I installed Microsoft's Powertoy "Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP" but that failed with a "cannot load image" message. I was at wit's end. Until ...

Finally, I discovered that Microsoft's Live Photo Gallery that is part of Vista and Windows 7 and that does suppot CR2 RAW files was available for Windows XP. Download it here: http://download.live.com/photogallery and then uncheck all the vile software you don't need. Et voila, CR2 RAW support from your explorer in Windows XP.

Whew. That only took me about 2 hours to fix.

---

DISCLAIMER: This hack can potentially harm your Megcos 1182. There is NO known reset procedure should anything go wrong. Hitting the Megcos 1182 HARD is your best bet in case anything goes wrong.

The Megcos 1882 or Musical Cow is able to produce a number of interesting sounds and songs. The nose will generate a "moo" sound and the bell will sound like a cowbell. The A button will sound like a sheep, the B button is reminiscent of a rooster and the C button will sound lilke Zorro's Tornado. The 1 button will make a cellphone-like sound, the 2 button will make you think you're in the London tube (that's the underground for US English afficionados) and the 3 button will make a ticking sound like only a clock can. Each of the A, B, C, 1, 2 and 3 buttons will also play a song. Each of these buttons will alternate between "sound" and "song". The songs themselves will rotate and are the same for all buttons. I can't name all of the songs, but there's 10 of them.

However! There are more possibilities. With a little bit of playing around delving into the User Interface, we were able to extract 12 more sounds! These sounds are the following.

• "A" and "Triangle";
• "B" and "Square";
• "C" and "Circle";
• "1" and "Star";
• "2" and "Heart";
• "3" and "Hexagon".

The way to actually reveal these hidden sounds is to actually slide the "on" button not all the way "on" (or not all the way "off"). Sliding it just far enough will result in the buttons producing the said 12 additional sounds. If you don't slide the button for enough, the normal sounds will continue to sound or you get cut-off versions of the 12 additional sounds.

Also: Hexagon? What 1-year old is going to even reproduce that? HEXAGON! LOLLERSK8Z!

---