Windows: life without walls

I have written about Vista's poor public image before, and a recent innovative advertising strategy Microsoft took to sell vista, called the Mojave Experiment.

Today, Microsoft has launched a new campaign to promote Vista, which is a stellar operating platform btw. It's called Windows: life without walls, and there are some print ads available, check it out:



The concept here is really interesting, cool and funky, but more than visual appearance, I think it really captures the essence of the "Vista life". Over this year, I've really come to embrace Vista fully, as a superb and dependable OS. And you should too. I use the Mac on a daily basis, and I know of swarms of friends who have recently "converted" to the Mac too, but you know what? Vista's as great... and this advertisement says it all: life without walls.

What Microsoft promises you are a plethora of choices to select from: both hardware and software. Unlike Macs, you are not tied down to a closed system of hardware. You can choose from a million computers on Windows from so many manufacturers, including tablet PCs, and configure them in almost any way you want (often cheaper than a Mac too). On the software side, Vista offers you so many configuration options and allows for personalisation of your desktop more than the OS X does. It has awesome multimedia capabilities with Windows Media Centre, and coupled with Windows Live and the new suite of "Wave 3" software, you will be connected with friends like never before. Windows Live is a huge part of the Windows ecosystem, and exemplifies Microsoft's "Software + Services" approach as a stepping stone toward full cloud computing. Not to mention Vista is also the platform for the amazing Zune music player, which I've heard (and strongly believe) is the better device over the iPod for pure music enthusiasts.

This is what you should know about Vista. Not the lies that the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads churn out, not the BSODs, or the incompatibility, or the horror stories you hear when Vista first shipped. All that's changed dramatically... no longer do I scorn on PCs the way I did 2 years ago. I have two systems running Vista at home, and use them as often as the Mac. I'm proud to be a PC user!

Toshiba Satellite Pro L300 first looks

As part of my team's win in the international ThinkQuest website design competition, we each received a laptop from Oracle! This 700USD laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro L300, a 15.4 inch widescreen business machine.


The model name is a bit of a misnomer... although is says 'pro', the truth is this is a simple, no frills, budget notebook. But don't get me wrong, the L300 is an affordable and serious machine with respectable features for its price.

But first, this is how it looks: grey lid, un-funky colours, very typical business laptop...












The L300 retails with a variety of technical configurations, including an AMD version (yuck) and the normal Intel chips. My model is an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.0GHz, with a standard 1GB 667MHz RAM, standard 160GB 5400rpm HDD, and lousy integrated graphics that I can't even remember.

On the Windows Experience Index, the L300 had a (pathetic) lowest subscore of 3.0, thanks to the graphics chipset which won't run Aero well. The harddisk yielded the best subscore of 5.2, while processor got a 4.9. I'll be upgrading this thing to 3GB RAM soon; 1GB is anything but sufficient.

Nonetheless, there are some positive things about this machine. Firstly, the 15.4 inch widescreen is one of the better ones I've seen for this price range. It's big, bright and clear, making it absolutely gorgeous to view photos. There is also a SD/memory stick card slot in front! And it is blessed with 3 USB ports, a well designed keyboard and a DVD RW drive.

Battery life is average at around 3 hours, and so is its weight. While it doesn't feel heavy like stone, it is not very light either. You wouldn't want to use this as a mobile road warrior, as it is quite big in size, but I can imagine this on the office table for general usage. When I start to nitpick, I would wish this was much thinner, the screen less thick, and the mouse button less stiff. Other than that, this is your standard laptop but with solid construction, good ergonomics and some very useful features.



On the software side, this L300 came pre-installed with Vista Business edition, which is the right way to go. Although Toshiba offers an XP Pro version, I think Vista is the future and everyone should run Vista. It's more secure, has more functionality, and from an aesthetics standpoint, more eye-candy.

