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There is the option to sysprep the box (after doing an install with lots of slipstreamed drivers), then Ghost it.

Google "sysprep ghost" and "nlite tutorial".

The classic Ghost info source:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

SATA controllers may be set in ATA mode in BIOS to allow OS installs without the SATA controller drivers, which may be installed later.

Norton Ghost isn't free, it's about $70. That's the difference between an upgrade and a full version for some flavors of vista. Though I guess there are free alternatives to ghost. Either way, ghosting is not for the average user.

This guy is full of complete and utter bullshit. Almost every helpdesk I've had any dealings with, and two I've worked at, recommend SpyBot and Ad-Aware incessantly. I've never seen it damage a system. The only problems I've ever had with either is that they occasionally can break winsock when removing some particularly annoying spyware. There's utilities that easily fix the damaged registry keys however.

Plus, this persons example makes NO SENSE. Why would spybot go crazy after an image was restored, but not before, unless Ghost (AKA Drive Image) did something wrong when making/restoring the image? Not to mention that Ghost 10 (Aka Drive Image) has a long history of generating corrupt images when making them while running the system. This is a documented problem on many Ghost and Drive Image forums and Symantec has demonstrated that it doesn't care. (See http://ghost.radified.com/) Hot-imaging is a non-feature prone to making bad images.

I find all players with memory sticks, memory cards and harddisks way too expensive. The good old portable 12cm CD players are much more affordable. They start at $30 including shipping (see for example pricewatch). CD-R's at a price of $11/100 disks incl. shipping are almost for free. I would also not like to constantly upload music onto the memory or harddisk every time I am in the mood for something else. But, over time I got a bit tired of the bulky disks. So I decided to go for 8cm instead of 12cm. The 8cm disks are handy, the player is not much larger, both fit into a pocket and they occupy almost no space on the desk. There are cute little wallets for the mini CD available, too. The only thing that bothers me a bit is the limited capacity of 8cm CD's. 200+ MB (units) is barely enough for two albums compressed as MP3's with variable bit rate (EAC+Lame). For a long, good concerto the capacity is sometimes only sufficient for one Audio-CD. So, what I really like to see is a tiny MP3-player for 8cm DVD's. Those little 8cm DVD's have a capacity of about 1.5 GB and their price beats any memory stick and harddisk. Unfortunately most regular (12cm) DVD players would not play MP3 files from an ISO 9660/UDF formatted hybrid, thus I expect this could be a problem for the little players, too. But, I think a little bit of good will and better firmware can make all the difference. If someone knows about such a portable 8cm DVD MP3-player, then please let us know. IMHO that would be a great alternative to all those hundred+ dollar gadgets. Anything is fine with me, except SONY. Otherwise I think that would be a great new product for the market and hope someone picks up the idea, wouldn't it?

Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port

You asked for suggestions on IDEs? I use IBM's free Eclipse with QNX's free C/C++ extension called CDT everyday on both linux and windose (Well actually my buddy uses the linux port). It is phenomenal and getting better everyday. I am using a old borland compiler but you can use any C/C++ compiler you want including gcc. I don't program in the .Net world but I am pretty sure there is a .Net plugin somewhere. And if you can't find one you can write one pretty quickly with IBM's plugin development perspective.

I'm into rippin' my CDs for my Turtle Beach Audiotron (fair use, RIAA jerks) so I also am not without EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip beautifully to .wav, LAME to convert to .mp3, MP3Gain to normalize, and ID3-Taggit to manage tags and filenames. Details

Sigh.

It's interesting to note, since you brought up optical illusions, that there are similar phenomenon with respect to the ear. One such example are Shepard tones. I suppose other examples would be those that are the basis for some clever tricks that the Vorbis codec (and others?) use to compress music audio.

See: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/ http://www.videoguys.com (retailer but has great guides and forum) http://www.radified.com (guides to alot of stuff)

This codec was developed by a German student in his spare time. He was dissatisfied with the quality of MP3, so made his own better codec.

Look at the MPEGplus home page for more information.

It achieves better compression than MP3 with better sounding results.

Also check out these webpages where other people have gone through a lot of trouble to compare audio codecs: Eric Mrozek's Audio Compression Page
Radified Guide to non-MP3 Encoders for CD Audio