Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

1. They're all sold out.
2. I read the fine print, AT&T is bonkers, and I'm not paying $500 for a phone that'll be replaced in a year.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iphone-info.jsp

Yeah, screw that. Shame really, since having used the iPhone for a good hour I must say it totally kills my BlackJack II which is running Windows Mobile 6. I guess I still have the 6.1 update to look forward to though I imagine I probably will be seeing the v3 iPhone by that time and come March will grab one of those .

 

Saw 300 tonight, was totally awesome. If you've got an IMAX showing it, see it there. Certainly was cool. Anyway, I heard this one piece of the score and knew for sure I had heard it before. Got home, popped in the Titus DVD, tried not to get pulled in, then sure enough it's basically the same. Hear for yourself, first the Titus version then 300's. Then I searched for more info to see if there was some underlying classical music tones similar to Nike's campaign with The Second Coming and Mozart's Lacrimosa. You know sometimes this stuff comes from all over. So much sampling and borrowing is done in music today that it's impossible to really know who's actually done what. Heck I bet at the heart of it all they do it to make us do just that, try and remember exactly what came from what and it'll stay with us. So congrats on a job well done.

The search ended up revealing this bit of review:

"Returns a King" brings in the first appearance of the powerful choral pieces Bates wrote for the film, though fans will note similarities to Elliott Goldenthal's Titus score. The choir cues are impressive, sung in a phonetic language and epic on scale.

Ya think!? I mean "note similarities"? You mean other than the few extra notes and more up to date recording? ROFL. Please. Rather than think that Bates' is copying Goldenthal's score as well as using similar musical tactics as Zimmer, I'd rather think or hope I guess, that he's paying homage to Titus and Gladiator. The former of which I happen to think was an underappreciated yet awesome film.

All that being said, see 300 in a theater, it was great.

UPDATE: Looks like Warner Bros. has released an official statement saying sorry for their knowledge that the music was taken from Elliot's Titus score... "Warner Bros. Pictures acknowledges and regrets that a number of the music cues for the score of "300" were derived from music composed by Academy Award winning composer Elliot Goldenthal for the motion picture "Titus." Warner Bros. Pictures has great respect for Elliot, our longtime collaborator, and is pleased to have amicably resolved this matter."

Was following a thread on a forum and someone posted the following.

Lance: Still got your Malibu?
Vincent Vega: Aw, man. You know what some fucker did the other day?
Lance: What?
Vincent Vega: Fucking keyed it.
Lance: Oh, man, that’s fucked up.
Vincent Vega: Tell me about it. I had it in storage for three years, it was out for five days and some dickless piece of shit fucked with it.
Lance: They should be fucking killed. No trial, no jury, straight to execution.
Vincent Vega: Boy, I wish I could’ve caught him doing it. I’d have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It’d been worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.
Lance: What a fucker!
Vincent Vega: What’s more chickenshit than fucking with a man’s automobile? I mean, don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle.
Lance: You don’t do it.
Vincent Vega: It’s just against the rules.

Pulp Fiction aside, it's mildly amusing, annoying, frustrating, whatever... that I get away scot-free from a near nasty accident during the first snow of Redmond after some guy nearly rear ends me. Only later, to have some buffoon key the hood and drivers side. I don't get why anyone would do that really. Unless they wanted to boost their ego in front of some drunken friends or whatever. Who knows. It's not like they saw the look on my face after the fact. In so many ways I wish Seattle and the US in general was CCTV'd up the arse like London is. I'd hope that there'd be the day where you could actually file a police report, give them the time the car was parked at the location then they'd just review the CCTV for those times and get a nice picture of the perp.

Of course with 20/20 hindsight I could say that we should've taken Julie's car. Who would really mess with a college student's a to b car, especially when it's a cute little Chevy Aveo with a bubble butt . We could've probably parked it in the same exact spot at the same time and the person would've left it alone. Or we could've not gone to the next pub after seeing her brother-in-law perform and been out of there before the incident happened. Who knows... It's only a car, sure, it is however for most the second most valuable investment behind a house.

Anyway, what can you do. It'll be a couple hundred bucks to fix, and hopefully won't affect the premium on the insurance despite them shelling out $2200-2700 to fix it. Oh and not to mention that it'll affect the trade-in value if I plan on selling the best car ever anytime soon but hey, it's the best car ever. Don't think that'll be happening for some time to come (like when the Tesla is about the same price).

After following the madness on Gizmodo. It really makes you wonder. Out of all the units sold so far, exactly how many are or will end up on eBay within 48 hours of the purchase. Insane.

Will be returning in more ways than one on October 9th, 2006.

Going through Scoble's blog, CTRL+Q'ing the stuff that's duped or isn't so interesting I stumbled upon blogger comedy gold.

The brothers in RSS advocacy aren't in sync anymore. Scoble has unsubscribed from Pirillo.

Back about 8 months ago in March I talked to Chris about the lack of full text feeds on his blog. He did mention looking into getting them turned on. At the time though he also suggested I do the incredible and actually download the webpage (via Fetchlinks for NewsGator).

What the!? Combine this with all the dead blogs. And the dead readers.

Maybe the blubble has burst, dead blogs, dead readers, nothing radically new, major RSS advocates not even using RSS to the fullest. Tsk tsk... What is going on in the world?

And I just wish I could've done it quicker. In the past year I've been with AT&T / Cingular on the cheapest $39.99 plan I've had the following available to me, 400 + an additional 50 free minutes and Unlimited Nights & Weekends. Oh and 0 SMS with the cost per SMS at $.10, great really. Not. At least not when you send a max of 5 SMS per month and haven't had a single month in which you went over 100 minutes.

Making matters worse I've never had a bill that's run my $39.99. This month I just paid $52.07, previous month was $53.55, etc. All that for my wonderful 100 minutes max usage. So rather than paying $.10 a minute or something reasonable I've been paying close to $1.92 a minute. Screw that.

Having just called Cingular to verify my contract end date I just received more bad news. I bought the phone off Amazon on November 10th so I thought my contract was already up. Apparently not, I was originally in San Jose with a 408 number but switched to a 425 number when I found out I was moving up to Redmond to work for Microsoft. I did that on January 12th, and so I've been told that Cingular created a entirely new service contract for me thus renewing my contract till January 12th, 2006. Grand.

So there you have it, hopefully, with fingers crossed, I'll be switching to T-Mobile's PAYG service on January 12th, 2006. I've also been told that T-Mobile with transfer my number, though of course if my PAYG expires then I'll lose the number. Oh well.

