Rant alert! Now, burning CD's (CD-R's) on a DVD-RW drive should be well established technology right ? Wrong! I have been lumbered with Vista Home Premium on my Laptop (HP DV6836tx). I have some photos I simply want to copy from an SD card to a blank CD-R. The problem revolves around Vista's apparent in-ability to detect the limitation of the type of media to be used. Now, back in the ol'days (just a year ago), I would put a CD-R into a DVD-RW drive and hey presto, XP would tell know that the disc is a CD-R format it accordingly. I would like to remind the technical wonder-kids over in Redmond that CD-R is a write-once media type. But they seem to have trouble counting. "Write once" is not a single event and that means it's not re-writable media (ie not more than once).

Vista does a couple of really (really) dumb things depending how you interact with Windows Explorer when you're writing CD-R's.

Really, (really) dumb thing #1: Whack the CD into the drive, and click on it in Windows explorer, Vista will present you with a dialogue window asking you to format the CD-R in 2 ways. Either A/ "Live File System" which is for re-writable disks, or B/ "Mastered" which is for your classic write-once. Even their (supposed) online "Help" tells you that you can use a CD-R as a re-writable media.

They even say for CD-R media, (and I quote) : "Be able to add and erase files over and over, as if the disc were a floppy disk or USB Flash Drive". But later on they state that a CD-R "You can burn files to a CD-R more than once (each time is referred to as a session), but you can't delete files from the disc. Each burn is permanent."

Regrettably, I thought, ok let's see what magic they have done to make a CD-R re-writable (even though a little voice was screaming, "Dude, it's write once, what are you doing ?"). Well, 80% into the burn, the remaining files can't be written. Hmm.. silly me... maybe it's bad media, 2 more failed discs later, I tried "Mastered". Success! But why can't Vista determine that CD-R is Write-Once ? And why did I permit Vista to trick me into thinking that formatting a CD-R as "Live File System" is ok. No other Disc writing device on this planet can do it. Silly me...

Really (really) dumb thing #2: In case you playing at home, we're onto our 4th CD-R attempt. If you just whack the CD straight into the drive, and not open the drive in Windows Explorer it will sit there quietly without asking you to format it.

If you then drag files straight onto the drive (remember I haven't accessed the drive yet previously), it won't even prompt you to choose the format. It just assumes you want to use the default, (Live File System). 80% into the burn, the remaining files can't be written. D'oh!!!

So the correct procedure to avoid wasting about 4 CD-R's is to, whack the CD into the drive, open it in Windows Explorer, where you will be prompted to format it. Select the "More Detail" option for formatting, and then select "MASTERED" to do a write-once burn. Oh, I forgot to mention, Vista doesn't want to confuse you by those difficult choices, (just 2), and actually hides the choice from you intially, unless you actually select the "More Detail" option, and then select "Mastered". And if you are not on the ball, you will probably forget (like I did one time), and incorrectly format a CD-R again as "Live File System" (arrrgh! Disc number 5 down the toilet!).

Our friends at Microsoft have been making Operating systems for some 20 years now. And this is the best they can do..... They don't seem to know how to determine the type of media in my DVD-RW drive to prevent the wrong form atting type from being selected.

On another disparaging note, I found out that Microsoft is a 75,000-ish person company, and only have about 350-500 guys producing product, the rest do suppport/training/marketing/writing spin/defending law-suits/what-ever. No wonder stoopid product goes out their front door, when you produce umpteen versions of Vista, and fragment under-manned teams, I don't think anyone coherently knows what their products do any more.....I need to go lie down now...