubles with the installation. Come to find out, I had three worms on the laptop and the Trojan Horse virus as well. I was being cheap and didn’t update my virus software, figuring that the laptop wouldn’t ever be used for email and that my router would block any hackers. Guess I was wrong. I had to spend a few hours killing worms and viruses, updating windows, cleaning the hard drive……blah, blah, blah……things I just hate to do. I then had to un-install the music software and re-install it. But, I had to go into the directory to manually remove some files that the un-install program wouldn’t remove or got corrupted because of the viruses. It was a long day. Lesson learned – keep the virus software up to date. Two days later we had the software up and running. My laptop troubles made things pretty weird and Dean (Music! software writer) worked with me to get things straightened out. He had me in the RegEdit and cd.. directory installing / deleting things. – I know nothing about this part of computer use, really. Don’t want to either….ever. I can’t say enough about Dean. If I was him, I’d have given me my money back just to get me to quit asking questions.
We are working out another bug that for some reason or other, I am getting error messages when I try to download the cover art. Dean is thinking it has something to do with my earlier virus problems and is going over error log files. He is confident that we will resolve the issues and I am confident that he’ll figure it out. If I have to, he has offered to work on the laptop in person if I send it to him.
Other than the cover art thing, the software is very, very cool and easy to use. The manual is very helpful and the software is updated all the time with new features. It’s pretty close to Windows Media with similar interface. I can fade in / fade out, drag and drop song, artists, and albums into play lists, or play the pre-populated genres, albums or artists.