Since I've not got any data services, which is another story, I figure I'll be saving myself about $43 every month. I'll start out with only the SIM and activate with the $25 card which should give me 130 minutes, that'll probably last 2 months. Then I'll pay $100 for 1000 minutes, those will expire after 1 year, not bad but not as good as PAYG in the UK . Figuring I make less than 100 minutes of calls every month I figure that one payment of $100 will last a full year.

Total savings after switch, $524!!! Man that'll be a good feeling.

Am totally impressed by this how to I just finished reading on Engadget. I'm keeping an eye out for any dead looking dishes now...

Sorry to say it Chris, but you won't be any happier with Cingular. Sadly I think the sentiment and frustration with mobile service providers and land line providers is growing more than ever. It's not just a feeling us geeks have either. When I was in England I absolutely loved the service I received there. With any of the providers you got all your incoming calls and texts for free. None of this minutes bull. Texts were on average 6-10p per message (cheaper if you had a good contract). Most average contracts include 300-500 texts per month with 100-500 minutes. As an example lets look at O2 (the provider I had in the UK), here's the plans they offer online. 200 minutes to any mobile and 500 texts for £30 on a year contract, so you might be thinking "that's not a lot of minutes". Well it doesn't have to be, you don't pay to receive calls. You might ask about the phones you can get. Well surprise, take one of the most popular phones out right now, the Moto V3, that's free, the Rokr, that's free too. So I'm not totally biased here. Personally I still felt as if I was being screwed for the service I received even while in the UK. I didn't think it was good value for money either. The main point I'm trying to make is that in the US we're being screwed on these huge 2 year contracts for phones that we've still got to pay $100+ for when in the UK they're getting them free on 1 year contracts and getting free upgrades every renewal period. I paid £25 for a Nokia 6610 (unlocked) when I first got to the UK on a 1 year contract with O2. When I came home, about 3 months later, I was disgusted when I saw the same phone just finally come available and be marketed as new and such, price, $249 on a 2 year contract. Please tell me why, how does that make sense?

I get this feeling that the US carriers are just happy and giddy that they've pulled off the most amazing trick. They've managed to make America forget about the rest of the world. I highly doubt the average person realizes that everywhere else people don't pay to receive incoming calls (or incoming texts [see T-Mobile US]). And in other countries they certainly don't pay an arm and a leg for 2 year contracts and new phones. Plus just look at how Sprint, Verizon, etc can manage to just not have phones that only work in the US. They've certainly managed to maintain the existing America is the world mentality. Sadly it's not like things are better in the north, Canada has it even worse, some there even pay for voicemail. How much is the V3 with Rogers in Canada? Currently $99 CAD on a 3!?!? year contract, $375 CAD on a 1 year contract!

Yet all of us in North America continue to pay. So many of us are just fed up and switch from one provider to another only to find they are all horrible thieves that continue to think we'll just love them for the same crappy service that's so behind the times.

I think secretly the reason why so many of us are dying for good data plans on mobile networks is so that we can just give the service providers the finger and start using VoIP. Heck I know I am. If I had my way, I'd use the data services while out and about to make VoIP calls and use Messenger. Then when near an open WiFi node, use that. How many of us would just die for a plan that provided unlimited data with say 100-300 minutes (just in case) for $20-40/mo. I know I would.

Don't get me started on landline providers. The idea of choice there is a joke. So many areas are still only served by one provider when it comes to the basic local line. It's horrible. I've been trying to get my Mom off of Verizon's land line service which costs her something like $70/mo for unlimited US and Canadian calls and onto Vonage purely because of the huge price difference. She's tied to it because Vonage doesn't currently let her keep the number she's had for over 5 years now. For those in reach of cable internet there's a huge opportunity there to just be rid of a land line completely. The service speeds and reliability are probably good enough to just get a good VoIP service (Vonage being one, Lingo not) and save a huge amount of money.

Please tell me when will things finally change for the better? Maybe I've become far too cynical or far too impatient, I have just about lost any faith that consumers have anything going for them anymore. That's another story though...

Alex posted a fine image of some Black Cab's from San Francisco today. Geez are they a sight for sore eyes. I really miss black cab's. Reasons why they're better than crappy Crown Vic's: can easily hold 5 people (6 if they're drunk), are really comfy, have plenty of space for luggage if there's only two or 3 people (there are two extra seats that fold up that face back-wards), get better gas mileage, oh and they're British . I really hope and can't wait till they make it here. Hopefully they'll invade all the major cities to start then invade the rest of the country. Down with Crown Vic's and up with Black Cab's. God Praise the Queen!

So BA flight 48. The Ferris factor didn’t really strike this time around. I don’t think it had a chance to. I mean the entire flight went pretty much normal and the snafu with Gate Gourmet really doesn’t seem to affect that much. If anything this was one of the most painless international departures I’ve ever been on. For a start I did BA’s online check-in. So I had my boarding pass about 11 hours before the flight was set to depart. Then when Dom dropped me off at SeaTac I just walked up to the check-in desk and handed the lady my bag and passport. She just verified my home laser printed pass okay and sent me on my way. Mind you there was only one person in front of me. I think that’s because the quick bag drop off shared the counter with the First Class counter. Anyway, it went by so fast she didn’t even ask me if I had a bomb or if I had knives or anything like that. She didn’t tell me which gate to go to. And she totally forgot to give me my $20 food voucher. Then again I totally forgot as well. I only remembered when I went for my grande soy caramel macchiato.

Some family was in front of me and loaded up on $60 worth of random Starbucks food which was ridiculous. Got to the gate and asked the guy about the voucher. Noticed he already had my seat number written down on paper to remember to give me a voucher. Not bad… Apparently one could only use the voucher at one location and couldn’t get change. Guess that explains the Starbucks family. Sitting and waiting, no WiFi, where’s T-Mobile HotSpots when you need them. WayPort and Cingular for $7 and $10 respectively, I think not.

For about $19 I managed to get two sandwiches (one of which is probably all soggy by now, yuck, wet bread), 4 cookies, and a croissant. Won’t be too bad if I can make it last the 9 hours for the flight. Oh and when we boarded they had the all day deli ready made junk to hand out. So yet more food. As long as there’s some wine I’ll be okay.

The chav’s (most likely from Stoke) are just annoying me as we board. The one girl is in a Mackenzie track suit which is obviously 3 sizes too small for her. The dad is wearing a track suit bottom and a England football jersey plus a chavtastic jumper. Some other girl with them is in full decked out Burberry. I just want to yell chav at the top of my lungs and get the camera to film the aftermath. On the other hand there’s a much more reasonable English family on the other side of me. Quite posh sounding accent though I can’t place it. The Dad has called his daughter by “darling”. So south, somewhere. Probably on the beach, undoubtedly with a yacht just down the road docked at the marina.

