With all the opinions, assumed problems, brands, types, and style of washing machines these days, its important to get a perspective of what exactly is being compared. With strict government energy guidelines, manufacturers are forced to comply and reengineer products to meet that criteria. The difficult task is manufacturing a product that still cleans, uses much less water, and promoting it in such a way it still sells. None of this information is new but it goes a long way into understanding what is being compared. Their are distinct categories of washing machines each with specific positives and negatives. Traditional Front Load Washer-Excellent cleaning, Uses plenty of water for effective cleaning , Average Cycle times, Gentle on Clothes, and finished load quality is better and softer. The later is directly related to having sufficient immersion of the load in plenty of water. Water temperatures are not locked down or lowered to meet current standards. Average life span is 10 years or more. HE Front Load Washer-Very Good cleaning, Substandard amount of water used, Long Cycle times, Harder on clothing because of the lack of water and friction of the garments creates lint and pilling issues in some instances. Finish load quality is harsh. (Scratchy towel syndrome) Clothes tend to wear out quicker. Dumbed Down water temps. (Hot is the new warm, warm is cool, and cool is cold) None of the new HE machines that I know of offer a 100% tap Hot fill. Average life span 7 - 10 years. Traditional Top Load Agitator Style-Excellent cleaning. Ridiculous amount of water usage. Short cycle times. Gentler on clothing than HE Top Loader and HE Front Loaders. Excellent lint and pet hair redisposition than all other types of machines. All other machines lack a recirculation water pump and lint filter. Temperatures not dumbed down and limited to Hot water supply temperature. Average life span 15-25 years. HE Top Loader-Below average cleaning. Moderate Cycle times. Tangles and knots clothing. Average amount of water usage but not enough for a vertical axis machine to properly clean. Dumbed Down water temps. Average life span 5-7 years. Build quality in all the new HE machines is virtually identical, neither here nor there. With the exception of Miele and Speed Queen which by far is superior. Unfortunately Speed Queen failed to keep pace with the technology and marketing over the years and are really not in pace with the competition. They are not available in mainstream big box or other retail but through a dealer only arrangement. If it wasn't for their share in coin-op commercial they most likely would have been bought out long ago. They were not mainstream in the 70's, 80's, and later years when top loaders were all the rage, while Kenmore, Whirlpool, Maytag, GE emerged as the market leaders. Today Samsung, LG have gobbled the market share with Whirlpool and it's acquired sub brands now trying to keep pace. Miele just isn't an option in the U.S. and didn't compete very well when introduced to this market years ago. Lack of service, capacity, and features. They too were dwarfed by the Korean competition. So there's a lot to consider when deciding if you like or dislike your current machine. I liked all my machines, commercial, very old double Dexter wringer, old style top loader, conventional front loader, and yes there are even things I like about my HE front loader. I would like it a lot better if government would QUIT placing ridiculous regulations on laundry equipment. When you have to use a work around to get the appliance to do what it was meant to do, we are moving backwards!

As an add on to this conversation regarding emergencies. Make sure your cell has reverse 911 (if available) for city/county emergencies. We lost many in fires who did not have this and got caught in fire storms and mud slides/flash floods. In these situations the danger was known, news reports gave information that the location was far enough away to give them some time for getting out, albeit a very short time. Emergency personnel going to so many homes was burdening the ability to get to all and in some cases not possible to do so. You need to sign up for reverse 911, registration should be for each phone. The use is for more than just natural devastations. Once the call/message is answered it won't repeat the information. Our city just started this last year due to the floods and fires. Most land lines already had the option. Check to see if you have this available, many cities are still working on activation. Also, somewhere in the last few years I remember having mobile phones connected to a main unit inhouse. Nothing worked when electric went out, so yes to the battery backup or the wonderful phone you found. I also took out the kitchen unit for tiling and it shut down the other connections. So make sure you don't mess with the main line, perhaps just cover it up with something that matches the backsplash and can be removed. Landlines are not available in my neighborhood area either, connections are strictly for electronic use. I never considered this until mentioned here. And now remember when my kids told me it was time to just go cell and get rid of the landline. But I'm not good at knowing where the cell is most of the time and unless it rings couldn't tell you on a moments notice. Doesn't bear well for emergencies either way since I'm the only one here. Tethered is not going to happen, out of reach does me little good if there were an emergency. How do others handle this one?

