We spotted an interesting ditty about Microsoft Research getting excited about an array of speakers that they hope will irradicate the need for headphone wearing.
Continue reading Personal Audio Space: Microsoft Research
Category: Microsoft
Microsoft Plans To Double Global PC Ownership To 2 Billion By 2015
Microsoft is hell bent on doubling the numbers of PCs on the planet by 2015, and is prepared to put its vast pots of money where its mouth is.
The company has announced that it will be charging governments in developing countries a paltry three dollars for copies of Windows and Office – so long as the software is being installed on computers given to schoolchildren.
Naturally, such a move would also have the happy side effect of getting the world’s young hooked into the Wonderful World o’Windows at an early stage and should reduce the amount of dodgy software slopping around undeveloped countries where piracy often runs rife.
Microsoft’s bargain basement software sale opens opportunities for tie-ins with the One Laptop Per Child project and Intel’s World Ahead Program , but Bill Gates maintains the hardware issue isn’t the toughest nut to crack.
“It’s not just the cost of the PC, but rather these issues of connectivity, of the training, the maintenance, the support, all of those have to come together,” said Gates.
More Microsoft moves
In its quest to stamp its size nines all over emerging markets, Microsoft announced that it was teaming up with Lenovo to undergo joint research at Lenovo’s Beijing lab and that they intended to double the number of global training centres to 200 by 2009.
Microsoft also revealed plans to build a Web portal for training prospective Indian IT workers and its intention to form public-private partnerships to help governments in five developing countries improve public services through technology.
XBox 360 HD DVD Drive Review (80%)
Microsoft have actually made a sensible decision, an external HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 and it works.
With a recent software update the Xbox 360 was given HD support and suddenly 1080i and 1080p resolutions sprang to life (of course not all games support these new modes). Unfortunately the internal DVD is a bog standard DVD-ROM drive and it doesn’t support the new HD formats at all.
The external drive connects through one of the Xbox 360’s USB ports, it’s a shame there aren’t any rear sockets as the cable dangles out the front of the unit. Just plug it in, connect its power supply unit and install the software that comes with the unit and that’s it. It all just works. MS have been nice and included a DVD remote, though the normal game controllers work too.
Upscaled content
A nice feature is that the Xbox 360 will upscale content to whatever your output is set to (tested using 1080i), so a normal standard def DVD can be output at 1080i or 1080p. It works surprisingly well. There were very occasional artefacts or blocking – but it’s eminently viewable, even on a high action film (shame the film itself wasn’t). There are quite a few DVD players that offer some kind of upscaling feature, but it generally adds to the cost significantly.
Silence is golden
DO NOT EVER watch a film with quiet bits in it. The major downside to this set-up is that the Xbox 360 sounds like a train rumbling through your living room, it’s incredibly loud. As soon the the film quietens, there it is. You cant quite block it out.
Current Xbox 360’s also don’t support HDMI (the newly announced Elite will) so the best resolutions require component video and that means a separate audio output. The cable does have an optical out, but it doesn’t support newer digital modes like Dolby TruSurround.
Verdict
For around 130 quid, a bargain HD-DVD drive that upscales as well, but it’s bulky and noisy.
Features: 88%
Ease of Use: 90%
Value for Money: 97%
Overall Score: 81% (let down by Xbox 360 noise)
Xbox 360 Elite Announced
There’s been lots of speculation going around the various blog sites about the release of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 Elite is a real product and will begin arriving in US stores on 29 April with an expected retail price of $480.
The confirmed spec of the 360 Elite is a combination of a 120Gb hard drive, new accessories bundled in, and to all of those HD TV fans, an HDMI port built in. Oh, and a return to a black case like the original Xbox. Microsoft tell us that the retail price of all of the bundled bits is over $600 if bought separately.
The HDMI port is an interesting move – yes it will make it simpler to get High Def screens connected (if you have a screen with an HDMI in port), but importantly it will let Elite owners play protected HD-DVD discs on the long-discussed add-on HD-DVD drive. HDMI connection is needed for the HDCP content protection scheme.
The new, large hard drive is a big step up from the previous version of 20Gb to 120Gb – all the more space for Microsoft to sell you TV shows, films and software to download – oh … and save you game positions to as well of course.
