Posts Tagged: Microsoft

fair is fair

On 29 November 2010 by matthew With 0 Comments - mobile tech, windows

A num­ber of my friends seem to think that I am anti-Apple. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth (well…outside my dis­dain for the very restric­tive  ecosys­tem). I love the design and reli­a­bil­ity of Apple prod­ucts, though I don’t own any­thing made by Apple. A while back, peo­ple (read Android users) were doing cart­wheels when the so-called iPhone 4  “Death Grip,” also known as Antenna-gate made head­lines. Con­sumer Reports pulled its rec­om­men­da­tion. Store made the nightly news on major news net­works. Apple denied there was an issue. Steve Job was incred­u­lous and annoyed by the sug­ges­tion that Apple may have pro­duced a lemon. Even­tu­ally Apple yielded and offered rub­ber bands/bumpers/cases for the iPhone 4 to rem­edy the recep­tion issues. All has been, rel­a­tively, quiet about the death grip since the case give away.

Microsoft finally released its Win­dows Phone 7 devices in the US mar­ket. It took less than a week for Antenna-gate, Part 2 to sur­face. The fol­low­ing video by Advanced Safety Devices demon­strates the death grip on the HTC’s Win­dows Phone 7 device, the HD7 on T-Mobile.

I hope that, by post­ing this video, the view of my neu­tral­ity on prod­ucts and com­pa­nies will be sal­vaged, it not restored.

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finally, microsoft gets clever

On 13 October 2010 by matthew With 0 Comments - mobile tech, windows

For as long as I can remem­ber, Microsoft has not been known for deliv­er­ing clever ads. Apple, shoot…even Gate­way, have been at the head of the class fresh adver­tis­ing. Along comes the release of Win­dows Phone 7, and mabye — just maybe — Microsoft has turned the cor­ner toward cre­ativ­ity. Really.

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windows phone 7 drawing near

On 6 September 2010 by matthew With 0 Comments - mobile tech, windows

It seems like an eter­nity, almost two years, since Microsoft talked about launch­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of Win­dows Mobile. Since the first whis­pers, the update has taken a dra­matic turn, includ­ing a rebrand­ing — Win­dows Phone 7. At long last, it appears the launch is draw­ing near.  The offi­cial word is still ambigu­ously just  “fall,” though I think we should get a hard date pretty soon.

Almost daily, lit­tle blips pop up about var­i­ous fea­tures of Win­dows Phone 7. Lately, I’ve seen some glimpses of the hard­ware from LG, Sam­sung and HTC. How­ever, you know things are get­ting real when you see full-production ads surfacing.

The video has a Lost smoke mon­ster thing going on. Let’s hope more inter­est­ing ads are in the works. In the meantime, Microsoft has a really nice web­site that demon­strates the dif­fer­ent fea­tures of Win­dows Phone 7. Click here to check it out.

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at last (well almost)

On 15 February 2010 by matthew With 0 Comments - business
I’m talk­ing about Win­dows Mobile 7 (WinMo 7). As many of you know, I have been eye­balling Apple com­put­ers and Google Android-powered mobile phones. How­ever, my haunted Zune issues notwith­stand­ing, I am still will­ing to give Microsoft a shot in the per­sonal com­puter, per­sonal music player and mobile phone are­nas. I upgraded my Toshiba lap­top with Win­dows 7 about a month ago and have been impressed with the improve­ments in sys­tem per­for­mance and sta­bil­ity. If these improve­ments carry over to WinMo 7, there’s rea­son to be encouraged.
Fairly recently, I decided to hold off on pur­chas­ing the Zune HD because there were rumors float­ing around that Microsoft was finally going to release WinMo 7. Microsoft put out a WinMo 6.5 a few months ago that, by all accounts, appears to be just a Band-Aid to add some fea­tures and attempt to keep up with the exponentially-changing mobile OS land­scape. Just yes­ter­day, Sam­sung announced a new device call Wave, run­ning on a new mobile OS plat­form called Bada.  (Don’t hate me. I didn’t make up the stu­pid name.)
Those famil­iar with me, know I am huge fan of clean design, and smooth fonts. I’ve got to say, the user inter­face (UI) looks is pretty!
 
 
Images: Microsoft News Center

Here’s a video first look at Win­dows Mobile 7, pre­sented at the Mobile World Con­gress in Barcelona.

