» microsoft

I don’t have many gadgets that I want lately except I’ve been eyeing on a netbook for a while. Currently the cheapest I find is about $300 to even high $200 Canadians, plus tax of course. While this is within my range, I am still telling myself to wait until at least Boxing Day for better deal.

I now have a change of heart as soon as I saw this from Gizmodo about Microsoft’s prototype booklet called Courier. It looks like a labtop/netbook with two sides that fold like, well, a book! The major difference is the two sides are made of two 7 inch multitouch screens. I can already see one of the screens being the keyboard when needed since it doesn’t have a physical one. The screens are also designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, no surprise there.

As nice and as much as I want the Courier, I will have to wait until there’s a production version. I highly doubt it will be as cheap as the netbook but hopefully cheaper than a Mac?

Image source: Gizmodo

Good news Hotmail users! NOT! Microsoft is now forcing us Hotmail users to adapt to the redesigned interface. Why break something that’s been working great for so many years? The first time I logged into Hotmail yesterday, I thought my page wasn’t loaded completely. But it was “done” so the only thing that could explain this was they changed the look and feel again.

Some people said Microsoft products are generally hated and bashed by when they first come out, but frankly I disagree because I’ve had no problem with Hotmail (most of the time) until now and I had no problem surfing the net with Internet Explorer until I made the mistake of giving the buggy IE 8 Beta a try but that’s beta so bugs are expected and luckily I got a new computer and now using IE 7 instead. Finally, I have no complains using Windows XP either and no I am NOT a MS fanboy.

Microsoft better get that option of going back to classic mode as soon as possible, I know a lot of people that are getting annoyed by the new design.

Thank you for listening to my daily rant I feel much better now.

Fable 2, another game that I wish would be available on the PlayStation 3, I’m hoping this will get ported over to the PC sometime after the XBox360 release. From the trailer both graphics specially the environments like grass and trees and physics have improved, I love the part where you can literally push/kick your enemies down a cliff but I can also see this may be overused since you can just push all of them down without using your weapons. Based on the trailer, the battle also looks like the same old hack and slash. When equiped with a gun, it looks like auto aim to me which hopefully can be turned off if that’s the case.

Oh well, I guess I will have Little Big Planet as well as Fallout 3 to keep me company until Fable 2 becomes available for PC.

Today in Windows Vista Team Blog Corporate VP, Windows Product Managemet Mike Nash confirms the next Windows operating system or simply OS, will be named Windows 7. At first I thought it didn’t make sense why it would they should use the number 7. But he explains that since its the 7th generation for Windows OS (sorry I seriously didn’t know better, I lost count with so many of them), it makes sense to use 7 as part of the Windows’ name. I also agree with him that using words like XP or Vista didn’t really do the justice as well, they didn’t have too much meanings in them.

For once I agree with MS…..which is a first.

Gametrailers.com has just released this amazing 3+ minutes long movie clip, probably an intro or some cut scenes? The clip is really realistic and tells the story behind Halo Wars, which is the first RTS or real time strategy game of the series. I am very happy that they have decided to come up with something different other than yet another Halo first person shooter, not that I’m bashing the games mind you. I just think that this release will attract more gamers, specifically the RTS gamers to the Halo series as well.

Unfortunately this game is for XBox360 only and maybe for the PC as well. PlayStation 3 users will either have to drool over it, like me. Or get yourself the XBox360 or hope the game will come out for PC.

In the mean time, check this 3+ minutes long movie clip out from Gametrailers.com

I was reading an article on cnet and I have to agree completely with what David Carnoy have mentioned about the present and future of the Sony PlayStation. The current PlayStation 3 has just started to take off with the lowered production cost (chip shrunk from 90nm down to 45nm) and with slightly more games worth purchasing. Sony should get back or at least break even from the investment and money lost from selling each console under cost when it first came out. That won’t be possible however, if Sony started researching on a completely new processor chip from the ground up as it would need to inject a huge chunk of money for research and development all over again, well before Sony could profit from the current console. Therefore it makes much sense for Sony to stick to the current chip design and modify it.

As a PlayStation 3 (60GB with Spiderman 3 Blu-ray DVD) owner since November 2007, I would prefer to hold on to this console for at least a few more years as oppose to buying a new console every 2 years because I’m just not ready to make another expensive purchase, just like most of us normal consumers who would like to make purchases at the cheapest possible price unlike the hardcore gaming fans who will rush to get new consoles/games on their very first release days. I too agree Sony should improve the current console, not just on the technical side but the look and feel of the console as well. The PlayStation 3 console is huge, though its surprisingly quiet. It would be great if its size could be reduced to the same side as the slim PlayStation 2. I think the slim version of the PS2 is one of the sleekest console of all time, if not THE sleekest. And I assume by the time it can be shrunk to that size, the price will drop as well?