The hard drive is detachable and will also be sold separately so standard Xbox users will be able to get hold of them too. Expected US price is $180.
Alongside the goodies above are an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller in black and a headset, in … err, black. Do you get the black theme? There’ll be a couple of other new bits available separately too, a Play & Charge kit for the the wireless controller ($20) and a black rechargeable battery ($12)
Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, turned the hyperbole meter way up to deliver the following, “Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content. Xbox 360 Elite’s larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer.”
It’s worth noting that the first shots of the Elite, while looking slightly underground, are in fact taken by ‘Major Nelson,’ the pseudonym for Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. So ‘leaked’ photos are now coming from official sources!
Images courtesy of Major Nelson
Microsoft Vista Shifts 20 Million Copies
Microsoft says that its new Vista OS is flying off the shelves quicker than, err, hot software off a shovel, with a claimed 20 million copies shifted since its January 30 consumer release.
Microsoft’s Corporate VP Bill Veghte was clearly a chuffed fella, “We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate,” he purred in an official statement released on Monday.
“While it’s very early in the product lifecycle, we are setting a foundation for Windows Vista to become the fastest-adopted version of Windows ever,” he added.
The figures seem to stack up well against the 17 million copies of Windows XP sold in the two months following its release in 2001, but the PC market has increased exponentially since then: according to IDC, total worldwide PC shipments hit 136 million units in 2001, a figure dwarfed by last year’s 227 million total sales.
There seems to have been a bit of gentle manipulation with the figures by Microsoft too. As well as the boxed copy and new Vista PC sales, the company cunningly included those folks who had bought an XP PC over the holiday season and then gone on to redeem their free Vista upgrades later.
Although Windows marketing director Bill Mannion acknowledged that the upgrade program had nudged the sales figures in an upward direction, he played down the numbers saying that upgraders didn’t make up the “core component of the 20 million.”
A shift to higher-end versions of Vista has been also reported by both Microsoft and the PC makers, with Mannion saying that the pricey Ultimate edition has been doing good business: “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”
Novell Linux Mocks “I’m a Mac” TV Adverts
Novell have done a great collection of spoof ads of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” series, you know, the ones that had a UK launch in January this year.
While playing to the same music and video style, it mocks the self congratulatory styles and adds a third character … Linux. Rather than the obvious blokes, it uses a woman to represent Linux.
Continue reading Novell Linux Mocks “I’m a Mac” TV Adverts
HD Photo: Microsoft’s JPEG Death Dream
The 800-pound gorilla that is Microsoft is trying to get the world to shift from the global-standard JPEG format to their relatively newly-announced format, HD Photo.
Last week Microsoft went on a PR offensive to promote the new format, despite them having published the specification in November last year.
It’s claimed that HD Photo offers twice the efficiency of JPEG – meaning the same quality of photo will take up half the amount of storage.
Despite the HD at the start of HD Photo, there is no connection to the HDTV standard or format.
It’s not surprising to hear that Windows Vista has native support for HD Photo images, and it can be easily added to Windows XP. Microsoft have also released a beta version of a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, enabling people to save files in HD Photo format. They’ll not be charging for it, even when it’s released.
Bold, to say the least
Microsoft’s attempt to convert the world to using their new photo format is, to say the least, pretty ambitious given how every camera in the world uses the JPEG format to store images.
Frankly we think Microsoft would have stood a better chance of success with HD Photo five plus years ago, before the price of storage, both of hard disks and portable memory formats, started plummeting. The same applies for the claims of needing less processing power to decode HD Photo images, as most new computers have more processing power than their owners know what to do with them.
Their best chance of success will be to try and get photographers who shoot in RAW (uncompressed) format to save their images down to HD Photo, tempting them with less loss in their photos than JPEG currently provides.
Firefox And Safari Browser Market Share Rises
Like hungry puppies with sharp teeth, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari Web browsers continue to chew and gnaw away at the juicy legs of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE).
According to new figures from Web metrics company, Net Applications, February saw both Firefox and Safari grab a bigger share of the browser market as IE’s share continues to shrink.