Oh how I miss the English accent. It really is a thing of beauty. So many varieties to choose from,

With just barely enough room to type I think I’m already getting carpel tunnel. The X1 is the first laptop I’ve been able to get out and use without having the screen and keyboard in some freakishly weird position. Even so this is starting to hurt. Oh and… The Sennheiser PXC-250’s with their lovely NoiseGuard (noise reduction) kick ass. With them on and not plugged in switching NoiseGuard on and off is amazing. Granted it’s not like some listening room with them on but without you get the blaring noise of the engines.

View outside the window is dismal at best. Looks like Manchester already, nothing but gray.

Argh!!! No wine. No ice for the water either. Suppose I’ll finish up now and continue again once we pass over Greenland.

So about 10 minutes ago while in bed sorting music and reading the news I heard a gunshot followed by two more then two guys who sounded like they were yelling from afar. Not quite sure what was going on and chatting to Mark at the time I just randomly ask if he thought if it was worth calling in. Typically, he says sure, so I do. Figured what the hell, was probably nothing but it couldn't hurt since I could use a real test of the 911 service with Vonage. It's a shame I didn't have it on speakerphone and recorded it. But it went something like this:

• Lady 1: National Emergency Fire, Rescue, and Police can I verify your address is x on Old Redmond Road, in Redmond, Washington.
• Me: Yes that's correct.
• Lady 1: What's the emergency.
• Me: Just heard 3 gun shuts and what sounded like two men yelling from the street.
• Lady 1: Okay sir, let me transfer you over to the Redmond Emergency Fire, Rescue, and Police. Please hold the line.
• Me: Okay.
• Hold: Kenny G - Theme from Dying Young plays. And yes I kid you not it was actually Dying Young. Oh the irony.
• Lady 2: Redmond Fire, Rescue, and Police, what's your emergency.
• Me: Almost about to open my mouth and speak.
• Lady 1: Yes this is the National Emergency line with a transfer from Corey at x on Old Redmond Road in Redmond.
• Lady 2: (Can't quite remember exactly what she said) okay, transferring to Bellevue Police.
• Lady 1: Sir, please hold the line while we're transferred.
• Me: Yep.
• Lady 3: Bellevue Police, what's the emergency.
• Lady 1: National Emergency line with a transfer and report of gun shots on Old Redmond Road in Redmond.
• Lady 3: Okay sir, please provide me the details of the incident.
• Me: Oh I just heard 3 shots which sounded as if they were coming from the road and then a male (possibly two) with what must've been yelling from the road.
• Lady 3: Okay, thank you sir, it looks like we've had other calls regarding this. Thank you for reporting it.
• Me: No problem.
• Lady 3: Thank you, good night.
  Click

About 15 minutes later I get a call from what I figure is Redmond dispatch (Lady 4) requesting a little more info for the officer that will answer the call. Provide the same details again and verify my apartment number.

Now 20 minutes since the initial call as I'm sitting in the dark writing this post the officer knocks. Repeat the details, show him general direction in which the supposed shots and yell came from. He says they're not too sure yet if they were actually shots and they've not found anything yet. Not surprising. Whatever. I'm tired and this being Redmond and this sort of thing being just about unheard of maybe it was just someone shooting a beer bottle or something stupid after having a little too much to drink.

As for the entire 911 experience. I can't really say if I'm satisfied or not. I mean, the one time when I had a proper land line and had to dial some years ago things were immediate with no transfers and someone on the scene within 5-10 minutes. The entire Kenny G on hold via the National Emergency line was absolutely insane. Granted the type of call I placed wasn't an immediate emergency for myself and it's just a report of a possible emergency. I can't quite say I'd feel comfortable with being transferred 3 times if I was the person who was shot and needed help.

So quite interesting regardless. I'll have to reread the E911 information that Vonage has sent me in the mail recently. IIRC basically, it spells all the information out in some long terms of service. There's a cover letter stating that Vonage is in the process of rolling out E911 service nationwide and that they'll notify me of when E911 becomes active. Coupled with 112 from my mobile I'd say there's plenty of ways to contact the emergency response.

Actually, just got me thinking, I wonder if in any areas they've enabled SMS reporting of emergencies...

Not having read the books, partly because I can't remember where I placed the eBook versions... I'd give the film an 8.8/10. Could've used more Zooey really. Quite liked Bill Nighy's character. At any rate go see the film it's worth watching. At the same time, I suggest you look for a couple snogging in front of you during the previews. This specific couple was most entertaining, they honestly could've booked a private room and private viewing or something, they most definitely could've used a pause button. Half-way through the previews before the film starts they're just going at it. So much so you can hear them over the trailers. So what do you know the music kicks in for Episode III and they both just stop and turn and watch the trailer. Dom, Mike, and I just most definitely all started laughing our asses off internally at this point. I point it out to Mike who I'm sure already noticed anyway. The trailer ends, then no more than 10 seconds later the guy is brushing his face against hers and they start going at it again. Just as the movie is starting they get up, walk passed everyone in the packed aisle, then as soon as they hit the stairs they make a mad dash to the nearest dark corner for what I'm sure was probably a most entertaining movie, well for them at least. Sigh, I just don't understand why anyone would pay $18 to see a film then walk out after 3 minutes.

Oh and I almost forgot. There's one scene with Marvin all alone on the ice and there's the nice scene in the background, I'd kill to have a flawless screenshot of that at 1920x1200. That would make one hell of a background.

So after a nightmarish search for a moving company and every one of them saying that I'm nuts for trying to get a mover to do 775 pounds worth of stuff I've been given a solution!

Dom has *cough* graciously *cough* offered to have me fly him from SEA to SJC. He can then drive my car back up to Washington so that I can drive the 10' U-Haul up, trailing him by half the distance.

Dom you're not a doormat, you're brilliant, and I owe you big time!
Thanks a million.

After much searching and a pretty large Excel spreadsheet plus countless phone calls to countless property managers I've finally picked an apartment. It's the 2 bed 1 bath path seen here. I ended up getting them to do a 6 month lease for $883 a month. Which is quite good compared to all the others I was looking at. There was this one place, Lionsgate, that was really really nice but outrageously expensive.

Pluses... I should still be close enough to ride a bike to work. I'm 5770 from the CO, RDMDWAXA, so 6000/768 service from SpeakEasy on OneLink is easily available. Line quality tests come back excellent as well.

Minuses... It's not walking distance to work. Would've liked to been able to bring my coydog up from my Mom's place in Joshua Tree. Can't really think of any others right off hand, unless of course I have annoying neighbors that don't like Zep late at night .

I should be out of here hopefully a couple days after Sam's left. It seems as if any mover I go with will take a day or two or three so ideally I should have my stuff packed the day Sam leaves. Wow! Talk about stressful, loads to do and loads to pack. This time I think I'll definitely try and get all the geek stuff into the car without the boxes.