Sony should ignore and forget about Microsoft from releasing an XBox 720 or XBox1080 (I personally like the name XBox1080 as it would match with the current Full HD format). Why? What happened to the earlier versions of the XBox360? Remember the infamous Red Ring of Death? How many times did someone you know had to send back the console for a repair or a new one? Don’t get me wrong, I am not a PS3 fanboy and certainly not here to bash XBox360, at least not in this article and I don’t see a point in bashing it anyway as I heard from people the newer versions are much more stable than the older ones. I just want to point out that history would repeat itself if Microsoft rushed into releasing a new console. And even if a new XBox is released with better graphic capabilities, its not all about the graphics. First if a game has great graphics but no actual playing value, the game would still not be worth purchasing, well most of the time. Take the Nintendo Wii for example, it doesn’t have the graphics compare to the XBox360 and PlayStation 3 but its the best selling console these days. The reason is because it is innovative and it suits a broader range of audience from non gamers, casual gamers and to the hardcore gamers. To me its basically a tweaked GameCube!

But then again, imagine what the PlayStation 4 can do with a completely new chip.

What do you think?

There are many people looking for solutions for downgrading from IE 8 back to IE 6 or 7. I actually stumbled upon this blog and found it very useful and thought I should share with you guys. The steps are clear to the point and easy to follow. I MIGHT downgrade to IE 7, but I want to see how much longer I can last with this buggy thing.

Things aren’t looking to go for IE8 Beta, I’m getting really annoyed with the incompatibilities while surfing different websites, specially when I’m in the middle of filling in data, if I press the Compatiblity View button, I lose all the data I typed in.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
•From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs
•Click Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and then click Remove.
•Your computer will be reverted to Internet Explorer 6 + previous IE6 security updates or Internet Explorer 7 + previous IE7 security updates depending on what you had before the upgrade.
•You can confirm that by clicking Help, then About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer.
•Be sure to check for any new security updates.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
•From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Programs
•Click Programs and Features and click View Installed Updates (located in the left side menu
•Select Windows Internet Explorer 8 and Uninstall
•Your machine will be reverted to IE7 + previous IE7 security updates
•You can confirm that by clicking Help, then clicking About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer.
•Be sure to check for any new security updates.

From gHacks.net

Microsoft released Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta last week. I was relunctant to download it and give it a try because of chance of instability not just to web browser but the entire OS, or operating system as a whole. But my curiosity won and I installed it today and writing this review using it.

The first thing I noticed was the Favorites is now part of the top section of the browser where the common File, Edit View etc bar and the navigation buttons are. I found it somewhat pointless if I have more bookmarks that the width of the browser can display because in that case I STILL have to either click the double arrow to the far right of the Favorites or click the Favorites in the File, Edit and View bar like in previous versions. Needless to say, I got rid of that right away, although a Favorites button remains on the top, it still takes up less space than before as I prefer a cleaner browser with as little as possible. Another related feature is the One Click Favorites which will save you a few clicks when trying to favorite a page.

IE7 introduced tab navigations which was long implemented in Firefox and Mozilla, IE8 further enhances that feature with Quick Tabs where you will be able to view thumbnail size of pages in each tab. You can go to that page by selecting the corresponding thumbnail.

On the Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 features page, it stated Increased performance. I have yet to notice any differences, and I actually crashed while surfing other websites once. I’m not sure if its a coincidence or because of IE 8.

There are two features that I think are relatively more useful – Web Slices and Compatibility View. Web Slices allows you to “favorite” or subscribe to a web page in your Favorites. When new information is available, the tab will be highlighted, when you click on the tab, it will then display a preview of the updated page. Clicking on that preview will bring you to the actual page. This is very handy for people that often buy/sell on eBay. The compatibility View is also a great feature because I can assure you not every website will be fully compatible with this new version of IE. Wordpress for one isn’t 100% compatible. With this new feature, all you have to do is click theCompatibility View button located just beside the Refresh and Stop button on the url section and you can view the page, and only this page, as if you are using IE7.

The URL bar, where you type in a website address also received enhancements. For example, if I type in the word “game”, it will display all matches from History, Favorites and RSS feeds. Neat feature but probably not as useful as the previous two mentioned.
Finally, IE8 also introduces a feature called Accelerators. Basically the idea is to save user’s time by eliminating the copying and pasting. It is sort of like an auto complete by using stored input data. I haven’t had time to play around too much with it.

I have also found a bug that will crash IE8 everytime, at least on my PC. Simply right click on any links and it will crash. Although IE can recover and display the page again. Basically I cannot right click on any links until either I downgrade back to IE7 or wait for an updated version of IE8.

There are some nice features in this version of IE but nothing “must get”. So for those who are not as curious as me, its better to wait for the “live” release. I have not written all the features of IE8 but rather some of the obvious ones but I hope this review can give you some ideas of what is to expect from IE8. For an overview or the full list click here.