Windows 8 Consumer Preview – First Impressions

UGLY!

UGLY!

UGLY!

From the “origami” goldfish, to the DOS-like sliders and toggles during the install, Windows 8 took everything good about Windows design and took a massive, fuming dump on it.

After installing, it appears to run ok, although the ugly continues in its poorly executed Xbox style touch menu. Unlike the Xbox tile menu however, the Windows 8 version is cold and rigid, lacking personality.

After flipping to Aero, there was no discernable way to return to the new tiled UI, and no Start Menu with which to find any apps or return to the UI for further testing. So I reboot the machine, at which point it breaks and goes into a screen (again with the ugly goldfish) “Attempting repairs”.

This is from a clean install on a virtual machine with nothing else installed yet. That’s right, it broke itself straight out of the box. What are we Windows 98 again?

At this point, the repair has taken significantly longer than the install, which clocked less than 15min (very nice). There’s no indication of what’s going on, just the ugly origami fish and the ugly bubbles spinner that has replaced the blue ring spinner.

Eventually it dies and says it couldn’t fix the problem.

Congrats Microsoft, you’ve successfully become Apple. WORTHLESS FLUFF.

...Barnes & Noble Nook

B&N Nook

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WiFi + 3G | WiFi only

I read a fair number of books, so when the eBook readers started coming out some years back, I started watching them. They were all rather expensive at first, and most of them used black and white or greyscale LCD/LED displays which at the time resulted in extremely short battery lives. On top of these hardware limitation, was a lack of content. EBooks were common, but they weren't easy to purchase or move around and required various methods to utilize their DRM that made them difficult to use on eReaders. They just weren't a practical solution yet.

Then along came eInk. This new display technology is a bit like a digital Etch-a-Sketch, it moves pigment on and off a visible surface, only in this case each pixel is self contained rather than being a big box of metallic dust. The first few eReaders to use eInk were of course black and white, or limited greyscale, and there was still no solid source of reading material to put on them yet.

Then came the Kindle.

Amazon.com started off as a book source, so they already had a huge library of books to work with, and by creating their own eReader they were able to get past the limitations of other readers and combine their resources with the eReader technology. Unfortunately, they were still expensive, and worse yet, the first few Kindle versions either couldn't handle public formats like PDF, or required conversion that often broke the formatting, jumbling the content.

But, the Kindle was a good device, and it became enough of a hit to cause a stir.

A few years and a few Kindle versions later, after seeing the success and potential in the market, a competitor steps forward. Barnes and Noble launches their Nook, an eReader utilizing their already massive library of books on top of Google's open platform, Android.

The Nook solved the remaining problems still suffered by the Kindle. Native PDF support, as well as support of various other open formats, without conversion, and without destroying the layout. The Nook features the same wifi and AT&T cellular capabilities as the Kindle, but also added a wifi-only web-browser and the ability to share books with friends. Amazon.com has recently added a 3G enabled web-browser to the Kindle as well. B&N's service also includes the ability to read books free of charge, provided you're connected to a B&N hotspot inside their stores, something Amazon.com is unable to offer currently. With a little work, you can even load custom Android builds into the Nook to add even more features (although doing so voids your warranty).

Unlike the Kindle, the Nook features a second display that grants it touchscreen capability, although I find their utilization of it to be minimal and not a significant gain over the Kindle's keyboard. One feature of the touchscreen I do like, however, is the ability to swipe my finger across the blacked out touchscreen to flip pages similar to a paper book.

The Nook's eInk display is nearly identical to the Kindle, with similar performance and battery life, although the touchscreen LCD does cause the overall battery life to suffer slightly by comparison. Setting a shorter screen timeout helps this.

B&N's book library has been fairly good for the material I read, although older books in certain genres (Fantasy for instance) are difficult if not impossible to find.

The PDF support is reasonably solid, allowing you to use the original PDF layout, or switch to an unformatted layout using larger, more readable, font sizes. I would like to see a true page zoom feature though, as currently the only way to "zoom" is to increase the font size, which turns off the original formatted layout and switches to the unformatted layout. Kindle has since improved its PDF support as well, although I have no first-hand experience with its functionality.

B&N has been really good about updating the Nook, and it's already on its fifth software revision. Each revision has improved performance, stability, and has fixed bugs and added additional features and support.

The cellular connection works fairly well, although I've run into many places, even inside larger cities, where AT&T's coverage is lacking and the Nook is unable to connect as a result. The wifi is handy in these instances.

