Odds & Ends: Sound Blaster & Spin Doctor conflict; VPC & Jeppesen conflict; SmartMedia death; more

Sound Blaster and Spin Doctor conflict confirmed Roxio Tech Support received the following email: "Sound Blaster drivers and Spin Doctor appear to be incompatible. Specifically, I can hear the audio in and watch the LEDs move, but when I push the record button, the program freezes up and I have to force quit to regain control of the computer. I tried turning off all the SB extensions and drivers, but this time Spin Doctor could not recognize any audio. It was however, able to record and function normally otherwise." Roxio confirms: "We have duplicated the problem."

VPC and Jeppesen Flight Star conflict confirmed Howard Tobin writes: "I have been running Jeppesen Flight Star version 8.3 on Virtual PC version 3 with no difficulty. When I upgraded to version 4, I immediately began seeing horizontal lines in the maps in the mercatur and horizontal projections (these are vector driven maps). When other map configurations were shown, the lines disappeared." Connectix replied: "This is a problem we have become aware of and we are currently working to develop a fix."

Avoiding SmartMedia card "death" An article on imaging-resource.com states: "We've noticed a number of reports from readers of SmartMedia cards mysteriously dying after a relatively short period of use." The article goes on to offer advice. Michael Go summarizes: "Apparently, Smart Media cards (and to a lesser extent, CF cards) get really jumbled up when their file contents are manipulated by any OS (Mac or Windows) other than the digital camera's. This site recommends doing any housekeeping functions (adding, deleting, modifying, etc.) solely on the digital camera, reformatting every so often, and leaving the computer to read off the Smart Media or Compact Flash only."

Acrobat 5 install problem: a follow-up Following up on our previous report of problems installing Acrobat 5, Rick Zeman writes: "I had almost the same situation: upgrading from 4.05a to 5.0. In my case, the installer would proceed all the way through its installation - and then delete the Acrobat folder it just installed. Adobe Tech Support said that they've heard of a few instances of this happening and some reported that the following worked: Delete all traces of Acrobat 4 per Tech Doc #323837. Rebuild your desktop, then copy the Acrobat 5 installer files to your hard drive and run the installer with your 4.0 CD in the CD drive." Indeed, this is consistent with the advice we noted for a Photoshop upgrade.

MP3 ID3 Tags: What Are They? TIL article 25293 defines the ID3 tag (versions 1 and 2) that may be part of an MP3 file, why the tag's information may appear scrambled, and how to change the tag's format with iTunes.