Like many of you, I slave over my computer, day in and day out. Unlike many of you, I write about this for a living. And while it may seem like a cool thing to do, the reality is that it's just like any other job: You show up, do what you gotta do, and get out of there as soon as possible. Unfortunately, when you work from home as I've been doing for over five years now, "as soon as possible" is almost always never: It's hard to separate work from play when the computer is right there in the next room.

When we were still living in Phoenix and my son Mark was very young, we had a one-story home, which is the norm in that part of the country. A few years ago, we moved back to the Boston area, which is where we're from originally, and we now live in a two story house, which is more usual here. I sometimes joke that my commute has thus doubled, because I now have to walk downstairs in the morning to go to work. My wife--who commutes four days a week into Boston--finds this sort of humor trying.

Epiphanies are made of this
Anyway... as described in the book's preface, I had an epiphany a year ago (at the time of this writing, which is Summer 2001) about computers. Over the past few years, a quiet revolution has been taking place. The computer--which has always been a great tool for getting work done and playing video games--had suddenly transcended into a new genre. I first wrote about this transformation--and my epiphany about it--in Windows 2000 Magazine UPDATE, in a July 11, 2000 article aptly titled Welcome to the digital age. In this article, I wrote:

I've never really understood digital photography, let alone the even more complicated subject of digital video, which seems to require knowledge of Firewire interfaces or bizarre specialty video input cards. But I've got a two year old son, and I'm still fairly young, and that means I'm a potential customer. I've grown accustomed enough to digital cameras, which we've had at the past few tradeshows, to actually consider buying one. And I think I'm going to do it.

Yeah, I am going to do it.

This decision--to fully embrace this digital reality--was not made lightly. It will require giving up some of the more traditional "media," such as music CDs and paper photographs. It will be rough going at first. But this isn't the future, not really. Because this stuff is all available now. My wife voiced concerns about the digital camera, wondering how we would show pictures to friends or relatives. But we don't really know that many people without Web access, let alone computers, and it's possible to buy relatively cheap color printers that can output photographic-quality prints. Heck, my father has one (and that's embarrassing enough, really). The first step is already well underway: I'm archiving my CD collection online. A digital camera, after some comparative investigation, should be easy to come by, though the thought of scanning in all, or at least many, of my old photographs isn't exactly exciting. After that, I'll look at digital video. I don't understand it at all, but there's no rush. The change is happening, and that's what ultimately matters.

So while the thought of trusting my memories to Windows has me wondering more about backup programs than the number of "Mega Pixels" (whatever that is) my new camera will have, there is something satisfying about knowing that this is all finally coming together. I'm not sure if this puts me back in the computing mainstream, and I'm not sure that I care. But I sort of enjoy the thought that this box could actually come to fulfill its promise for once. And if I happen to learn something more about this fascinating technology along the way, all the better.

A week later, I followed up this article with a look at the technologies that then existed to enable this digital media future. The pickings were slim: A once-promised consumer version of Windows 2000 never materialized, and though Microsoft's consumer-oriented follow-up to Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), had its heart in the right place, it was based on the old Windows 9x code-base, and was therefore buggy and unreliable.

But it won't always be [this way]. The [upcoming] Whistler release promises to finally bridge that gap. And then this discussion will be largely academic. When Microsoft finally pulls off this transition--late though it may be--it will be one of the company's most under publicized success stories.

Making it happen
And with that, I set out to embrace this still-emerging digital media future. First up was audio CDs--I had a collection of hundreds, and encoding them in MP3 format onto my computer was the simplest, and most effective move I could make. It was also time-consuming: I investigated a number of applications for this purpose, ultimately settling on RealNetworks' RealJukebox. In early 2001, I switched to Windows Media Audio (WMA) version 8 format, however, as documented in the book.

My CD recording odyssey took months to finish. I would sometimes do dozens a day, and then tire of it, and take a few weeks off. Eventually, however, I got my entire CD collection on the computer, and I've spent much of the time since late 2000 simply cleaning up the ID3 tags and other metadata for each music file so that they appear (and sort) correctly in Windows Media Player. It's a lot of work.

Digital photography was another no-brainer. On a trip to Montreal a decade ago, I forgot my SLR camera and bought a point and click, expecting to return it after the trip. But the pictures were so beautiful--and effortless--that I never picked up the expensive and difficult SLR again, and it gathers dust in a closet to this day. So upgrading to a digital camera was an easy transition, and we can order prints online when we need standard paper-based photographs.

Digital video was the longest time coming. When my first child was born in April 1998, we purchased an analog 8mm video camera, and used that with a Dazzle video device to get our home movies onto the computer. The quality was lousy, but at least we could get it done. Finally, the camera died an untimely death, and rather than replace it with another 8mm model, we went MiniDV in early 2001 and haven't look back since. I've recorded numerous movies onto the hard drive in full resolution and stereo sound, and have recently begun creating Video CDs (VCDs) that can be played in any DVD player. When DVD +RW comes down in price, I'll be making real DVD movies. It's pretty exciting.

What you can do
As I describe in the book, it's easy to spend a lot of money on this stuff if you want to. Digital cameras and camcorders, flash memory, voluminous hard drives, and scanners all cost big bucks. But you can ease into this transition however you like, a little bit at a time. High quality scanners can be had for under $100, giving you the ability to digitize your most important photographs, for example. If you want to experiment with digital video and not spend $1000, you can get a $50 USB dongle and hook your VCR or TV right to the computer, and record whatever you'd like. The point here is that it's not hard to get going on a budget. And you can do this one piece at a time.

The key to this puzzle, of course, is Windows XP, which enables even the most inexperienced user to work with digital photographs, music, and video in fairly elegant ways, all without the need for any third party software. Windows XP is the realization of many dreams, but to me the most important revolves around digital media. Windows XP makes your PC fun again.

In the book, I separate these digital media subjects into digestible chunks, so you read what you need, in any order. And if you go down the path I have over the past year or so, and take back your personal computer, turning it into something that's actually valuable and fun, then more power to you. In the end, that's what it's all about.

(c) 2001-2002 Paul Thurrott. All Rights Reserved.
This site created entirely with Windows XP and FrontPage 2002.