What I wasn't too pleased about was the preloaded junk programs. The Toshiba DVD software stuff is fine, but what isn't fine is Picasa 2 photo editing software (I'll never use that), the Google Desktop search and toolbar in IE, and some other crap that I can't remember. This is bad... these unnecessary software clutter up the machine, take up disk space, slow down performance, and I won't use those programs!! It also does come with Norton 360 60 day trial, which is more acceptable since I'd want to use that, and also Office 07, which is fine too, but apart from that, the other bloatware isn't acceptable! Toshiba should learn from Sony and allow customers to opt out of these software and just have the OS installed.

You might feel differently about the extra software, and you may like it for the added functionality out of the box, but not for me. I like to install what I want to use. But overall, this is a truly utilitarian laptop, not outstanding but gets the job done. And for the low asking price, this is perhaps one of the better 15 inch widescreen business notebooks around.

Strictly NOT for gaming!

Google android phone

I read on the iToday app on my iPod touch that the first Google Android phone will debut on September 23. The open source phone OS will run on a HTC phone. I took a screenshot of the article:



Google is essentially taking on the Windows Mobile approach, where software will run on various phone manufacturer's hardware. This is in contrast to Apple, which makes both software and also the hardware. This is interesting, and is highly anticipated as the alternative to the iPhone... more soon!

Improvements to Live Hotmail

For all those people who use Hotmail on a daily basis, you'd be pleased to know that Microsoft will be updating it in the coming weeks. The changes include a cleaner interface, and most of all, faster loading time. Great!

Apple's deceptive iPhone 3G advertising

This video is excellent! It shows a comparison between the iPhone 3G data load times in Apple's ad, against real world usage in the US.  Boy, the difference is enormous.  Apple's deceptive marketing tactics... and AT&T's inferior 3G networks... enjoy.

Blog turns 3!

Woohoo! For the record, today marks my third year of blogging!

Scream Out Loud! is 3 years old today, and there is a total of 258 posts thus far!

Ok, now back to studying for exams...

Extreme III hits 32GB

In the exciting lead up to Photokina, SanDisk has announced a 32GB version of its Extreme III CF card. DPreview reports that "it offers a read and write speed of 200x (30 MB/s), supporting the new generation of high-resolution DSLRs. Priced at $299; it will be available in the month of October."


This storage capacity bump is targeted more at video professionals than photographers. Who the heck would keep 32GB worth of photos in a single card, even if it is in raw?

This announcement is compelling, but I suggest that photographers do not buy these cards once out on the market. My recommendation with memory cards is always to avoid buying the largest cards.

There are 2 reasons for this: firstly, these cards are too new and have not been extensively tested in real-world use. Thus, there is a higher chance that these cards may fail you. We can't be certain about its reliability. Also, the bigger the capacity, the more likely it will have a file allocation error and crash.

Secondly, it is the issue of placing all your eggs in one basket. If there are thousands of precious images in that 32GB card and it crashes, there goes everything. The best 32GB card is four 8GB cards, even if it means bringing more cards and changing them more frequently.

iPod touch 2G has bluetooth chip

According to iFixit, they disassembled a new iPod touch 2G and found out it has a Broadcom BCM4325 bluetooth chipset! It supports bluetooth 2.1 + EDR!

Now apple didn't say anything about that! This shocking discovery raises the immediate possibility that bluetooth could feature in the 2.2 software update, but no confirmation from Apple on that. If this is true, bluetooth headphones could be paired up with the iPod touch.

However, I think this is rather unlikely. To me, it is more a case of inheriting the iPhone 3G's hardware, since both devices technically run on the same electrical parts and circuitry. Thus bluetooth is there, but Apple doesn't plan to 'activiate' it as the iPhone would then lose its bluetooth advantage over the touch.

Update:
As of June 2009, bluetooth has been unlocked on 2G iPod touch with iPod software update 3.0!
(Not applicable for 1G owners)

Sept iPod event - roundup and first thoughts

Just caught the hour-long webcast of this event from the Apple website, and I'll be sharing some of my initial thoughts. Firstly, I would like to say that everything that was rumoured and what I had anticipated came true, including the accelerometer for the nano which I kinda guessed (more on that later).