Bah, I hate moving!

Well Dom now knows and I saved one long rant about how big of a twat I am for trying to surprise him only to end up pissing him off.

So before I left for Vegas after much discussion with Dom, who gave pretty good advice, I decided on Archstone Redmond Campus for their last 1 bedroom apartment which was on the top floor. I called up the girl, Tracy, and gave her my details and gave her my email address to send me the PDF's so I could FedEx the paperwork over before I had to try and get some sleep that night (I even printed the label). Waited till 5 minutes before 6 and still no email, called again and spelled out my email once more and she confirmed that she had it right and that she'd send it straight away. Still nothing. Called back 10 minutes later and they were now closed so I left a message.

Left at about 5AM the next morning for Vegas in the pouring rain. It didn't stop raining once while I was driving. At one point when Alex's Belkin GPS software running on his PPC Phone said we were off road we were driving through snow at about 75mph. That was fun. Alex and Sam fell asleep on and off and I having only slept about 30 minutes since waking up the day before at about 11AM was still going strong. At some point along the I5 we stopped at Starbucks and had Alex's famous quad espresso. Still going strong. Went through hundreds of tumbleweeds then at some point finally decided to switch with Alex and let him drive my 2 door Accord. I don't really remember falling asleep but I'd guess I got about an hours rest.

We get in, condo is great, nice, better than my dinky 1 bedroom apartment in San Jose. After having a quick break and changing we hit the show floor with the exhibitor passes that MS graciously provided MVP's. Tony Hynes was there which was slightly unexpected but awesome. Susan Leiter, who I'd met a number of times before at previous events was also there. Sam was worried the entire time about whether or not she'd get in and whether she'd also get to be another brilliant exhibitor . All was fine as usual when you're in the hands of the MVP peeps.

DMD MVP shindig and I'm exhausted. I don't remember anything at all except that Zeb and Matt were bugging me about only having 1 drink even though I was driving us back to the condo and still had had very little to eat that day and even less sleep.

Bright and early on Saturday (?) had a semi decent brunch buffet at can't remember where then back to the show floor. Parking was crap. Tram was crap (the bloody thing ran on wheels) and it cost $3 each trip with a day pass being $10, RIP OFF! Felt sick the entire time on the show floor from the excess amounts of caffine from the previous day. Candice Pederson and Susan saved us again with water and some Aleve. What a difference that made, we were actually able to walk around now. Starbucks queue was ridiculous so we passed. Didn't see ANY other MVP's on the show floor which was odd. That night the MVP meet up was nice at the foundation room of the House of Blues. Chris Hassler was there from Idaho, forgot he was going. Got to meet with Amir Majidmehr and argue briefly with Pirillo about whether or not it was really likely some person would download a random WMA/V with the “DRM exploit”, etc. Not to mention some other WMP annoyances like the lack of quick access to any track via a Jump hot key. Went for food after with Joel, Kasey, Matt, Zeb, Alex, Chris, and Ponzi, and “her/she” aka Sam. Sam and I sat with Chris and Ponzi and had a nice chat about the entire woman vs. beast type thing. I decided geeks really can get laid. Went home, fell asleep, don't remember anything after that (obviously because I wasn't awake).

Left condo at 10AM, had breakfast at Bellagio (?). Better than the day before, but still bad. Alex was working on a Home Screen plugin for the SMT5600 for some WA based company and needed it finished like 2 days ago so went to work on it in the car to send it out via the SmartPhone... All that just to convince Attgular to keep offering the SMT5600. Oh well, what he was doing seemed cool and hopefully Cingular will like it. Started the drive back which ended up being like 2 iirc. Yet more rain. At some point before the I5 I switch with Alex and the rain just stops! WTH!? Stop at Starbucks and grab a Subway at the same time. We sit at this small table and Sam places her bag under the table without me noticing, so when we leave I never think to ask her if she grabbed it. We were all extremely tired. Alex gets us back at some point before midnight and takes off in his Jeep. Then Sam's Dad calls to tell her that a guy from Starbucks called him on her mobile to say that she's left the bag. Sam freaks, I laugh, and say oh well, don't worry about it. Immediately I figure it's too far to drive. Like 8 hours, an entire day lost, ~$30 worth of gas. Cuddle her to say it's okay and not to worry because her geek boyfriend will take care of it without even leaving the house. Call up FedEx give them my account number and say that I need a purse picked up from Starbucks in Buttonwillow. So that's all taken care of. Call up Starbucks at 12:45AM and tell them to expect FedEx and to make sure the bag is safe along with a note explaining to whoever will be working there later.

Monday morning and I check for my email from Archstone and nothing. Call up and find out that she didn't send the email and that they've leased the place to someone who actually came in on Saturday or Sunday. Now looking for another place in Redmond or Bellevue, tired, annoyed, and totally out of it. Then later I notice a SMS from Jon and he's said that he was feeling ill last night and is now on the way to the hospital. The, uh, oh crap, moment happens, tell Dom, call Jon's cell, of course it's off being in a hospital and all (stupid stupid stupid rules). Send him a SMS from Messenger. Call his home number and talk to his Mom who's said she's in the “emerg” with his Dad and that it's probably appendicitis. So I guess we'll find out how that and my apartment end up tomorrow morning.

Obviously by writing this I'm letting him know something is up. Of course he doesn't have a clue. Sadly that also means I can't write anything here yet till I make up my mind, luckily this won't affect the outcome of Dom's shock one way or another. What to do... Whatever I decide I've got to do it in the next day so I can decide by the 20th 

Gramps told me the other day that my second (or is it third) cousin Andrew, a marine, was being sent to Iraq. Not that big of a surprise since the marines are usually cannon fodder for any given military movement. But it’s kind of weird that it’s my cousin being sent and not some other unfortunate soul who I’ve never heard of. My gramps that was in WWII has never supported the war in Iraq and has always been pretty liberal. My first cousin, Casey, has been in the Navy for a while now. He was originally stationed in Okinawa, Japan but is now on some god forsaken island off of the San Diego coast. He’ll probably get out of the navy without ever seeing battle, definitely a good thing in my humble opinion since he’s been brainwashed enough as it is.

Anyway, Gramps was saying that it was ironic that our family has two grandsons in the military right now. The one that supports the war has his grandson on the front lines with the marines in Iraq fighting the war that has been long over for some times. Gramps who hates Bush and doesn’t support the war has his grandson home (seemingly) safe at home on a homeland naval base.

Odd?

