What about a product can irritate you?

Other Thiel owners have no doubt struggled with this one: Binding posts under the speaker. What were they thinking?! If you want to swap cables you're basically stuck with repositioning your speakers. If you have them spiked through carpet it's an even bigger chore.

The only benefit I can see to putting the binding posts under the speakers is a slightly cleaner look, but I would trade that for convenience any day.

I have decided against trying different cables many times for this very reason... On second thought maybe it's a good thing.

Stepped volume controls are the pits. It always seems the volume is too loud at one position and too quiet at the next one down. Also, any mechanical noises heard through the speaker, hum and hiss tick me off.

I have a system for removing the wrapping from CDs that works well for me.

First, I run my thumbnail along the front crease where the spine[black plastic on some] and clear front lid join when closed. This is a natural gap that aids in splitting the plastic. From there it is easy to remove the rest of the wrapping.

Second, CDs usually only have that fun tape on one side. So I unhinge the pivot on the opposite side so the lid comes off the CD tray. The only thing holding it to the tray now is the tape, so all you have to do is pull it off the back of the tray, then using the full intact leftover tape as a handle, peel it off the lid.

Very quick and easy once you get the hang of it, and best of all the tape comes off in one piece. No more digging with your fingernail and smearing goopy glue all over the case.

DVD movies are another thing. An Xacto or pocket knife does the trick on those. Just cut a slit between where the front and back meet at the top and bottom of the case. Cut through the tape and wrapping. From there peel everything off. Not quite as neat as the CD trick, but it works just the same.

Gunbei,ill try that next CD i get ,thanks

Gunbei, that's exactly the trick. The guy who showed it to me was a clerk at one of those mini-CD stores in the New Orleans airport. I bought a CD and he claimed he had a trick and was going to try to get into Guiness as the guy who could open the most CDs in the shortest time (or something equally useful...). So anyway, told him to open mine. Probably took him less than 5 seconds, unwrapped, untaped, clean, quick, no fuss, no muss. Now, I'm certainly not as fast, but it definitiely does the job.