I usually just let the whining go on since it's like people slamming their fingers in a car door and complaining it hurts. Try to tell them but they often won't do anything about it. Sometimes it's more fun to complain than to solve the issue I suspect. Before going off half-cocked and blaming innocent parties, please educate yourself and use some common sense. Opera, Chrome and Firefox all will enable you to effectively block ads. If you won't change you accept the problems and shortcomings of the browser you choose. A number of us have preached till the milk sours but somehow it has little if any impact for whatever reason. The other thing that doesn't make sense is coming on and ranting to boycott something without so much as saying what your problem is with the company! There's likely some people who'll walk in lockstep like lemmings to the sea but I won't. Make your case. Convince me. Most of us will listen to the reasons and if they're reasonable can be persuaded. But "boycott" only? You're only shooting yourself in the foot. And you're off-base blaming Nabisco for the ad and boycotting them. If you want to boycott someone, your logical choice is to boycott THS. They put the ads up, presuming this is the basis of your boycott. Nabisco buys ads from a places and they generally buy ad time on places like Google, Kontera and other web ad places. Nabisco likely has never heard of Gardenweb, nor any of the people posting here. "Dream on, these ads are sanctioned by GW and no matter what ad blocker your running, you get the ad... " Bull. I don't get these ads nor any of the multitude of problems others complain about nearly daily. I run Opera, Chrome, K-meleon and Firefox. No dream. Fact. "In the last 6 months I bet I have sent 20 emails to GW about their pop up ads,,and it seems to fall on deaf ears.." As said, they're going to raise revenue (they have to) and thinking that you can email a corporation and get them to change their policies to make money is as short-sighted as thinking you can complain to a CEO of a fast food restaurant about a bad cheeseburger or a rude cashier and get their attention. "I would not necesarily boycot Nabisco,,,but if we were to all email Nabisco and tell them that we are contemplating boycotting them as a result of their advertising policies I have every confidence they would quickly get in touch with GW and put a stop to it..Lets be honest, GW runs those adds to pay their bills and if they have a major advertiser threatenting to pull a contract I am sure changes would happen relatively quickly." I give you credit for recognizing that Nabisco is not the villain here but, uh, methinks you overestimate your power a bit. They will (and properly) advise you to contact the website with whom you have the dispute and take the issue up with them. People need to learn to place blame in the right place. And learn how to complain effectively. It would help lower their blood pressure a lot if they did. It's like a friend of mine who gets sick every time he eats mushrooms, yet every time he goes out to eat, he gets something with fungus on it. Then he blames the restaurant! And (yes) talks about essentially boycotting that restaurant because they must be giving him food poisoning! LOL You want to stop the ads? Here's a simple way. Buy Gardenweb and remove them. Problem solved! That is until someone posts a recipe someone else doesn't like and sends you an email that they're boycotting Volkswagens because of it.

It's true that no matter what tag database is used, the supplied information can have problems. Not usually with the big name, blockbuster mainstream albums - which for me I might cite Sgt Pepper's, Hotel California, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and similar others - but rather the ones where the name is ambiguous, there are multiple different albums with the same name, or the album is a bit more obscure and less known. But sometimes even with well known, popular ones. There is a freeware program - contributions welcome at the downloaders option - called MP3tag. The name is misleading, it can edit and change tags for all types of sound files. MP3tag will access databases MusicBrainz and Discogs for tag info, album art, or both, at the user's choice. It's easy to use. As I said before, tag editing is essential and quite often becomes a manual rather than automatic exercise. Other than the auto ripping devices which themselves can be kludgy with sometimes undesired compromises, I know of no shortcuts. I was able to do it over a long period of time as a side effort when working on PCs. Sometimes feeding in CDs one after another while doing other things, then going back a week later to edit tags. I've always used a separate folder for each album and have them as branches off of a higher level that is by artist. For classical music, I have it organized by composer, then by artist or orchestra or conductor, then by album It's worth the effort to clean up your metadata, you'll have your music everywhere you want it and with easy and swift access to everything you have. There's another corollary programs I use to make random playlists, or genre-flavored playlists or theme playlists, for focused variety. That's a topic for another thread.