Well, I don’t know, I guess I agree. But for me, it’s stranger when I think about my cousin (who I’ve only spent time with once) being in Iraq. Now when I see the MSNBC .NET Alerts pop up in Messenger about US soldiers being killed I notice them more. I notice them when they say 5 marines killed in bombing. I’ve looked at the growing list of names, I haven’t seen my cousins yet, but 4 more years, a lot can happen.

Despite the fact I really don’t have any close ties to Andrew I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for him and every other soldier over there fighting for nothing. They serve no purpose at all except to possibly secure a few more barrels of oil which are oh so precious as the planet starts to finally run out. There’s no freedom in Iraq and there certainly won’t be any in the next 4 years. We certainly aren’t any more secure than we used to be by being in Iraq either, the only real thing to come out of Iraq will be further hatred for America and what that other half stands for. Americans are dead wrong if they think we’re somehow safer from “terrorism” than we used to be. Heck, I’m sure we’ve probably got a few more radical liberal terrorists even more pissed off since the election on Tuesday. I can only imagine the headlines when a few of them got together and decided to drive a pickup truck filled with liquid explosives to the Reagan Center while Bush and Cheney were giving their 4 more years speeches. That’s terrorism, it’s all around you, it’s not the fear of some Iraqis catching a flight from Fallujah and taking a bomb to the next football game. The only way to start the explosion of terrorism is to stop pissing other people off around the planet and promoting peace. Till then this country is screwed and any halfway insane American can just decide to make a few good pipe bombs and start blowing stuff up. Anyway, I’m getting away from what this post was about...

I really hope I get a chance to speak with Andrew once he comes back, not about what it was like over there, but if he truly believes it really mattered. Till then, good luck.

Like I was just saying, I was going to go do my laundry... I just opened my front door though and what do I find!? A girl or somebody or something has left a pair of red panties perfectly placed and laid flat in front of my front door which is up 4 stairs. How totally random! I haven't quite decided to touch them yet. I think I'm going to find a stick. They look like they're silk or something...

<afk>going to get stick and check brand and what the hell is up with the panties</afk>

Okay so upon further investigation... They're some unbranded pair that are probably a girls cheap way of entertaining some guy. Why were they placed at my door. They're clean and look as if they've never been worn or if they have maybe once or twice. Now that I've taken pics of the back where I originally found them and the front, I think I'll just put them back and see how long they stay there. Maybe I'm being watched or something. How odd.

I guess first things first… A brief introduction… Some of the people reading this will be friends of mine who have been eagerly waiting (impatiently) for some time in fact. If you’re one of them, then too bad, you’ll have to wait a bit more.

I’m Corey Gouker (obviously); I’m a Media Center MVP who hangs out in the Microsoft newsgroups for everything Digital Media and Media Center related. I’m 20 years old and starting up college again at SJSU after already doing a year abroad at the University of Manchester in the Queen’s Country.

I’m pretty much an average geek. I think anything electronic (that at least has some class and style) is totally sexy. For example my cell phone, my Klipsch 5.1 Ultra’s, a 2TB RAID, a super fast Internet connection, you name it. If it’s geeky, chances are I love it and might find it sexy. And please, I don’t mean to get you worried at this point, I don’t find them attractive in a sexual way or anything like that, I’m much more drawn to a nice 5’8” red head than anything made of silicon, LOL, err, no pun intended. Besides that, I’m just an average guy with an anything but average collection of digital media. Some stats I compiled about a month ago are pretty out there. I was sitting on a 204GB collection of music. That’s approximately 44,190 tracks for the curious. My main Media Center Edition PC has a 250GB HDD which at any given time has about 200GB of recorded TV. Then there’s about 500 or so DVDs as well. I’m not even going to guess on the number of pictures, all I know is that there’s a 50 CD folder sitting on a book shelf that is filled with DVD+R’s with nothing but JPG’s from my Canon G2. I’ve actually warn out 3 batteries in the little time I’ve had the camera.

I personally don’t own that many media devices. In fact, I’ve only got one at the moment. A small but nice 256MB Creative MuVo TX. I’m in a unique situation in that unlike some, I couldn’t hope to fit my entire collection on a device to take it with me. Whether it be music, videos, TV, or pictures. I’ve almost bought a Dell DJ, 40GB iRiver, and 20GB Rio Karma, but didn’t buy any since I still felt none of them quite fit what I had in mind.

Being a Media Center MVP with some interest in the Digital Media Division as well, I’ve been keeping track as much as possible about some of the new stuff coming along. Portable Media Centers (PMC) really caught my eyes and ears when I first heard about them. Back then I hadn’t a clue what size drives they’d have so I had high hopes that they might be a breakthrough device that would fit my needs perfectly. Something that would really do damage to Apple’s iPod. While some might have put the idea out there that Microsoft wanted the PMC to be an iPod killer, I don’t really think this is true. I think most people within Microsoft who were working in the area knew perfectly well that this device was different and really could not be compared with previous Portable Music Players. The OEMs that signed on to make the device, Creative, iRiver, Samsung, knew the device was different. The only real way they could be compared would be in terms of size, weight, battery life, easy of use, style, and sexiness. The feature set of a PMC far surpasses a regular Portable Music Player. Besides it having a GUI that’s strikingly similar to the Media Center (imagine that) it’s got the PMP part down perfectly. You’ve got playlists, album art, and all that. But you’ve also got videos, TV, and pictures. It really is a on the go Media Center. Or like Microsoft says, [almost] all your media. Here. There. Everywhere.

The devices can be used with or without a Media Center PC but it really does go hand in hand with a MCE. The recorded TV aspect of the device almost makes a MCE a given. It’s not a device that you plug into a cable box and record TV on it for the cross country trip, and you don’t put DVD’s into a slot and watch them that way. To some this might seem pretty odd. I mean, where do you get the video and TV content then? Well. With a Media Center PC you’ll be sure to have plenty of Recorded TV content. As for Movies and Video content, well there are/will be a number of content providers doing subscription/pay for download solutions that will let people download and sync their content to a PMC through MP10 with the help of Janus DRM technology. Not got enough music? MSN Music will help you out there as well. But really one of the main things in WMP10 is Janus. CinemaNow.com will have movies available for purchase or rent directly from the net and they’re already in WMV format, perfect for the PMC. Storing home movies from DV cams is also quite easy when combined with Windows Movie Maker and such. PapaJohn, another MVP, will probably have plenty to add to that. The biggest thing will be the entire rental model for Music. This is quite a bit different than what we’ve got now. Now you pay 99 cents and you’ve got your song. Soon you’ll pay your monthly subscription fee and be able to select all the songs you want to be able to download and listen to, as long as you’ve got a license for those and are paying those monthly fees you’ll be able to listen to that music. You aren’t actually paying for each track and don’t own them. To me this seems like an all around best scenario for music. As long as those monthly fees are right I think this should be a success. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a couple price points as well. Say a $5.95, 9.95, 19.95, and 29.95 plans. Hopefully that “expensive” plan will allow for unlimited listening. We’ll see.

