I have been a little under the weather the last week or so. So as I was trying while away time while recovering, I used StumbleUpon to come up with this article. Man, did I hit paydirt!

I can’t remember reading a more gripping article in a long, long time. In fact, calling this an article seems to make it less than what it is, a great story from the real world, where real people took minute-by-minute decisions to save lives. Incredible skills, incredible decisions, I could go on with endless superlatives. Whoever wrote this article, thank you for this.

On a connected note, this is a week after the terrorist-drive mayhem of killings in Mumbai, India. For a country that was able to execute a flawless mission to send a craft to the moon, I am hoping these great rocket scientists will turn their attentions to helping India come up with a security plan that will help thwart such problems in the future. And shame the politicians who are busy pointing fingers at “neighbouring countries” instead of searching their own souls.

This was supposed to be the post on my review of my new Toshiba HD-D3 player. Now I’m feeling so bummed I haven’t even turned it on all week.

After waiting for months and hoping the format wars would end, I decided to take the plunge and buy a Toshiba HD-D3 DVD player. I was taken in by the hype that the format wars would continue for a long time and that the stalemate would go on and on. I should have gone with the gut instincts that were telling me that the Toshiba price cuts were a last ditch attempt by them to lure customers. Eventually, content was going to rule the format wars. And in our world today, most DVD content is from the movie studios. Toshiba was always going to be outmaneuvered by Sony in that department. I can only say that I now have a decent “upconverting” DVD player, since the HD-DVD movies are going to dry up pretty soon. It looks like Universal and Paramount are still talking about “holding on”. Come on, for how long?  We know these movie companies are going to move on to Blu-ray.

Bottom line: Not every Sony format dies. So what if Beta, MD and UMD died? Blu-ray’s won. Time to buy some real cheap HD-DVD movies (if there are any halfway decent ones out) and enjoy them for a while. I’ll be looking for that Transformers disc to see all the great effects it supposedly has, thanks to the HTGuys podcast (scroll down the page to read the features list).

As with most people, I bought or was gifted, some new gizmos for the holiday season. Among my new acquisitions are:

1. Western Digital 1 terabyte MyBook drive
2. Toshiba HD-D3 HD-DVD player
3. Plantronics BlueTooth set
4. Sony Ericsson W580i cell phone - Mine’s the same, except for the black color

I am going to review these devices over the next few days as I use them. Unfortunately, I forgot to do the whole “unbox” thing a la Engadget! Oh well, none of these gizmos was particularly well-packed so I guess a straight, simple performance and looks review is all that I can do.

In the past I wrote about my Sony Walkman phone. During the last 3 months I have been using the Motorola Q at work. Incidentally, this is my first Windows Mobile cell phone experience. I have to say that while the comparison here is between an apple and an orange, I will focus on the usability features of both phones, rather than the fancier features like the camera or the music player.

Part of the problem with Microsoft is they seem to have taken the usual Windows route in their mobile OS as well - pack in lots of features with software of fairly average quality - and hope to improve the “user experience” as they get feedback and improve over releases. The Q, with service provided by Sprint, tends to fail me at the most inopportune moments. I have had issues of “phone freeze”, very slow response times, and the lack of features in the phone such as Copy and Paste. On the other hand, the voice recognition feature is quite good although the text-to-voice translation produces unintelligible sounds. Some program, like Google Maps, work very poorly. Now I realize the blame probably lies with Google for designing such a poor user interface, but somehow I also feel that they are constrained by the design of the hardware and the operating system.

All in all, I ‘m quite satisfied with the performance. I just wish the screen size were bigger and I had fewer menu options to choose from to accomplish things. And please, for heaven’s sake, give me a Copy and Paste feature. I so miss it!

Until very recently I thought I was one of the many Xbox 360 owners who have suffered the infamous “3 red lights” problem. I went through the tedious process of following all the troubleshooting steps from the web site. Nothing helped. Next I called the Xbox support phone number and had to suffer that irritating “recorded guy” on the phone. When I finally reached a living, breathing mammal, lo and behold, I had to again follow the same steps. Finally, they agreed that it was not a problem that could be fixed and I had to send in my console for “repairs”. That meant waiting for the UPS box they ship you and finding out that, contrary to Microsoft’s helpful written instructions, UPS expects to be paid for picking the box. Long story short, I sent it to Microsoft and in a few weeks received a “new” (??) console that worked very well. And I thought that was it, problem solved.