Also unlike the Kindle, the Nook has a removable back cover with a user replaceable battery and a MicroSD slot for expanding its storage.

Aside from the slightly short battery life, the page turning buttons on the side of the Nook feel slightly flimsy and sometime have an audible snap sound as they catch the edge of the backing. The device is also prone to appearing to lock up when the battery is too low to operate; fully charging it before powering it back on resolves this issue however.

All told, both the Nook and the Kindle are very solid eReaders, and I would recommend either one to avid readers.

...Brink

BRINK - Preview

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XBox 360 | PS3 | PC

Back in the day, I used to play a lot of FPS games. We're talking back when the original Doom was top of the line. I played pretty much every game id Software produced at the time.

But something happened starting with Quake 2, and the FPS games just stopped being fun for me. I think this was around the same time that the everyday non-geeks started really getting heavy into gaming. They stuck mainly with the FPS games and didn't spread out into the other styles, and they were good at it. It set new levels of gameplay that I had a hard time keeping up with at the time. But it was more than that, something about the games just weren't fun anymore even playing single player.

So, I spent a decade, give or take, playing other games and while I occasionally touched FPS, they still weren't really there for me yet.

Then came the Tactical FPS. A new style of FPS that focused more on thinking and strategy rather than just running in guns blazing. Battlefield, Call of Duty, Halo (especially Halo 3, ODST and Reach); games that mixed real tactics with a deeper story and helped you feel like you were really involved.

I was slow to join in these, but I did join, and they were fun. They were new and different and I really felt like I was getting better as the tutorials an even the levels themselves taught me new tactics I could use to best the AI and possibly other players.

A lot of this had to do with technological advances in the hardware the games were running on, allowing the game AIs to make more decisions, and allowing the game to support more tactical features without slowing it down.

But lately there's been a bit of a plateau, the games have stopped advancing. They try new things, sure; Vanquish for example is so overloaded with things that, along with it's poor aiming, it's just a monstrosity to even attempt to play. A case of too much, piled on with things that just don't help gameplay and don't make it interesting. The game is beautiful, it has a lot of interesting things, and even a decent storyline, but the controls are just too cumbersome.

In comes Brink, created by the development group Splash Damage.

Being released for PC, XBox 360, and PS3, this game promises to be a complete change from everything FPS has been so far. The game helps relieve a lot of the controls by making choices for you based on how you're moving and where. It will jump over things, climb walls, slide under things all automatically just by you looking at them while you move and press a single action button (at least that's how their videos make it sound). This frees up the rest of the controls for moving, aiming, and primary and secondary weapons, a very modest set used in many other successful titles.

The technology behind it all is called Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain or "SMART", most likely a backronym but fitting if it does everything they claim. SMART is the decision engine behind determining what to do based on your speed, location and obstacles. Impressive technology from everything Splash Damage is claiming.

But it's not the only tech joining Brink. Detailed motion capture is being used to help the game feels more real, along with a whole slew of weapon and other sound bites specially recorded just to give the game authenticity. Even their visual style is new, combining photorealism with exaggerated proportions that make it easy to make out fine details during fast paced action, while at the same time being almost lifelike.

One of the other new tech pieces is the blending of singleplayer and multiplayer allowing players to progress their character offline as well as online. This is combined with a mission system that changes and takes different directions for every character, allowing a truly unique experience for everyone that plays.

Since the game isn't out yet (due Q1 2011) I don't know if it will be everything they claim, but what I've seen so far is pretty impressive, and I certainly look forward to receiving my copy.

...Smart Phones

Being a gadet freak, I go through a lot of phones, and they're pretty much always smart phones. I've owned three different SideKicks, several Windows Mobile and several Android OS phones now. I've also researched various RIM, Symbian, iOS and PalmOS devices over the years.

So why smart phones?

Honestly, I rarely use my phone, I need it for business and emergencies, but I just don't like talking to people if I can text instead. I like the smart phones because of everything else they can do. They're better at texting than standard phones, and there's a huge selection of applications for accomplishing other tasks as well.

I used to own a Palm TX that I used for taking notes, tracking my car mileage, and managing my bank account. It was also handy for carrying documents around in digital form. At the time, there weren't many smart phone choices yet, but I eventually ended up with my first Sidekick.

SickKick's OS is pretty slick for light users, people that just want the social network and mini-games will enjoy this phone, but it's not real strong at anything else. It's just not designed for adult tasks.