Back when my Mom was being educated on MCE’s and PMC’s, she really didn’t understand the concept of only having digital content. So I showed her MovieLink and a couple other sites. After having a Media Center PC in the house for a bit she wanted it in the living room to use, she wanted all her stimulating reality TV shows, Queer Eye, and home improvement programs recorded so she could follow what was happening on every possible reality program available. Quite scary really. But anyway, the point is that after a while our entire TV lifestyle changed. I personally didn’t have a clue what time anything came on anymore, stopped channel surfing, and my TV time was cut down drastically. It was a real change, TV started becoming a 1 or 2 hour a day type thing that I did while eating dinner and relaxing. With a PMC I can easily see that changing again. With daily schedules becoming tighter and tighter a PMC would let someone take entertainment with them wherever and enjoy it at any time and not just enjoy it at home. In that regard, PMC’s really are different from previous types of portable media devices.

Before you’d have your MP3/WMA player and might only use it while out walking, jogging, biking, shopping, driving, whatever. It was only music though and really didn’t do much more than a Walkman did. PMC’s will let people download a movie to a device, go to a friends house, plug the A/V cable into a TV and enjoy all their music, pictures, movies, and videos with friends and family. Or a person on the go might carry it with them on the road and enjoy their favorite TV series while in a hotel. Maybe I’m making the device out to be something totally revolutionary. I don’t mean to, but it is a pretty new way of handling media. This is only the start and I’m sure gradually PMC’s will change the way people think about how they interact with their media.

So recently out of the blue I got an email from my MVP Lead, Andrew, if I wanted a PMC to play with for a bit. I was like, what in the world, why me, why now? Especially since the PMC is not an eHome product like Media Center is. It’s a Windows Mobile device that’s really under the Digital Media Division at Microsoft. So except for the fact that it’s called a Portable “Media Center” and that it’s got a very similar Start (green) button and the UI is also very similar to the desktop Media Center. It is not a Media Center and doesn’t belong to eHome. Hence my reasons for wondering why they decided to send one to me. But whatever… I immediately replied and two days later a 20GB Creative Zen PMC was waiting at my doorstep when I arrived home. When I first picked up the box I was a bit surprised at the size of the box and such and how light it was. I honestly thought it was another Media Center Remote to try out (I’ve got like 4 or 5 of them). So I began opening it up with anticipation that it might actually be a PMC. Of course… there it was. I’m not sure why exactly but I was actually pretty excited even though I knew I’d only get around 2 weeks or so to play with it and decide for myself if it really was a big deal and whether I’d end up buying one sometime soon. Andrew didn’t give me a choice in terms of the device. I might have asked for an iRiver PMC or most likely a Samsung. But heck, beggars can’t be choosers.

First thing I did when I got the device out of the box; I plugged in the juice to get it going. Then I started examining it to see if it would be easy to take it apart, LOL. Sadly while I’m sure it is; I don’t have a screw driver small enough at the moment. So that’ll probably have to wait for a couple more days. I’m always kind of curious about the batteries they use in these devices since you’ve got Li-Ion or Li-Poly, Ni-Mh are becoming a thing of the past I think. Both providing really good battery life, but Polymer usually are even lighter than Ion and are a bit more advanced. So I was quite pleased when I saw a 3.7V Li-Ion Polymer Battery in there that had 3.6Ah.

Luckily I had to go out for a bit and take care of some things. I was totally ready to just load the thing with a 20GB selection of music from my 204GB selection but sadly that would have to wait. Instead I brought my little tiny 256MB Creative MuVo TX with me which had a whopping 4 CD’s on it. Just my luck though when I got to the Wash America Laundromat and went to play some tunes the AAA battery turns out to be dead. I get back in after an hour or so and check the PMC. I unplug it and try turning it on, it doesn’t come on, I take the battery out and pop it back in, still nothing. Keep the battery out and plug it in, still nothing, then I pull the power out slowly and with the plug in half way the screen goes white. I was baffled. I thought the device might be dead. After letting it charge again for another hour or so I tried again, still nothing. I tried some tricks to get it to turn on that sometimes work with electronics and such. Like holding the power button in and popping the battery in and plugging it in, trying the reset button, holding the Start (aka green) button and pressing power, everything I could come up with. Finally, somehow the device turned on. I was set. I kept it plugged in and started playing. Being a curious geek I went to the Settings and About screen. By that it was pretty easy to tell the device wasn’t final. So I asked Andrew and was informed that I was sent a really really expensive engineering sample or something. Whatever it was it was as close to final as I’d see without actually buying it from Amazon. After going through every menu I was a little disappointed. I think partly because the sample media that was on the device left much to be desired. Some of the “classics” they had on there were just daft. But nm. At this point I pretty much decided that I was going to post up a massive review of the Creative Zen PMC for all to read, complete with pictures, video and anything else I could come up with.

I plugged in the USB 2.0 cable into the Zen which connects at the bottom of the device into the front of my computer and was quite happy that that was it. I didn’t need to do anything else in terms of drivers or software. I’m running a MCE with SP2 and MP10 so the device just shows up under Audio Devices in My Computer as well as the new Portable Media Devices area in Control Panel. To my dismay however, the device doesn’t exactly work as just another external USB drive. This may or not matter to you but it can be annoying. The device has a Data and a Media Folder, the Media Folder has a Music, Pictures, TV, and Video folder. Plus a WMPInfo.xml file from WMP. If you want you can just copy media to each of the folders and that’ll work just fine. And if you want to store apps, Word docs, whatever, you can copy it to the Data folder. One thing that really doesn’t please me though is that you must copy the data back off the device to use it if you plug it into another computer. So for example… Say I’ve got this review which I’m writing in Word. I copy it to the PMC and take a flight over to Jon and plug the PMC into his system, I can’t just open up the Word doc from the device, do a quick edit and save. I must copy it off to his system, edit, save, then copy the doc back onto the PMC. This holds true with any file on the device. Double clicking any of the files on the device will give you the File Properties Dialog and some nice text that says “Files cannot be opened directly from this device. Please copy the file to a local folder and open the copy.” Personally I just fine this to be idiotic. But I’m sure Microsoft had its reasons, one of which was probably DRM related.