Ok, now the fun begins. I came back home from work one September evening and my son told me “Dad, the Xbox is not working”. So I took a look at the 3 red lights and realized this was starting all over again. This time I called Microsoft and got to the point straightaway. No waiting to follow diagnostic steps, no irritating Alex or whatever that “voice guy” is called (is he a relative of Clippy??). I even told the lady on the phone politely but firmly that I had already followed all the troubleshooting steps, that I knew exactly what the problem was and that I guessed I had to send it back to them for repairs/replacement. To her credit, she quickly realized that I probably knew something about this problem and told me they would be sending me a box. But here’s the kicker! She then proudly told me Microsoft would be giving me a whole free month of XBox Live subscription, no kidding! Now isn’t that great, considering the fact that I am already a subscriber? When I politely informed her that Microsoft’s kindness did not help and that I needed to be compensated in other ways, she was at a loss. So I knew where that one was going. To cut a long story short, I decided to ask for the instructions to send the console for “repairs”.

Update

I got my Xbox back a couple of days ago. Microsoft’s letter accompanying the console states that in the interest of letting me enjoy the experience of playing games quicker, they have sent me a replacement console with a different serial number. And, of course, I get one month’s free subscription to Xbox Live!!

I was hoping I would at least get the new version of the Xbox 360 with HDMI but no, that didn’t happen. I’d read in a blog (written by a prominent blogger) that he managed to get an upgraded console after his repair incident. No luck with mine. I’m going to start screaming now because this is the second time my console packed up. I don’t even know what kind of hardware/firmware is in my “new” console. Or which poor soul is going to get my previous console after its been “fixed”.

Conclusions

So what kind of a product is the Xbox 360? It certainly provides a great user experience for game playing. It is also a great console for watching movies and images. And I have to confess I usually go for the underdog (Numero Duo) when it comes to purchasing products. My motto is the old Avis one - we try harder. I bought the original console when the PS2 was king. I bought a Sony PSP although the Nintendo DS seems to be the king of the pile. I selected Sirius satellite radio over XM at a time when Sirius was clearly number two. I went for Dish Network over Direct TV although in this case Dish was clearly ahead on its HD programming at the time I subscribed to their service. But this “numero duo” story should be rested for another rant. Let me get back to the Xbox 360 story.

When giant corporations like Microsoft create products, sometimes things do go wrong. However, the Xbox 360 seems to have problems unlike most other pieces of hardware. I’ve owned a Toshiba TV for the last 7 years and it has never broken down. NEVER. I’ve owned a Dell desktop PC since 2000 and that thing has never broken down. EVER. How come the Xbox 360 seems to have these problems? And Microsoft’s way of soothing my feelings is to provide me free repairs and 1 month of free Xbox Live? This after I told them I already have a Xbox Live subscription. I’m going to have to write/talk to Microsoft to see what they have to say. But hey, when they don’t directly answer questions from folks at PC World, what can I expect? Not even a PR response, I bet! I’ll save my fingers till after I’ve tried to speak to Xbox 360 support. And that’s after I’ve gone past Alex.

Amongst all the PSP bashing I have read in recent months, I notice something missing. Every writer describes how bad the PSP is as a game playing console, particularly compared to Nintendo’s DS. No doubt, the DS is a better handheld gaming system. I feel Sony has not done a good job of setting the PSP in a unique niche. Let me count what I consider to be several winning features of the PSP:

1. At the time of its launch, it was one of the few that had built-in WiFi
2. It allows for browsing the web using it’s (rather clunky) web browser
3. The PSP lets you play Flash games and watch Flash videos
4. You can subscribe to podcasts through the RSS feature of the PSP
5. The display is gorgeous despite being a smudge magnet
6. The USB interface enables an industry-standard ready to be exploited

Now to some of the features that are not all that alluring:

1. That terrible UMD disk - DOA is the word (or is that a phrase??)
2. Poorly designed controls for gaming - leads to finger and hand fatigue within a matter of a few minutes
3. Sony’s constant “upgrades” to the operating system that prevents or hampers the creation of third-party applications
4. Lack of a podcatcher software - Sony’s basic assumption that everyone has an always-on, always-available WiFi connection is highly suspect at best, and ludicrous at worst
5. The “Sony crawl” with respect to add-ons to the PSP - where is the GPS, the camera (yes, yes, I know we’ve all heard that these are “available”; that’s Sony speak for we will get it to you when we desire)
6. The horribly difficult virtual keyboard that one uses with the browser, for instance

Ok, let me not get carried away. I think the PSP is a versatile device that needs a few things to make it a serious competitor in many ways to the iPod, the iPhone, and several other similar devices. Let’s hear what you have to say.