Eventually I graduated up to Windows Mobile 6, where I was finally able to start using more business apps and was able to replace all of my Palm TX apps (except my universal remote control, darn them for not equipping smart phones with IR ;).

Windows Mobile was an excellent business platform, and did texting pretty nice as well. But, along with being a tech head, I'm also quite a bit of a gamer. I enjoy more than just mini-games, and honestly Windows Mobile couldn't even do them very well due to it's low end hardware and lack of graphics power.

Symbian and RIM were way too business oriented, and while both are quite strong at business, they weren't "fun" phones to own. RIM was especially prevalent with all the different BlackBerrys coming out on every telephone company imaginable, but Windows Mobile was keeping pace.

After a few Windows Mobile 6 phones, Apple had come out with iOS. And at first, this was great. Apple set a new bar, but unfortunately they made several major mistakes. No MMS, no copy/paste, and stuck on AT&T, who at the time thought a $750 deposit on top of the price of the phone and first month's bill, was a fair price. Needless to say, I passed on iOS because it really didn't offer enough above Windows Mobile to justify the cost.

Then comes the 3G networks, and with them, Android OS.Android OS was, and continues to be everything iOS wants to be but has yet to achieve. Android OS was fun, Android OS was business, and Android OS was social. But most importantly, Android OS is an open platform.Right off the bat, Android OS had everything iOS had and then some, it could even copy/paste, MMS, and was scheduled to launch on several major telecomm networks. Unfortunately, they still lacked enterprise support.

Of course, Apple had to respond, they fixed the missing features in iOS in an attempt to catch up to Android OS. But Android OS's open nature means it continued to evolve and grow, receiving speed, stability, and feature updates including enterprise support all faster than Apple has been able to keep up.

Here we are in the present day, and Apple is still playing the catch up game, as Android OS takes over more and more of the market. Apple releases its pseudo-tablet iPad and finally catches up to the 3G revolution; Android comes out with multiple pseudo-tablet chocies, an eBook reader, dozens of new 3G and 4G phones, and even dedicated GPS devices.

Then all of a sudden, FUMBLE! Apple pushes an embarrassingly broken phone to market. The iPhone 4G and it's broken antenna, video chat that only works on wifi, and nothing new from previous models. But, the raving Apple fans continue to buy it all up, refusing to admit that Apple's broken offering is anything less than perfection.

Honestly, I think the different OSes have their place. For open development, a fun phone with loads of power and customizability, go with Android OS. For business, especially enterprise, go with RIM (BlackBerry). For younger socialites, go with SideKick. And if you just have tons of money to blow on a brand name so you can look cool and don't care about the problems and draconian practices, go iOS.

...This Blog

No really, I figure a great way to introduce myself, as well as to introduce what this blog is about, is to just jump in and talk about the blog itself.

I've never really been a big blog person; it feels a bit too much like writing a diary to me. But I always enjoy playing with gadgets, games, and basically anything tech related and then telling all my friends what I thought of them. I don't get very emotional or enthusiastic about many things, but technology has always been an exception. I'm just wired for tech I guess.

So it occurred to me, "Why not blogs too? They're tech, right?" and I could use the blog as an outlet to gush, fume, and spam people who actually want to know, instead of just annoying my friends and family.

Congrats, if you stick around, I get to annoy you with my gripes and praises instead *cackles maniacally*

*cough* Ahem, where was I? Oh right, blogs as technology...

So yeah, when you really think about it, blogs are technology. It's amazing how quickly they're grown and changed. Used to be, before they were actually named blogs, people would manually update their little homebrew website every day/week/month by adding in new pages, manually linking them to the main page, etc.

Eventually this led into more formal web applications, and then into social networks. That's right, MySpace, Facebook, and etc are really just blogs, albeit overloaded with non-bloggy features.

What's really interesting, is this trend has sort of gone backwards a bit too. Twitter, along with services like Blogger and Weebly go and take all the fluff back out, stripping the blog back down to its bare essentials.

So we've come full circle, personal websites became web logs, became blogs, became social networks, and then back to micro-blogs. Now on top of that we have video logs or vlogs, which merged with video sharing websites like YouTube and created the "YouTuber", people who run whole shows out of their bedroom, many successfully making a living out of merely sharing their thoughts with you, the viewer.

Props out to these personalities, inspirations like Ray William Johnson, MysteryGuitarMan, and even that annoying Fred guy (Lucas Cruikshank actually, and much as I hate the character, one cannot deny his success). Just by being themselves they've become successes, all with the help of blogs.