At first I was thinking that it was all a bit daft in terms of getting content onto the device. But I then popped open WMP10 and started going through my library. One of the new things you’ll see in the Library of WMP10 is that it doesn’t just have Music and Videos now. It’s got a whole lot more, you’ve got a place for TV, Pictures, Purchased music, etc. Plus devices like the Zen also show up under the Library. It’s really quite cool. The Library is probably one of the biggest improvements to WMP10 over 9. There are now two artist views for Music. One for Album Artist and one for Contributing Artist. This is great because many albums such as Santana’s Supernatural or Shaman have other artists that are either co-singers or are featured on a song, like P.O.D., Michelle Branch, or Rob Thomas. In WMP9 they’d all appear under Artists, which would end up being extremely annoying since you’d have to scroll through all those artists even if they were only featured on a single song. There’s also Composer, Rated, and Purchased Music section. Not to mention the Year Released section which was sort of available before if you installed them. The Purchased Music view makes it really easy to quickly see what you’ve purchased on Napster or MSN Music for example.

The All TV section of WMP10 is equally as impressive. In fact, it provides a much more informative view of TV than the MCE actually does. Obviously there’s a section for the series’, so I can easily see the two CSI’s, Futurama, and Family Guy. You’ve also got a section for programs that have not yet been viewed. Genre view, Date Recorded, and Rated TV as in star rating not parental guideline ratings. I also thought it was cool that there is an Actors view as well, which might come in handy. Under Videos, the main new thing is a Purchased Videos view, continuing to align WMP10 to online content services.

WMP10 can now also be used to organize all your pictures in the Library which is kind of cool. You can organize stuff by Event, the date the pictures were taken, and can also continue rating stuff and rate the pictures as well. I was a bit disappointed that WMP10 didn’t expose EXIF data in a sort of Advanced Tag Editor dialog like music has. Maybe for WMP11 ? Even without that, it’s still a pretty handy way of organizing all the main media a system might have.

So in WMP10 there really are two ways of actually syncing content to the device. Automatic mode and Manual mode. Automatic is new and is quite cool. I think while I personally might like to have some exact say in what goes onto the device WMP help you do a pretty good job of automatically getting stuff onto the device without any user involvement. There are too many options to choose from in terms of Automatic syncing to go over. But you’ve go all the different playlist options for music, adding stuff via ratings, fresh tracks, pictures taken in the last month, TV from the past week, etc etc. It really is quite extensive. To Manually get content on the device is equally as simple. You just go through your library right clicking and then going to Add to > Sync List. Or at the right side you switch to Sync List then just drag and drop. From there just press Start Sync. The Burn and Now Playing lists are also separated from the Sync list, and the entire list concept has undergone some major changes to fix annoyances caused by creating a massive list only to play some totally random file and losing that list.

You’ve also got some other options for the device and syncing. You can let WMP create a folder structure on the device for you automatically and can have it do a total ActiveSync type thing and start syncing everything when you plug it in. And finally under the quality tab there’s an option to not convert files. Granted this option applies to both Music and Video/TV at the same time, it should be a separate option for each. For example you can have WMP auto set the quality. You can set the bit rate you want for each. Or you can have it not convert at all. This is really handy for some people who have large devices say 5GB or larger. It’s pretty silly on these larger devices to convert a 192K WMA/MP3 down to 128K when you have all that room. Plus there’s a time factor in converting and this removes it. But like I said the option to convert or not is singular. So you can’t have it just convert TV automatically but not touch the Music.

There’s plenty of new features and updates in WMP10, a couple start to address my previous blog entry about WMP9. I’m not going to go too in depth yet about the new Media Player, that’ll be for another time. I should also note now that this is going to be the first part in a series of blogs about PMC’s, MCE *cough* and related, and WMP10. I’ve not go exact times for stuff like battery life and conversion times yet so that’ll be in the follow-up PMC blog.

Getting back on track now, I ended up adding about 14GB of actual content to the Sync List. That includes pictures, TV, video and music. I hit sync and minimized WMP10, a couple hours later it had converted everything and copied it to the device. It ended up only taking about 2GB on the device. So converting can come in handy.

I popped the headphones on, and started playing. The UI sounds have been borrowed from MCE as well which wasn’t predictable at all . I played my copy of the Dark Side SACD which was encoded with 90% VBR WMA. It sounded pretty darn good on the cheap little Creative headphones. Which, btw, have a really annoying cable. Where the line splits to each phone you’ve got one side longer than the other. But like I said, it sounded great, especially compared to my Sennheiser EH2270’s plugged directly into my MCE. Volume level was pretty good with the in the ear cans and I really couldn’t complain. I plugged in those EH2270’s and was even happier with the sound quality. Granted the little PMC can’t pump out enough power for these mighty Senn’s but fidelity and signal to noise was great. I unplugged the headphones expecting the tiny mono speaker to take over but it didn’t, instead the PMC auto mutes the device when unplugging the headphones, plus or minus depending on how you look at it I guess. Turning the sound up all the way, I was immediately disappointed. The sound is even worse than listening to the same track on my HP iPaq 5550. And can’t even hope compare to the sound coming from the Dell Inpsiron 8600 sitting next to it. While I’d imagine most will use the device with headphones or the A/V out, having a better speaker than the midget mono would’ve been greatly appreciated. I can’t overstate just how bad the speaker was on this Creative. I took it right outside my front door, there’s some construction going on about 400 yards away at this new student housing complex. Even with it being a quiet day there I couldn’t really make out anything in particular on Money. Just hi-end noise and that was it. With headphones of course all I heard was beautiful music so at least it’s got that.

Next thing while outside was the screen. They can range from 3.5 to 4” and have a standard 320x240 resolution. It looked just fine indoors, especially with the brightness turned all the way up. But even with the brightness set to its battery killing greatness, outside it left a lot to be desired. I walked over to the Blockbuster to grab another 3 DVD’s on the Movie Pass while watching Coral Reef Adventure. Still really happy with the sound quality and just totally guessing as to what was on the screen since I couldn’t actually see much but highlights. On the way back I walked a bit more slowly and played with the brightness levels including turning off the backlight and nothing really seemed to help. The quality of the screen outdoors really can’t compare to even the iPaq 5550 which I also had with me playing the same video. They could’ve done a much better job with this one. The other problem that I saw was that the device has a glass like reflective quality so I kept on getting reflections over the screen and that only made things worse.

Plugging in the handy little corded remote I tried out the FM features. The remote itself is quite small, the headphones plug into it like most other corded remotes. The controls are pretty easy to use, tactile feedback isn’t bad either. I found even with my big hands I could use it one or two handed. The LCD on the remote has a nice TReKiE blue backlight which is quite sexy. The text and such is a bit small and hard to read around the edges because the LCD is set into the remote so deeply. Bringing it closer to the plastic and removing some of the black border would resolve that. Sound quality remained good even with the headphones plugged into the remote and the actual cable length was also plenty long.