If you really want to get your nerd on about Win­dows Mobile 7, check out this 22-minute video from Microsoft’s Chan­nel 9 site.
Get Microsoft Silverlight
It must be said that this Win­dows Mobile OS update is way over­due. A good num­ber even ques­tion whether this OS upgrade is too lit­tle, too late for Microsoft. A good ques­tion. The answer, I think, remains to be seen. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of iPhones and iPods, and now Android OS run devices such as the Nexus One, Droid, Hero, Eris, etc. make it a tough smart­phone hill to climb. (A hill Microsoft used to dom­i­nate, no less.) And, unfor­tu­nately, it will be some time before con­sumers get their hands on any WinMo 7-powered devices. Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion released from Microsoft, WinMo 7 devices won’t be avail­able until “Hol­i­day 2010.” We could all hope that means one of the var­i­ous national hol­i­days between now and the end of the year, but I think we all know it prob­a­bly means some­time between Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas. That’s a shame. It makes me won­der whether Win­dows has really fin­ished the OS, and it’s just dan­gling some sexy teasers out in front us. As the expres­sion goes, time will tell. 
As for me? As much as my inter­est is piqued, par­tic­u­larly with the inte­gra­tion of Zune fea­tures with the phone, I am prob­a­bly not will­ing to wait that long. Other than the Zune subscription-based music, most of the songs I have are MP3s, which can be played on any device. I am much less inter­ested in the inter­face itself (iTunes, Zune Mar­ket­place), and sim­ply would like a device where I can suc­cess­fully inte­grate my needs — phone, e-mail, cal­en­dar, decent cam­era and music. I rely pretty heav­ily on Google appli­ca­tions for e-mail, cal­en­dar and even doc­u­ments, so the Android phones look­ing more and more attractive.
If you have expe­ri­ence and a pref­er­ence for one of the Mobile OS plat­forms, let me know. I am par­tic­u­larly inter­ested to hear impres­sions from peo­ple using Win­dows Mobile devices, as well as those who have moved from an iPhone, WinMo or Black­Berry to an Android or WebOS (Palm) device.
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paranormal zunetivity

On 9 December 2009 by matthew With 0 Comments - business

I try so hard to give Microsoft a chance. Though nearly all my pho­tog­ra­phy and cre­ative arts friends urge me to get a Mac­Book Pro, I’ve been hang­ing in there with my Win­dows Vista-running Toshiba lap­top. (I would say note­book, but this big 17″ widescreen Jimmy takes up my whole lap!) Like­wise, my friends look at my side­ways when I talk about lust­ing for a Motorola Droid, Android OS, smart­phone. “Just get an iPhone,” they say.  Finally, I fre­quently have answer the ques­tion, “What’s a Zune?” when I pull out my per­sonal media player (PMP).


Now, let me clar­ify that I am, in no way, a Microsoft-fan boy or a stock­holder. The use of Microsoft-driven prod­ucts, quite hon­estly, has mostly been more about eco­nom­ics. The lap­tops and phones are less expen­sive that Apple alter­na­tives. 


That didn’t nec­es­sar­ily hold true, how­ever, for the Zune. I picked up the 120gig Zune for the same price as a com­pa­ra­ble iPod. My son has a Zune, too. What attracted me to the Zune was the large, bright screen, sleek design. The biggest draw, t hough, was the Zune Mar­ket­place sub­scrip­tion. For $15 a month, I get unlim­ited down­loads of music. It should be noted that this music is only avail­able as long as you have a Zune Mar­ket­place sub­scrip­tion. You also get 10 “free” down­loads to keep each month. I have been using the Zune for just about a year, and enjoy the access to unlim­ited music. Even if I lose it when  my sub­scrip­tion ends, I was able to enjoy a lot of music for $15 a month. Not a bad deal. 


Sorry, back to the point of this post. While I have enjoyed the Zune and the ser­vice, the prob­lems with the hard­ware has started to creep up on me. First my son’s Zune started to act up, and even­tu­ally just died on him. I sent it back to the Microsoft and they sent us a new one. So far, so good with the new unit. (For­get that he dropped it and cracked the screen. Argh!) Now, my Zune has been act­ing up. First it was strange spikes of the vol­ume, and the occa­sional inabil­ity to prop­erly use the direc­tion pad. Recently, I’ve noticed some­thing very odd.




What the…?!!? This weird, phan­tom menu scrolling ren­ders the device nearly use­less until it’s shut down and restarted. I have repeat­edly checked the WiFi set­tings to make sure the Zune wasn’t being affected by stray or over­lap­ping sig­nals from another device. No dice. A lit­tle Google search revealed quite a few peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing the same prob­lems. Ugh.


So much for con­sid­er­ing the Zune HD, which was launched a cou­ple of months ago. I am really start­ing to think that any­thing attached to Microsoft oper­at­ing sys­tems are doomed for fail­ure. I expect that when I pay $300 for a PMP or $1200 for a lap­top, it’s going to work out of the box and for the fore­see­able future. I refuse to become a Kool-aid sip­ping, Apple cultist, but there’s some­thing to be said about pay­ing for qual­ity. You buy cheap,  you buy twice.


I may just be look­ing at a bun­dle of Apple prod­ucts in the near future. Not because I am try­ing to be styl­ish or part of the in-crowd. No, I am likely headed to an Apple store because, by all that I’ve read and heard, their prod­ucts just work.

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