The keynote was held at San Francisco, and while not as big as Macworld keynotes, it was nonetheless a reasonably major event. Steve came on stage to a rousing applause from the audience, and the first issue he addressed immediately was his health. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," said the vegan dressed in his usual black turtle neck top and jeans. Now this is a huge sigh of relief to investors, worried that his supposedly deteriorating health would affect Apple. But anyhow, we're glad to hear that... he looked his usual self.

Then he announced some statistics, the usual stuff that makes people go WOW. There are now 3000 iPhone and iPod touch apps, and iTunes Store is the top music distributor in any format in the US, beating Walmart. Impressive.

Now for the product announcements.

iTunes 8
Jobs started with iTunes 8, the next version of the popular music jukebox software for Mac and PC. He introduced HD TV shows which can be purchased online for USD 2.99, and showed some samples. Great quality, but not exciting to me.

iTunes 8 also has a new way of browsing music, where album artwork are displayed in a grid format so you can see all your albums at one go.


Then comes some really lame stuff IMO: the Genius playlist. What Genius does is to "automatically make playlists from songs in your library which go great together". In other words, this is smart shuffle. It takes random songs of a similar type and genre and pulls them together. Sounds really cool, good way to discover your library, but this is a superficial feature which doesn't impress me too much.


There is also a Genius sidebar, which will fetch recommendations of songs from the iTunes store which goes well with the playlist, and allow you to purchase them. Sadly, this is a not available in Singapore.


And that's about it for iTunes 8. I was expecting something more innovative. -.-

What I think:
iTunes 8 is clearly an evolutionary upgrade, and while some changes are nice, such as the new browsing views, the other features are purely lame and unconvincing, as if they had to force some new feature into iTunes since it's the new version. Genius playlist comes across as being good-to-have, nice to tinker around, but trivial and nonessential. However, the way Apple is marketing this... I think it's overrated. I don't know, you may feel differently, but iTunes 8 is not an impressive update at all.

iPod
With the software side out of the way, Jobs now focuses on the hardware, and this is where things get interesting. As usual, some statistics to brag about how dominant Apple is: iPod has a whopping 73.4% US market share as of July, and more than 160 million iPods have been sold to date. (Interesting fact: Microsoft's Zune player has only 2.6% market share.)

Great job Apple, but I share the same sentiments with Paul Thurrott, that the iPod is now at the point of maturity and changes are getting incremental. The long-term challenge is how to sustain that dominance (and perhaps stub out the up and rising Zune).  

iPod classic
This is the most BORING change to the iPod line. The thicker 160GB classic has been phased out, and the only model Apple will offer is a 120GB version at USD 249. No change whatsoever to everything else. Same software, design etc. This is obviously a non-event.

iPod nano

Image from Apple

Images of this 4th generation nano leaked out before the event, and they turned out to be dead accurate. Like I tell my friends, this new nano is reminiscent of a popular China fake of the 2nd gen nano! Haha... but whatever, it's so much nicer than the 'fat' 3rd gen nano. Clearly that form factor didn't work out for Apple. When you place all 4 generations of nanos side by side, the 'fat' one totally looks out of place, like it was never meant to be. But that's the past.

The new curved nano, the thinnest iPod ever made, is constructed out of aluminium, and even has curved glass. From an aesthetics standpoint, the curve body is beautiful. From a functionality standpoint, maybe less so. The curved glass could be reflective and cause viewing problems. I haven't had my hands on this thing, so that's just my guess.

The nano also sports an accelerometer, same as the iPhone/iPod touch, adding more functionality to it. When turned on its side, the nano will transit into Cover Flow mode. Photos will also rotate accordingly... neat. Also, when you shake the device, it will change track! But the larger picture is that now fun games on the touch which utilise the accelerometer will slowly make its debut on the nano too. There are also some UI tweaks, one obvious one being how the album art fills the screen like the touch.

The mediocre Genius thingy is also available on the nano, where you can create a Genius playlist right on the device itself, and refresh the playlist for new songs too. The pixel dense 2 inch screen is gorgeous, and the long height allows for nice long menus. Battery life is good, at 1 day for music and 4 hours for video. (Do take these numbers with a pinch of salt, it's normally less.)

