last summer I bought a Dell laptop
when I played music in WIndows Media Player, the power settings were overridden and the screen stayed on
Since it was new, I used the live chat option and connected to a Dell service
rep
after all the usual rigamarole, I was told to use policy editor to change the settings
fine
I often use that tool at work so I logged off the chat only to discover that XP Home (the pre-installed OS) does not have the same options as XP Pro and
it was not possible to execute the instructions
this was one of those 'doctor, it hurts when I do this' moments so I stopped using WMP
not a big deal, but revealing

my son's 4 year old laptop bit the dust and rather than buy him a new one, I gave him the Dell and bought myself a new one
This one says Compaq on it but apparently is an HP (the email I got thanked me for registering my new HP)
it has Vista Home Premium
I played an album in WMP and the screen stayed on despite the power settings
feeling brave, I got in a live chat with an HP tech who had a lot more rigamarole to go through than the Dell tech, but eventually told me that the problem was I had the screensaver set to (none)
If I would enable a screensaver, the problem would be solved
I thanked him and tried the solution which did not work

I googled 'windows media player screensaver override' and in moments dicovered that in Tools Options under the Player tab there is a check box that says 'Allow screen saver during playback'
this works like a charm

oh well

A

Well it's 2007 and my laptop says Compaq

A

it's like this

I noted the Compaq/HP thing just because it struck me as odd

when my wife bought a Buick she didn't get a letter thanking her for buying a new General Motors

if HP's marketing plan is to keep the Compaq name alive (it's on my laptop, he said for the third time) then they should thank me for buying a Compaq

that's all

feel free to dwell on other matters of equal cosmic significance

A