It’s All New (To You…)

A new year is upon us and so is CES and Macworld.  The real news (for Macworld anyway) out of Macworld was that Steve Jobs wasn’t there this time and Apple won’t be there next time, or anytime after that.  This was apparently the death nell for Macworld Boston some years ago and some say that no Apple plus no Adobe equals no Macworld.  CES is just getting underway.  If you want to see some of the goodies from CES check out Engadget.  Windows 7 public beta will be coming out tomorrow however the MS execs are still being cagey about whether or not W7 will be released in 2009 at all.  From what I have heard it is already more stable than Vista was at release and is basically ready so I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be released as early as Q3 this year but then again I’m just some yoyo with a blog.

One of my projects is getting rid of our TV provider (Dish Network) and making use of the various audio and video capabilities of the Wii and xBox and the computers we own.  And now Dish Network comes out with a really cool device. The new high end DVR has some really nice capabilities including being able to access your programming from a computer or even a laptop while travelling.  I am waiting for more companies to start generating products that allow people to break away from the service based model of telephone and television and allow consumers to have more choices in these areas all by just having an internet connection.  Maybe that should be another post altogether.

Internet Services worth a crap

This may end up being one post that I ignore in the future because I can’ get any reviews done and it may also end up being something that I end up forgetting about 15 seconds after I click “post”.  My intention is to take a look at some of the services out there on the ‘net and let folks know what doesn’t suck.

Windows 7?!?

Okay, I have seen some of the different ideas as to why this next release of the Microsoft Desktop Operating System should and should not be called Windows 7.  The real question to me is what happened at Microsoft between XP and Vista?  If you look at the release timeline of past releases, you’ll see roughly 2 years pass from version to version.  A bit too long if you ask me but that is not the point here.  From XP’s release to Vista’s release there was a 5 year gap.  Now it is true that the then “Longhorn” came and disappeared in the development process, but that doesn’t explain to me where all that development time went.  Maybe Microsoft’s internal management and bureaucracy is so bloated and stagnant that all they had to show for those years of coding was Vista.  ugh!

My guess here is that an internal political struggle ended up wasting vast amounts of time and money on the behalf of Microsoft and also put it in a position of playing catchup to Apple’s comeback in consumer electronics and to Google’s Internet explosion.  I think this political mess has possibly ended up putting the “lucky 7″ behind the Windows name in order to help consumers forget about the negatives of the past year but hopefully it has been able to redirect its focus on development.  Windows 7 sounds like it is getting some good attention to its development process, but Microsoft is still not focusing enough on its core in my opinion, but then again nobody asked me.

Coming Soon

Windows XP Service Pack 3 should be out soon.  It is currently in production and should be available on the Windows Update nearest you next week.  I will be updating as soon as its available and I’ll post any goodies I see.  Western Digital has come out with a 10k RPM SATA hard drive, the VelociRaptor.  About time if you ask me.  Desktop users, mostly gamers will care, have been stuck with 7200 RPM drives for years.  If you want to build a cheap but quick database server, the drives won’t kill you now.  Gamers will love the added speed also.  The drive is not priced to bad either.  At $300 (MSRP) for the 300 gig model, it’s a pretty good bang for your buck.