Archive for November, 2005

New Font for Windows Vista

Just read on the windowsvistaweblog that Microsoft is replacing the font in Windows, what used to be Tahoma will now be Segoe UI. Don’t ask me how to say it. The new font is pictured below. Source: WindowsVistaWeblog via RealTechNews.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with their families.

Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition

Microsoft is developing software for high performance computers, those that are often used in science projects, like weather prediction and other engineering projects. Bill Gates plans on announcing the release today at the supercomputing industry conference in Seattle.

Craig Mundie, one of Microsoft’s chief technical officers, said the company is entering the market as high-powered computers are becoming more affordable, allowing the market to expand to a point where it makes sense for Microsoft to get into it. Such computers are used for computing, storing and sharing data for a wide variety of uses, ranging from creating better medications to engineering automobiles.

While such computers used to easily cost as much as $1 million, Mundie said some are now available for as little as $4,000 or $5,000.

The Microsoft product, called Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition, is due out in the first few months of 2006. The company has not yet set pricing.

Gates is giving the keynote speech at the SC|05 Conference.

18 Games Will be Available for Xbox 360

Microsoft announced that they will have 18 games available for the Xbox 360 at launch time, 13 accessories, including customizable faceplates, as well. They also announced that you willbe able to play about 200 Xbox games on the 360, including Halo and Halo 2.

Bad Caps in Dell Computers

Just last week, Dell computers announced it was taking a financial charge on it’s earnings, a $300 million dollar charge, to help cover costs that it incurred do to replacement of motherboards with bad capacitors.

Capacitors are an inexpensive little component on a PC motherboard, but they can be a costly headache for manufacturers when a whole bunch of them go bad.

Last week, Dell announced it was going to take a $300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations. The Dell system boards in question were manufactured from April 2003 to March 2004, according to several contract computer repair firms that are starting to replace the systems.

The Round Rock, Texas, computer maker is expected to provide more details during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

Luckily, I myself haven’t had any problems, I purchased two Dell XPS machines last year, but apparently, lots of people have, and not just from Dell computers, the bad cap problem has plagued HP and Apple as well.

At issue are faulty capacitors on motherboards that store power and regulate voltage. Defective capacitors found in the Dell Optiplex workstations, some Apple iMac G5s, HP xw-series workstations made in 2004 and PCs with the Intel D865GBF motherboard have been found to bulge, pop, leak and crust over, causing video failure and periodic system shutdowns.

Photos showing Dell’s Optiplex GX270 and Optiplex GX280 with defective capacitors have been widely reported on Web sites such as Badcaps.net, PowerEdgeForums.com. Pictures of other faulty capacitors have been spotted on Apple’s own discussion boards, MacOSG.com, and G5Support.com.

Usually, data loss does not occur as the system will generally just shut down, not affecting the hard drive. If you think you could be experiencing a problem with bad caps, then you should look for swelling on the tops and along the base of the capacitors, and check to see if there is a brownish substance oozing from the bases. If you find some problems, check your warranty and contact your manufacturer for parts replacement. Capacitors are usually expected to last about 7 years, and experts say if they are not made right, they will start to deteriorate after 3 or 4 years.

Various postings on message boards claim the trouble was caused by capacitors that were overfilled with a liquid electrolyte that helps the component protect the processor from excess power; convert energy from 5 volts to around 1.5 volts; and deal with current surges. The PC makers have not confirmed that that was the problem.

Source: News.com.

Xbox 360 and your iPod

Coming to a big screen near you. The Xbox 360, when it debuts, will have the ability to stream music files from just about any MP3 player, including, gasp, Apple’s iPod. And during the preview of the Xbox 350 in San Francisco last month, Microsoft execs were really excited to be able to play music from the apple iPod, and talked up the functionality quite a bit.

“When you plug your iPod in,” Xbox digital-entertainment executive producer Jeff Henshaw told CNET News.com, “the Xbox 360 automatically detects that it’s there. You can browse by artist or album or genre or by custom playlist.”

And, although it can stream the music from your iPod into games like Project Gotham Racing 3, replacing the game sound track with your own tunes, this was done without Apple’s support.

“We do not have an official relationship with Apple for the iPod connectivity,” said Scott Henson, product unit manager in Microsoft’s advanced technology group. He maintains that “Xbox 360 leverages standard protocols such as USB mass storage to enable iPod support.”

Henshaw said Microsoft tried to “engage” Apple in a partnership that would have officially made the iPod interoperable with Xbox, but Apple rejected the overture.

“So we went in and built all of the support we could,” Henshaw said. Microsoft plans to release the new Xbox in North America on Nov. 22.