For years we have heard about all kinds of people urging the cable industry to switch to a la carte pricing. From what I am reading in the news about the Sirius-XM merger, it looks like the first companies to do so would be the satellite radio providers. That would be good news for customers like me.

However, for this kind of pricing to really be attractive and work for me, the price differential has to be a bit more substantial. I pay $13-$14 a month for the full set of channels from Sirius. If I were to just pick 10 or 15 of them, instead of the current 198, I would expect a significant drop in prices. What I hear is that the new offering of the combined companies might be a 50 channel package for $6 and change. That is okay but not good enough. I am not interested in listening to 15 out 50 channels. I would like greater differentiation in pricing. Perhaps I should stick with my current style of picking my channels, using the Favorites setting on my radio! That way, I know I am only going to listen to the channels I like.

What do you think?

Looks like Chris Satchell, General Manager of Microsoft’s Game Developer Group is in controlled release mode. Doing controlled release of the fact that Microsoft is not going to bother about Xbox 360 backward compatibility for too long.
I was just reading a Gizmodo post about Satchell predicting that by 2008 Xbox 360 backward compatibility would be a non-issue. Microsoft obliges, as usual! Here is a quote from the forums of Xbox-scene (caution - there are some real trash talking teens out there!):
“At some point we’re going to focus less on it,” he said. “When you get to the end of this year there will be a reduced focus on backwards compatibility. There are so many 360 games out there. I don’t know if it’s important anymore.”

My 5 year-old son is hooked on several E-rated games on the original Xbox console. For unknown reasons, Microsoft never came out with backward compatible versions for most, if not all, of these games. My read on this is that the selection process for these games was probably based on some survey of Xbox Live or general sales volumes of titles. Most of these games are rated either Teen or Mature, probably reflecting the highest demographic of game players. But Microsoft tends to forget that children probably form the second largest demographic.

My original Xbox console recently gave up the ghost and stopped working. After long conversations with Microsoft I was told that if I would have to pay upto $175 to get it repaired. My intention was to get the Xbox repaired so my son could play his old games that would not work on our new Xbox 360. He loves many of the new games on the 360 including Marbles, Bejeweled and even Uno! But he still yearned for his old favorites like Tak Attack, Scooby Doo, and others. I finally found that my local Microcenter store sold used Xbox consoles for between $100 and $120. There were no warranties and I took a risk and bought one for about $115. Now there is a happy youngster and a somewhat apprehensive dad, waiting for the console to pack up.

And now, of course, we hear that Microsoft is going to yank whatever little is left of this backward compatibility humbug. I read some of the comments on the Gizmodo article about how much worse Sony is. I could be hardly bothered because the only Sony gaming device I have is a PSP. All I can say is that after investing in nearly 40 games I will not have any options in case my second Xbox console dies on me.

I came across this debate earlier today. First things first, I really thought the ad was a hilarious take on the PC and Mac ads. That said, Apple clearly intends to make this an all-in-one device for the consumer market, not for business users like me. If we can get to use it as part of our businesses, that would be terrific. Like I am doing with my Sony Ericsson 810i. Apple truly does know how to make things work in the consumer market. I agree with one of the comments about Apple following the 80-20 rule. But Apple also has very clever people developing very good user interfaces. Which is why when I get my paws on my daughter’s iPod I still have not come across a requirement that has not been met by its controls, buttons and menus. I bet Apple has several surprises up its sleeve when it comes to the iPhone too. I can’t wait to get my hands one and am hoping I still remain a Cingular customer.

For those people who are not aware of this, beginning from 2007, the start and end dates for Daylight Savings Time (DST) has been changed. This change was was authorized by the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 and will be coming into effect this year. Most US users of Windows operating systems pick a time zone when they first install or start their factory installed systems. A wrong DST setting could potentially be a problem for many home and office users. Even more so, for Windows servers that are set to perform certain operations at a particular time of day or week, this change could cause significant problems if left unpatched or unattended. Microsoft has posted a patch which can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388. For most Windows XP users an automatic patch was included in the latest updates from Microsoft. Users of Windows Vista need not worry as the operating system was shipped with updated software. However, those users who either don’t have the auto update feature set up or for other users who may be running other versions of Windows, this site provides useful information. Gartner has issued an advisory recommending that all companies set up enterprise-wide communications programs to let users know of potential problems. In addition, Gartner is also recommending that tech departments be staffed and be on alert on March 11 (Sunday) and March 12 (Monday) for possible problems. Of course, all these patches would only work for systems that are software upgradeable. Not for hardware with clocks and other times (remember old VCRs?). Those will not be patched and users would have to suffer during the extra weeks of DST.