The nano is available in 9 wonderfully vibrant colours, and retails for USD 149 for 8GB and USD 199 for 16GB.

What I think:
Apple's got a winner here with the nano. It looks slender and compact, while being durable, and also comes across as funky and hip. Youths would want this player. It has a good form factor and the curved body fits snugly in the hands. But best of all, it's environmentally friendly!

iPod touch

Image from Apple

The nano was the climax of the event. After that everything was back to dull and lackluster. There was a new iPod touch, but there's nothing to shout about it. It is much thinner (what's with Apple's obsession for thinness?), and takes on a curved back similar to the iPhone 3G, but still with that awful scratch-able metallic back.

What's really nice is the volume controls and inbuilt speaker, similar to the iPhone, which I feel should have been there since first gen. Jobs reminds us that the speaker is just for "casual listening", but apparently Engadget reports that it's not all that crappy. It would be very useful for playing games, since people do not normally connect the headphones.

Battery life for this device is at 36 hours for music and 6 hours for video (assuming Wi-Fi turned off I suspect).  There are also price cuts, though capacities have remained unchanged.  8GB is going for USD 229, 16GB for 299 and 32GB for 399.  Very attractive prices indeed...

Lastly, software version 2.1 will run on the new touches. Jobs claims that a ton of bugs have been fixed in this release, backup time reduced, performance improved, and there's a slightly updated UI, which again features the Genius playlists functionality. 2.1 will also be available to iPhone owners, which fixes call dropping and battery life issues. For iPod touch users running 1.x versions, the upgrade to 2.1 will cost USD 9.95, while existing 2.0.x owners can install 2.1 free.

What I think:
iPod touch 2G is clearly evolutionary.  It essentially remains unchanged from the first gen, since software can be updated to 2.1.  Perhaps the only reason why someone using the first gen touch would upgrade is for the volume controls and speakers! At least, I would.  But of course I wouldn't... it wouldn't be worth the money.  For the speakers, I already have purchased an external portable speaker that attaches to the iPod via the iPod connector, and for volume controls, you can get the new Apple headphones fitted with volume controls.  Problems solved!

So looking at all the announcements as a whole, I'm rather disappointed.  It all seems very mediocre (except for the nano) and conservative.  But then again, when you are the market leader, and when your products are mature enough, the notion of a total change in the product line is hard to entertain.  

Is Apple prepared for the big holiday season? Not really. But will sales be affected? Not really too, simply because they are Apple and the whole world knows iPods.  

Doubled capacities for nanos and price cuts for touch

Engadget reports some last minute iPod rumours just before the "Let's Rock" Apple media event.

The iPod nano's capacities is set to be upgraded from 4 and 8GB models to 8 and 16GB respectively, while having 9 colour choices, up from the existing 6. However, the iPod touch will not be having any capacity increases, remaining at 8, 16 and 32GB models. Instead, the good news is that prices are expected to fall heavily.

We'll see if that's true very soon, but most likely it will be.

FYI, the Apple online store is currently down, perhaps in preparation for the new products :)

IE 8 beta 2 compatibility

The upcoming version of Internet Explorer, IE 8, is now in public beta and can be downloaded from Microsoft's website to test out.

There are a ton of new features in this browser, and some are very useful, such as the Smart Address Bar and Tab Groups.

Microsoft explains that 'the Smart Address Bar in Internet Explorer 8 matches what a user types in the Address Bar with titles in the history as well as content in their favorites and feeds, making it easier to locate sites the user wants to visit.'

Tab Groups is a superb way to keep organised automatically: 'When one tab is opened from another, the new tab is placed next to the originating tab, and both are marked with a colored tab, so users can quickly discern which tabs have related content.'

Despite all these cool stuff, the big deal to me is that Microsoft promises IE 8 to be more standards compliant by default. This is normally thought of as a good thing, since the browser now adheres to web standards and thus is more compatible, but apparently this isn't the case.

