It's official. Windows Media Player 11 sucks.
I don't understand the point of upgrading something when it's just going to make life harder. This piece-o-crap is not very user friendly, and not only does it make it incredibly difficult to sort music out that is labeled as "unknown", but it also makes it hard to sort ANYTHING into whatever slot you want to put it into. I wish I could explain things more fully, but I seem to lack the capability to do so. Also, I can't stand the new layout. I dunno why, maybe it's because the " classic" look of Windows Media Player 10 worked out so well and you could manipulate so much in it, or I've been using Windows Player Media10 for about a year to a year and half before I was finally forced by my Mp3 player to switch to the new crap version.
You may be wondering "Why the bloody heck is she ranting about a music player??", and the poster would be asking that same question herself were she not trying to make a point. The point is this: in an attempt to make life easier and more "comfortable" for everyone, we're either constantly rehashing updated versions of old ideas or we're introducing some sort of fresh new idea into the mix, which just throws everyone off and makes people confused. The result? Thicker instructional manuals used to explain things that we once knew how to work but now have been completely altered, new, more complex layouts, and people complaining about the new thicker instructional manuals and the new, more complex layouts. The new version of Internet Explorer just proves that point (minus the manuals). The people over in Micro$oft or whatever other money leech corporation did not only royally screw with the layout of an Internet that has been used for over a decade (or so) now; they completely threw away the old layout and replaced it with a new, much less user friendly layout that has you clicking all over the frickin' place trying to find the history, favorites, and other such buttons that used to be blatantly in display in the elderly versions of Internet Explorer. It took me about 3 days to figure out and memorize where everything was, and let me tell you, I was not a happy camper about this whole new radical change. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against most types of change; however, I also believe that you shouldn't fix something that is not broken, and Internet Explorer Version Confusing and Windows Media Player Crap prove that exact point.
And manuals... It's completely understandable to have a manual to help you put something together, like say, a chair, so that you won't have to worry about falling flat on your arse the first time you sit on it, but as far as house hold appliances and other such electronic things go, manuals should not be needed. You know it's getting ridiculous when you need to read the manual to be able to operate your dishwasher or mess around on your electric piano keyboard. I kid you not, the instruction manual for my keyboard was about 20-30 pages long, and when we first moved here I could've sworn I actually saw a parental unit using a manual to try and figure out how to work some setting on the dishwasher. Another thing that's just as ludicrous is the size of the manual for those graphing calculators. I don't think that I have ever seen a manual monstrosity as awful as that of the graphing calculator. Not only is it pretty thick for a calculator, but the writing is ant-print tiny, so if you try reading the blasted thing and you did not need classes prior, you will after you get done with reading your calculator's instructional manual. (And it'd make for an incredibly embarrassing reason to get glasses too…) And for every new gadget that come out on the market, a 50-100 page whopper of an instructional manual is sure to follow. My proposal to the companies who make such gadgets is this: stop making gadgets that are so gosh darned complicated to figure out how to work and maybe, just maybe, you'll get less calls about how to work the thing. If companies get it through their heads that there is a very small minority of people in our population that actually has the patience and bravado to read the instructional manual, then they'd maybe start saving some trees.
So... my opinion of technology is that it's actually making life harder for us, at least for the moment. After all, there are many many people who can identify with having to spend hours on end trying to figure how to use a certain gadget that they got for Christmas, their birthday, or whatever. I'm hopeful that one day upgrades will actually be something that makes life easier for us all, but until we have a really good handle on technology, that day won't be coming for quite a while.