This is the first in an occasional series from Sidepodcast, giving you a behind the scenes look at podcasting, specifically in the Formula 1 genre. We want to share the pitfalls, the problems, and the triumphs that go into making the show what it is. As this is a joint effort, to provide you with both sides of the story, I will be writing in plain text, whilst the geeky one will add his two cents in italics.

I've always been on the PC side of the Mac vs. PC debate. I appreciate everything that a Mac is and I will gladly stand up and say it is easier to use, has some stunning applications, makes you want to create stuff, and is generally just better than a PC. But, I am a control freak and there’s something about Finder that puts me off. The thought of it makes me anxious. How will I ever find anything? The file structure, it scares me.

I did use a Mac for about six months a few years ago, and I don’t remember it being a problem, but just a simple glimpse of the Finder icon brings me out in cold sweats.

True. As a person sitting on the Mac side of the debate, I'd agree that the worst thing about Apple's operating system is file navigation. It's better in the new version, but still geared to finding files rather than organising them correctly in the first place.

I had a PC laptop and life was good. Then, gradually, it wasn’t so good. It was slow, there wasn’t enough hard drive space, and sometimes the screen wouldn’t start when you switched it on. I was getting frustrated, and I needed to upgrade.

I knew about Vista. Trust me. I'd listened to enough TWiT podcasts to know that Vista left a lot to be desired. But I figured that the little annoyances everyone seemed to be talking about were worth the fact that I would be upgrading to better hardware.

Ha.

Very, very silly.

Soon after Vista was my operating software of choice, I started to hear audio glitches whilst creating podcasts. Some of them were simple 'clicks' on playback, some were 'pops' in the recording. There was the occasional glitch in recording that was much, much worse, almost as though it had skipped a word. If it was a tape, I’d imagine that the tape had folded over on itself and covered up a second of recording. So far, I’ve been using my editing skills to the max to either chop out the damaged audio, or at least minimise the effects.

Can't say I've noticed, so you must've done a pretty good job. What I have noticed is the incessant swearing coming from your direction since the upgrade, so I imagine it hasn't been much fun.

Obviously, we've been narrowing down where the problem actually occurs but all the signs point to how Adobe Audition works with Windows Vista. The download trial of Audition 3 was supposed to be my saviour, but the glitches still occur, and there's another problem to add to the mix.

Load up Audition and it works fine. After five minutes, it gets sticky and slow. You’re moving something, you’re clicking somewhere, and it takes a second or two to catch up. It sounds like nothing when I’m writing it down, but it is not at all practical, and I find myself having to restart the software. Every. Five. Minutes.

Ahh, the Adobe approach to software development strikes again. Release early and patch later sounds familiar. It's a shame because Audition 2 was a great bit of software, version 3 is sadly worse than useless.

It seems like the only way to work with Microsoft at the moment is to downgrade everything. Audition 3 is bad, so stick with Audition 2. Vista is laughable, better to stick with XP. I just can't fathom how a company as big as Microsoft could be satisfied to produce something so bad that it's better not to upgrade.

Personally I blame Bernie, not for any specific reason, but it must be his fault somehow.

I heard PC World's hardware sales recently dropped so low, that they had to re-introduce XP machines to the shelves. A rather embarrassing affair all round. don't worry though a new OS will be available in a few years.

Like I said at the start, I’ve always been on the PC side of Mac vs PC. But now...