With beta 2, users are reporting more compatibility problems viewing websites than with IE 7. Many websites will not render properly in IE 8 (such as Gmail), with misalignments and stuff which messes up the page. To solve this, supposedly, you can click on the 'compatibility view' button up next to the address bar to display the website as viewed in IE 7, which will correct display problems like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. This option is on a per site basis and all other sites will continue to display with IE 8 functionality. But even in this view, there are still bugs present and rendering mistakes!

This is very disconcerting to me, that the latest version of a browser is less compatible than the previous version. I really hope Microsoft figures everything out by the final release, and if need be, throw out a beta 3.

We all wanted standards compliant, and now that it is more standards compliant, is this really what we desire? I don't really know why being standards compliant ends up being less compatible, but my guess is that developers tend to put in IE specific code in their websites that doesn't run well in IE 8's default standards compliant mode.

This is so important for Microsoft... compatibility is one of the key fundamentals of any good browser. If it doesn't work right with sites, then people won't want to use it, no matter how many superb features it offers. Either web developers have to start getting rid of IE specific code in time for the final release... or Microsoft has to work some magic to make everything render right. I believe they will do so, but for now, this product is kinda half-usable and non-technical users should hold up downloading this first.

New iPods this Sept confirmed

Let's rock!


It's confirmed! There will be an Apple event on 9th September where Jobs will introduce new iPods! He will introduce a taller, rounded nano and a new touch, consistent with the iPhone 3G's design and featuring volume controls at the side (finally). With these new hardware, there should also be an update to iTunes, version 8.0. You know what? I really hope that Apple will drop those scratch-able shiny metallic backs of the iPods and opt for a more durable material.

Also in the pipeline are new MacBooks, but I speculate that will come later at the end of the year instead of 9th sept. These new MacBooks are rumoured to be aluminium, and feature a better GPU and new chips with faster clock speeds. So if you're thinking of getting new iPods/MacBook, hold on for a while!

Google Chrome - the third major web browser

This piece of news is very sudden to me. Yes, rumours did circulate before that Google was working on some kick-ass web browser, but I didn't anticipate such an early release.

So Google announced on Monday that it will be shipping a public beta of its first web browser, Chrome. This is big big news, because this implies not only that there will be more competition facing Mozilla and Microsoft, but we as users who depend so greatly on the web browser will also have to evaluate this product and determine if it's better than Firefox or IE. So there will soon be 3 major web browsers... cool!


For more information, check out this comic on Chrome, released by Google themselves.

Basically this product is based upon the open source Web browser engine, WebKit. FYI, WebKit is also the engine powering Safari, but no immature comparisons should be made with Safari (and how horrible it is) until we really test it out.

Google being Google, the Internet company that it is renowned for, has created Chrome to be centered around web applications. And because we spend so much time on these web apps (like Blogger, Facebook, Gmail etc.), the browser is arguably the most important software on many people's computers. One of the main emphasis Chrome places is on stability of the browser, such that when it crashes, it doesn't bring down the entire program, but just the tab that is causing the problem. This is done through creating isolated processes for each tab and "sand-boxing" each tab. Curiously, this is what Microsoft is doing for IE 8 too. ^.^

Other areas where Chrome promises to do better than the competition is in security, performance, and simplicity without being feature-bland.

It is too early to say whether Chrome will dominate over IE or FireFox, but this is definitely an interesting product which everyone should consider installing once out of beta.

The must-get free App Store game: Cube Runner!

I'm not the sort of person who would actually recommend playing a game, but for perhaps once in my life, this game is worth checking out. It's called Cube Runner, a free download from the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch version 2.0. Simple, fun, challenging and has much replay value!

The video below shows you what the game is all about:



As you can see, the App Store has transformed the iPod touch into more than just a multimedia player. Increasingly, it is becoming a viable gaming platform too, with it's unique combination of accelerometer and touch-screen interface.

Sing To The Lord - Hillsong 08

Another awesome worship song from 'This Is Our God'! (Figured out the chords myself.)