There’s also an IR remote, that might seem kind of odd, but it makes sense for when you’ve got the device plugged into a TV and are sitting back on the couch. It works quite well too. All of the controls are reproduced including the 4 presets at the top. I couldn’t actually find a way to customize these presets though. The remote is quite small, and was pleasant enough. It uses a standard 3V CR2025 battery and it’s easy enough to replace. The IR receiver on the unit is on the front of the device so when you’ve got it plugged in you’ll want the screen facing towards you and the remote.

I started browsing through all my pictures on the device and was quite pleased with the speed of the UI. Thanks to the 400MHz Intel XScale processor and 64MB RAM, I doubt anyone will have to be concerned about it. Even when I had close to 4,000 tracks on the device the Songs view only took about 8 seconds to load up the title of every one of those songs. There was no delay at all though with the Artists and Albums view. Very pleased indeed. One of the very cool things that I quickly got used to while using the device was the entire concept of what Microsoft calls “twist navigation”. The best way of describing it is this. You’ve got the top levels, My Music, My Pictures, etc. Then you go down into My Music, from there you’ve got at the top Artists, Albums, Songs, etc. You can either go left or right for that stuff. Or you can go down through the list of Albums which have album art when you scroll slowly and switch to the letter that you’re on when you scroll quickly. Say I go down to In Step by SRV. I can then go down again through the list of tracks on that album. But now at the top I’ve got the albums to the left and right. If I go left I’ve got How the West Was Won by Zeppelin, and In the Beginning to the right, another by SRV. The same thing holds true if you go to Artists. Go down to A Perfect Circle, to the left you’ve got “A”, to the right you’ve got Audioslave. If you go down to A Perfect Circle’s first album you’ve got all the tracks but can go left or right to the other album. You’ve got this entire twist navigation thing going on throughout the device except in the Settings. This is a real breakthrough on these small devices in terms of navigation. It really makes things really simple and easy to jump around through content.

So I started up some Cure to listen to while I browsed through the pictures. I’m not sure what I was expecting really since it’s almost exactly like MCE. The only real difference is that you’ve only got a fade transition and not some super almost intelligent moving picture and fade transition that MCE has. You can’t zoom in or move around as far as I can tell which is kind of a shame considering that Pictures are one thing that doesn’t get converted down to a smaller size. I’m kind of curious why since the display is 320x240, you’d think WMP10 would auto convert down to say 640x480 or 320x240 for each picture going on just to save space. While yeah, you might want to plug the device in elsewhere and view the originals, you’ve still got to copy them off the device. So at the moment all my pictures on the device are over a meg in size and 2272x1704, the default resolution from my Canon. Along the lines of having EXIF data in the library of WMP10, I would’ve liked to see some extra features for the pictures on the PMC that might give photographers reasons to drool. For example, if the device had a SD/CFII slot, you could pop the card into the device and automatically download all those photos to the device. There are some stand alone data storage devices but they’re ridiculously expensive for what they do. For example, Epson sells the P-1000 which holds 10GB (9GB available) and has a 3.7” 640x480 LCD with USB 1.1. But that runs $599, and while it does everything a digital photographer wants in external storage, it also costs a lot per GB and doesn’t do anything else. Who’s to say digital photographers don’t want to listen to some music while taking photos . A couple more features and a SD/CFII slot and the PMC would be great for them. A couple more cool suggestions which I like that came from other MVPs (Zarax, Jake Ludington, et al) gave were to give the device a better display and PowerPoint support. That way a professional could pop a PPT on the device, plug it into a digital projector through the A/V and use the IR remote to control the presentation instead of using a laptop. Zarax suggested Bluetooth support so that you could quickly move all the photos from a camera phone to the device. Diane Dumas suggested that GPS would also be really cool since the device has plenty of storage for maps of the entire planet. I think we pretty much all agreed that memory card slots and USB Host features would be really nice. At the same time there’s got to be a distinction here between a PMC and a PocketPC. Maybe at some point we’ll see some sort of convergence here.

When I was going through my music when I had 3968 tracks on it I really started noticing that unless I remembered the name of something there wasn’t a way for me to find it otherwise. You can’t really change the order stuff appears in, and you can’t make changes to any of the content or even delete the content from the device. This must all be done from a host system. Whether or not this matters is debatable.

In the Now Playing view you’ve got a couple of viewing options. My favorite is probably the view that gives you the album art, artist, album, track number, and track info all in one. This is definitely the best view. In another you’ve got the album art taking up almost the entire area, with just the track time and number as well. Next it slides over and half the album art is shown with a complete track listing and the track time showing for the currently playing track. Next you’ve still got half the album art but you can change the options, like repeat, shuffle, eq, rating, and purchase. The way I understand that purchase option is that it’s for when you’re renting music and like something enough to want to buy it. You check the box and WMP10 will go out and buy it. I’ve got to confirm this but that’s my current understanding since I can’t think of any other reason for it. Anyway the last view is a bit pointless imho, it’s only got the album info but no art, and is frankly quite boring. One of the cool things is when you’re in the half album art and track listing view. You can scroll up and down through not just that album but all the tracks on the PMC. I think for some they might be a bit disappointed that there aren’t any visuals, not even a spectrum analyzer visual. Any visuals like this would mean a battery trade off so it’s my only guess as to why they weren’t included.

With My Videos, you can sort things by Date or Name as well as a place for New stuff. There aren’t any thumbnails of the videos which might make video browsing more of a chore if you’ve got a lot of similarly named videos. Overall picture quality while watching videos is quite good. Even when I transcoded the Rules of Attraction WMV HD down to 320x240 800K for the device with all the fast movement and such it still performed well. You can see a few artifacts and notice a couple dropped frames in very fast scene changes and such. Like when you’ve got a close up of this girls face with her lips. Then it draws the next scene which is all black. You can see the diagonal blocks for a quick frame or so. I think if you’ve seen the video quality of a high end PocketPC with an XScale processor that will give you an idea of the actual video playback capabilities of the device. My TV quality is just like My Videos, same views, no thumbs, and the quality is still just as good as other videos. You’ve still got the same transport controls as well so you can still pause, rewind, and fast forward any of the videos or TV. You also have the now pervasive 30 second commercial skip as well. Conversion times for TV specially (DVR-MS files) relies on the MPEG-2 decoder that your system has installed whether that be CyberLink, InterVideo, nvDVD, etc. They’ll produce about the same results, generally I’ve found InterVideo to be the all around best decoder but that’s not to say the others are bad. I’ll go more in depth about the conversion process and conversion times in a follow on article since I’ve not had a complete experience yet and can’t report the findings just yet.

One of the major gripes I have with the device is the fact that I’ve got all these cables coming out of all but one of the sides. For the amount of money that these are running it really should have a charging/sync cradle. My HP iPaq has on which is