I always liked the concept of Windows Media Center, I really did. I just couldn’t ever quite justify upgrading to MCE or Vista on my little HTPC, so I made do with what I had. Eventually my 360 would turn into my main media player in the living room, supplemented by my old HTPC running Boxee. Well for those of you that are depending on Windows Media Center, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft has finally added support for streaming Netflix.
I feel like I should be more excited about this than I really am. You see, I use Netflix, and I already stream my movies to my Xbox 360. Hell, I’ve been doing that for like six months. Sure, it’s great to see them add this to WMC, but shouldn’t this have been done a long time ago?
We know that Microsoft will be offering up the first release candidate of Windows 7 in just a few days. This means that we’re probably only a few short months away from an actual release date, right? Well according to Acer it will be out in just under 6 months.
Acer’s marketing director in the UK pinpointed the release down to the very day it will hit shelves. October 23rd to be exact. I’d take this with a little grain of salt, but the timing does make sense. After all, it was about 5 months between RC1 of Vista and the actual retail date. My advice? I’d start thinking long and hard before going out and buying a new PC when there’s a new OS just around the corner.
I think everyone is familiar with the Red Ring of Death on the 360. Hell, if you’ve owned a 360 for very long, you’ve probably experienced this wonderful sensation once or twice. Well lately there’s been a new issue plaguing owners of Microsoft’s current-gen console, simply called the E74 Error.
While the E74 Error doesn’t sound nearly as ominous as the RRoD, it has the same effect. It turns your 360 from a kick-ass gaming machine into a doorstop. Since you don’t get three flashing red lights, you aren’t covered under Microsoft’s extended 3-year warranty. Until now that is.
Microsoft has apparently been listening to their customers again and have decided to extend the 3-year RRoD warranty to include the E74 Error. Just head over to the official support page for the info. I have to commend Microsoft on this move, as I’ve been a bit worried that I’ll have a $200 brick sometime in the future. Wait, did I just commend them for offering to fix a widespread issue with their console that probably never should have happened in the first place? I must be going crazy in my old age.
I’ve been checking out Windows 7 since the beta opened up a little while ago, and have thus far been fairly pleased with it. I’m not a huge Vista hater (I can’t say that I’m in love with it either) but I’m looking forward to the new OS so that I can go ahead and upgrade. I always hate this period of time between operating systems because end-users are sort of in limbo. Everyone is hearing how great the new version is going to be, but they want to upgrade their system now. So what does one do? Well my suggestion this time around would be to wait until July 1st of this year to get a new computer.
Seems like a pretty specific date to be buying a computer, but it’ll definitely be worth the wait. You see, if you purchase a computer after this date, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 7 for free (once it is released, of course). The only snag here is that some OEMs may not opt to participate in this promotion, so you’ll need to read the fine print. For those that do take advantage of it, you’ll be in a win-win situation. You’ll have your new hardware now, and you’ll get the new software when it hits without paying extra. Even better, if for some reason Windows 7 ends up worse than Vista (at this point it would take a lot to make it that bad), you can keep Vista.
Variety is the spice of life, or so the saying goes. Unfortunately for the uneducated, having too many choices can just be confusing. Such was the case with Windows Vista. There were six versions of the software, which were aimed at six different specific markets. This unfortunately made some people confused, while others were left to deliberate on whether they wanted to sacrifice remote desktop functionality for Media Center. So will Windows 7 be any different? Sort of.
Once again Microsoft has decided to grace us with six different versions of their operating system. However, unlike Vista, each time you go up to a higher version, you are getting all of the features of the lesser ones, plus extra functionality. Plus it looks like there are really only going to be three versions that most consumers will see. Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. There isn’t any word on pricing, however, if you hit the jump we have a breakdown of what each version will include.
This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net
The NXE brought us Mii’s Avatars, which I haven’t really done a whole lot with to be honest. I spent roughly 5 minutes setting mine up the first day and haven’t touched it since. However, Microsoft has given us a good reason to put a little extra effort into your creation. You can now “Free Your Avatar”, which basically means that you can create an image of your avatar, complete with text and a background to download to your computer. This is a cool way to make a new profile image for Facebook or Myspace.
Of course the real fun comes when you realize that you can put in anyone’s gamertag and make a picture. This means that you can make a pic of your “crew” (if you don’t have any friends, they have generic ones that you can choose from). Of course you’ll have those immature people that will take your pic and add something rather childish just above your avatar.
Unfortunately at the moment you’ll have to head over to the European Xbox Live site, as it’s not up here in the US. Don’t worry though, you can still pull US Gamertags for your pics.
It’s taken us years and years to finally shed those annoyingly-curved CRT monitors and TVs, but Microsoft apparently feels that we should not only return to curved displays, but one that features a full 360 degrees of imagery. This week they unveiled their Sphere prototype which works just like the company’s Surface technology, but applied to a spherical interface and display. The technology and hardware needed to run the Sphere is a bit more advanced than what Surface uses, since it has to warp the images and the interface so that it looks correct when projected onto a dome, and as a result Sphere won’t be moving past the research project phase anytime soon. And as gimmicky as it might seem, there are some cool applications that come to mind like an interactive globe (as demo’d in the video) or a better way to watch and interact with 360 degree videos and panoramas.
So the Parker Whittle character has been IMing for 29 straight days, helping Microsoft raise awareness to its I’M Initiative. Nearly $1.7M has been raised since March 2008, from people doing what they already do with alarming levels of obsession: chat passionately about what they did last evening.
It’s not too late for you to help. All you have to do is keep doing what you do… only with Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail instead. Find out how here.
And finally, before it’s completely over, you should check out the always entertaining I’m Talkathon blog. Here.
Just a quick post to let you guys know that the I’m Talkathon is still going strong. They’re up to day 18 now, and with the number of comments I’m seeing on the posts (one had over 100!), I’m guessing people are IM-ing for charity hard and good. You would not usually see me talking about something like this in this fashion, but for once I’m genuinely excited about a campaign on the site for completely humanitarian reasons.
To recap, Microsoft will be donating money to several charities (including UNICEF, the American Red Cross and the National AIDS Funds, among others) simply for using Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail.
What’s more, the I’M Talkathon blog-writer guy, Parker, is actually really engaging.
So, if you can spare a click, you should check out the site.
Related Tags: Microsoft, Windows
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By Luke Anderson
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