Henshaw said the Xbox 360 would be able to stream any standard MP3 file or AAC file from an iPod, but not protected songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store. Those songs, he said, will appear grayed out in menus on the Xbox.

Microsoft would not comment as to wether they had to reverse engineer anything, but industry folks assume they did, since the iPod actually scatters the songs accross directories and renames them, which makes them really hard to find.

iPods have a database that cross-references the location of music files and their names so users can select them through the device’s menu. Microsoft would have had to include simple software in order to engage that database, he said.

“They have to read that database to get a list of songs on the iPod and present that to the user,” Benson said. “Once a user has selected what song to play, then you use the database to find the song and play it.”

So, it sounds like they would have to figure out how to find them first by talking to their database. I would say Apple isn’t going to like this very much, and will probably be ready to counter the ability with an iTunes update of some kind, like they did when RealNetwork’s made it possible to copy songs from their online offerings with the iPod.

“It would be unfortunate if that happened, because people are enjoying the flexibility,” said Henshaw. “It would be unfortunate to see Apple inhibit people’s ability to enjoy their own music.”

Hehe. That’s their line and they are sticking to it. This article quoted the News.com article, and they said Apple did not have a comment at this time. I’m sure there will be one when the system ships near the end of the month.

Here’s a post on Microsoft blog on SeattlePI.com, where a journalist actually got to try it out with an iPod Nano and his own iPod, and he said it worked just fine, even has a pic with it connected.

Bink.nu has an article about it posted here, and it has some quotes from J Allard and he says,

“I’m pro consumer on this one to the end. Anybody in my company who thought this was a bad idea to plug in Sony or Apple devices into this thing, I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they invest $500 in their digital media library, you can’t ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera, and a 360… NO! They got their stuff. They’re going to want to plug it in. We’re going to be open here, guys. And if anything, I wish we could be more cooperative with the other companies that are doing those things. And if Sony or Apple were to call me up and say, “hey, we want to [do] some special things with the 360,” i’m on it. I think it would not be in anybody’s interest to say, we’re not going to work with 360. It’s good for them, it’s good for us, and it’s good for consumers.”

Sounds good to me.

Ultra Mobile PC’s and the Once a Week Battery Charge

I know, the title’s a little misleading, but that is how they are promoting it. What it means in all actuality, is thet it will sit in stand by mode, the actual running time, meaning in use, is about 8 hours, which is still pretty good. This is from an article on tgdaily.com,

David Perlmutter, vice president and co-general manager of the company’s Mobility Group and in charge of the development of key components, spent some time on the ultra mobile PCs or UMPC category, which Intel CEO Paul Otellini briefly mentioned in his August keynote. The UMPC, a miniature variation of today’s notebooks, is scheduled to be commercially available late next year, will come in a size and weight not much greater then a common handheld.

While details how Intel wants to achieve this goal were scarce, Perlmutter mentioned that the device will be based on “a scaled-down version of a Pentium M processor.” The UMPC will provide full PC capability, which can handle most common computing tasks, including web-browsing, e-mail and even computer games. “It won’t be as strong as a standard PC”, he explained, “but it will have more computing power than what we had in PCs only two years ago.” According to Paul Otellini, processors for UMPCs will consume about 0.5 watts and be able to run Windows Vista.

Commercial availability of early UMPCs is scheduled for the second half 2006. Perlmutter added that a “breakthrough” for the devices is expected for “2007 or 2008.”

So, hopefully, by the time they are actually released, they will be as fast as computers are today. I hope they are pretty cool looking, as what I have read it seems they will be perfect for those people who don’t want to carry a briefcase, but need all of their info with them, and be able to fit into a woman’s pocket book. So, they will be too big for your pocket fella’s.

Found this pic on engadget of a mockup they tested in April.

From their article,

So we got a chance to play around with the mock-up for the Ultra Mobile PC, that new concept design for a mini Tablet PC with a 6-inch display that Microsoft was showing off at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference earlier this week. This isn?t really a prototype, since it?s just a plastic model with some dreamy future specs, but Microsoft says that the goal is to have something that?s this small and thin out within a year or two after Longhorn debuts (which means we?ll be reviewing this on Engadget in 2007 or 2008 at best). Even when/if it does come out, the Ultra Mobile PC will still fall squarely into the no-man?s land of portable computers?it?s too big to fit in your pocket and too small to serve as your main machine.

Sounds pretty cool, and it probably could serv as your main machine if you could plug in your mosue, keyboard and monitor. May also be handy for GPS programs for use in your car.

Just found this pic on this blog, check it out, a manufacturing company has started added some of those big pockets on the inside of your jacket to carry these devices in, pretty cool.