Time To Face The Music

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 28, 2008

Nick Galvin; David Flynn

You just need some authorisation to replace lost tunes. Nick Galvin and David Flynn report.

One test to find out which possessions you value most is to consider what you would grab on the way out if your house caught fire. The answer for most people used to be their photo albums, as everything else can be replaced.

Today we're just as likely to grab the laptop on fleeing that hypothetical disaster. From photos and letters to music and household accounts, much of what lurks on the domestic hard drive is irreplaceable.

Which is something Sarah Thomas found out to her cost when she had the digital equivalent of a house fire - a catastrophic failure of her hard drive.

Among all the photos, letters and work documents she lost was her painstakingly assembled iTunes library of about 1600 tunes. And, even worse, about a quarter of these were tunes she had bought from the iTunes store.

Luckily she had a copy of all that music on her iPod but the question was: how to get the tunes back onto a replacement hard drive?

We contacted the ever-helpful John Marx at Apple, who, after briefly pointing out the bleeding obvious (Sarah should have backed up her hard drive regularly), said it was possible to restore the tunes using iTunes 7. The process involves "authorising" the new machine, then connecting the iPod and choosing an option called "transfer purchases".

See docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305465 for the details.

Uploading the remaining tunes (rather than laboriously reripping each CD) is only a little more complicated. To do this you will need a program like Sharepod or iDump26, both of which are available from www.download.com.

Happy listening, Sarah.

Meanwhile, cast your mind back to last year's final Troubleshooter column when we reported on the difficulties faced by Jono Hayward in obtaining the activation code for his copy of Office 2007, which Microsoft is selling to Australian university and TAFE students for $75 under a promotion titled "It's Not Cheating" (www.itsnotcheating.com.au).

Despite registering online, Hayward was unable to log into the site and buy the activation key needed to transform his demo version of Office 2007 into a fully licensed edition.

Several readers had helpful suggestions. TAFE student Kerry Behrendt said she initially had problems registering her software. Her TAFE college was eligible according to the itsnotcheating.com.au website but her login was deemed "ineligible - I guessed that it had something to do with the fact that NSW TAFE students do not have .edu as part of their domain name".

Behrendt contacted the customer service email address listed on the website to draw attention to her quandry and after some follow-up emails her persistence was rewarded with the receipt of an email containing her activation key.

We brought all this to the attention of Microsoft Australia, whose spokeswoman liaised with the US company that provides the back-end fulfilment service for the site.

She confirmed that Hayward's registration was received and his password to log onto the site "should have worked". A customer support representative phoned Hayward, issued a new password and also "logged into his account to place the order for him while he was on the phone". In the end, Hayward received his activation key and all was set to rights.

Can't get satisfaction from your ISP? New laptop on the fritz? Mobile phone provider driving you nuts? Tell us your problem and we'll try to help: email troubleshooter@smh.com.au or visit www.smh.com.au/troubleshooter

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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