Firefox – which comes in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux flavours – increased its share from 13.7 percent in January to 14.2 percent, while the Mac OSX Safari browser had a small but noticeable shimmy upwards, from to 4.7 percent from 4.85 percent.
Despite dropping in the rankings, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still retains the Billy Bunter share of the browser market, devouring 79.1 percent (down from last month’s 79.8 percent.)
“After a minor hiccup in January, Firefox seems to be back on the offensive in February,” said the fabulously named Vincent Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing and strategic relationships.
“January showed a brief halt to Firefox’s assault on Microsoft Internet Explorer’s market share. Could that have come from new Vista machines?” asked Mr VV.
Before any hands could be raised in answer, the double V man delivered his verdict, “Possibly, but it appears that browser users have gone back to switching to Firefox, Safari and Opera.”
The well liked Opera browser also saw its market share rise a smidgeon, but it’s still deep in the niche territory, registering just 0.79 percent in February, up from 0.73 percent from last month.
XBox 360 IPTV Coming To London
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 running as an IPTV box will be demonstrated in London for the first time in Europe on 5 March.
It’s had an outing at CES in January this year and was well received.
There’s little doubt that the X360 has the grunt to be able to act as an IPTV STB – if anything it’s total over kill, given the considerable graphics ability it has.
Here’s what Robbie Bach, Sr. VP and Chief Xbox Officer, said about IPTV Edition, the middleware that the network operator will run to power the IPTV-ness of the Xbox 360, “IPTV Edition enables you to do, regardless of whether you’re a cable provider or a telco or any net operator, you can take live media, on-demand media, across an IP network and put it into the home on a high-definition television, and you can do multiple streams of that content without having to have multiple tuners in the set-top box. You really can produce an amazing TV experience.”
He went on to explain it’s not just about selling the IPTV software to the head-end, “this product sells SQL Server, it sells Commerce Server, it sells the rest of our backbone into these operators, and really helps broaden our business.” Hmmm, Nice.
It’s also been on what they call “scale commercial deployments” with the BT Group in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, T-Online in France and Swisscom in Switzerland. AT&T is working with Microsoft in the US.
There’s a history here
When the original Xbox was launched, Microsoft spent an awful amount of effort in denying that it was a going to be used to bring them closer to the TV in the lounge.
Despite this, they did quietly release some add-on software package that allowed you to pull picture and music from a PC. We bought it to give it a go, and found it to be disastrous. Hugely bloated software that needed to loaded on the PC that was to share and disastrous software that loaded on the Xbox. It was rare that it worked at all.
We assume that the X360 is considerably better than this.
The US version of XBox Live already gives subscribers the ability to download films and TV programmes to their X360s.
Vista Launch: Boxed Copy Sales Down, PC Sales Up
Although punters waited an eternity for the chuffing thing to be released, first-week retail sales figures for boxed copies of Windows Vista were almost 60 per cent down on sales registered for the first week for its predecessor, Windows XP.
The figures, from the market research group NPD Group, calculated that the dollar value of Vista retail box copies shifted during the week of 28 January crashed 32 per cent compared to the value of XP box copies sold during its debut in October 2001.
It’s not all bad news for Billy and the gang though, as the sales of new PCs running Vista went through the roof after Vista’s launch, up a massive 67 per cent over the same period last year.
Conceding that direct comparisons are difficult as many stores were clearing out their XP inventory prior to Vista’s launch, Chris Swenson, a software analyst with NPD commented that the figures, “still reflects a fair bit of growth.”
Swenson added that the seemingly contradictory figures are down to consumers twigging that they need a beefier system to be able to run the bells and whistles of Vista, so some are going out and buying a new PC rather than upgrading.
There’s no such confusion with Office 2007 sales however, which recorded very strong retail sales, more than doubling the first week sales for Office 2003.
There’ll also be much hand rubbing at Microsoft with the news that consumers are upgrading to the higher end versions of Vista, with the average selling price recorded at around US$207 – up two thirds on the average selling price of XP.
“So, although total dollars were down compared to XP, I think the preliminary data shows that Microsoft’s gamble on a new high-end Vista SKU will help keep dollar volumes from declining as rapidly as unit volumes in the near term,” observed Swenson.