So it was only a matter of time until someone in Redmond logged onto MSN and went “dear god, what is this?” After what seems like ages, MSN is getting a notable redesign. And not just a few more widgets as with the last update, but a full-fledged redesign. I absolutely love it. It’s got just about the same amount of content, but it’s so cleanly organized and isn’t obtrusive like it used to be with ads. The slight hint of Facebook and Twitter line the bottom corner, but unlike some websites, the site doesn’t center around the social networking services. Instead, the page is complimented by the services. Also added is a “Local Edition”, which puts everything regional on one clean page. It’s what a local news outlet’s site should look like- clean, locally centric, and, most importantly, popup ad free.

Sadly, for the other beacon of the Internet Age, AOL’s page is still the definition of web portal. Relentless promotion of AOL services, several sections that aren’t functional without logging in, and poor local integration. Yahoo, the other still-halfway-relevant web portal, has cleaned up its act a bit, but the page’s roll out options are way overdone. In their defense, however, most of the third-party site integration is hidden behind those roll outs, and the rest of the page is typically good stuff. However, looking at MSN’s new look, both AOL and Yahoo! look like dinosaurs. If you’ve moved to iGoogle because it was embarassing to open up to MSN, give the new page a bit of browser time today. Even if it’s just in celebration over Firefox finally surpassing IE6 in market share. Welcome to the 21st Century, MSN.com.

MSN Preview

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This week features myself as well as Dennis Scally, who has from time to time contributed in the games section, but this week was resident Windows expert. Below is a list of topics on the show this week. Next week, we’ll be looking forward to adding Lyon to the show. Questions? Commentary? Leave us feedback at podcast@techinhiding.com or below in the comments. Enjoy the show!

At this moment in time I have installed on my PC both these shiny new operating systems, Windows 7 Professional (the full, release version, yes thats right, the one that’s not out till Oct. 23rd!) and Ubuntu 9.10 Beta.

My review of Ubuntu 9.10 will follow later, but as it is, I have been running Windows 7 for the past month and would like to share my thoughts.

Installation

Microsoft have received alot of stick from the tech media because of their ridiculous upgrade situation.

That is the official chart to consult for information on how to upgrade your system. Ridiculous. That, Microsoft, is what you get when you start releasing several versions of the same OS.

However, this reviewers experience of upgrading to Windows 7 was very smooth. I, as I usually do, selected to do a clean install over Vista, so naturally, I backed up all of my important files to an external hard drive.

Installation was fairly simple, as my hard drive was already partitioned because of Vista, I just selected the Vista partition and away I went.

The install took a good hour or so before I had access to my PC again. When I booted up, I was very surprised to see that my hard drive, a 200GB partition of a 320GB drive, was almost full!

What the installer does, and without telling you it will do it, is basically copy your entire old Windows installation to a folder on the C drive called Windows.old. Here I found all my files, which I had to manually copy across to their rightful homes in the new Windows 7 structure. Then, when I tried to delete the folder Windows.old, I wasn’t allowed because of some system files present. It was a bit of a mess but I eventually got it sorted.

First Impressions

Windows gives a good first impression. The default desktop looks very nice, and with a little tweaking can look really very pretty. Here’s my current set up,

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Boot times are improved, despite what some reports have indicated, definitely an improvement over Vista, boot taking around 45 seconds on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo. It’s nice to see boot times improving with a new Windows release.

Responsiveness is very good, the experience as a whole feels quite snappy. I wouldn’t read too much into it however, as it is a fresh install, and has not yet began to suffer from usual Windows bloat and slow down.

The Aero UI, which debuted in Vista is back, looking more transparent than ever, and looking better, with more tweakability than it’s Vista counterpart.

New Features

So then, what does 7 offer you that Vista doesn’t?

Well, there’s a new taskbar for one thing,

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You can place icons for regularly used programs here, similar to the dock in OS X, icons get highlighted when the application is running, and clicking the highlighted icon maximizes the program.

The taskbar is much much much better than the old one, dragging up on the icons gives you a contextual menu that is very handy.

I do have one beef about it however, since you can launch programs with one click of its icon, the same way you maximise already open programs, you often launch programs accidentally.

This is fine for programs like Chrome that launch quickly, but as I’m an engineering student, some of my programs take ages to open, taking up processor power and slowing everything down,which is an absolute pain in the arse!

Much has been made of the Aero Peek feature, shown below, it will show you all your windows transparently overlaid on the desktop. I’ll admit though that in a month, I haven’t had cause to use it at all, so I think it’s not really a big deal.

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As far as it goes with compatibility with applications, I haven’t had any trouble installing anything on the 64-bit version of Windows 7, 32 bit apps install into a seperate folder, Program Files (x86), and all run fine.

Conclusion

Basically, the OS is the OS that Vista should have been, it’s not perfect, there are usability issues, but overall it feels smoother and more polished than Vista did, and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it as an upgrade to Vista.

If you are running XP on old hardware, then Windows 7 isn’t for you, and you should stick with XP, but if you have a 2-3 gigs of RAM, dual core processor, then go for it.

There really isn’t a huge amount thats new in the release, but all over, it’s a better OS than Vista. Still, in my opinion, not quite as good as Ubuntu Linux

UPS isn’t the greatest, but apparently they just hate me. One of my Newegg orders left California on the wrong plane and headed into Washington before being relayed back to Texas through several destinations, delaying my new PC build by nearly a week. Two weeks ago, I had something shipped from my parents’ home in San Antonio to my dorm in Lubbock, and they could not, for the life of them, figure out how to deliver it properly. It seems as if somebody or some system rewrote my residence hall (Hulen) into an academic building (Holden), which are on separate sides of campus, leading to another long delay while they figured it out. It’s most peculiar because the actual label printed with the shipping address (the one you can print off the internet) had the correct one, but the after-shipment labels added by said shipper put it in the wrong place. Anyhow, two over the last year can be overlooked by myself, mostly because I’m a forgiving person.

Not this time. From this day forth, I shall no longer be choosing to use UPS for any of my shipments. This time, they managed to screw up my Halo 3 ODST delivery. I was one of those who ordered ODST early, and originally paid for simple 2-3 day shipping. When I got access to a 10% off coupon from the ECA deal at SlickDeals, I chose to cancel that order and get release-date shipping, which was entirely negated by the coupon, making it cheaper to get the delivery today than wait to get it. Somehow, UPS managed to be notified of my shipment at 8:31PM yesterday along with probably a zillion other Amazon preorderees and not get it out of Kentucky until 4:41PM today. This after they damn well knew that it was a next day air shipment and knew there would be a lot of them. They might have noticed this because of the large sum of money Amazon deposited into their coffers to do this. Some people have reported that it is because of a mechanical failure on a plane somewheres over the rainbow, but either way UPS is majorly at fault, and I can only hope they fix it somehow. Amazon has already refunded $9 because of a price change; now will UPS? Unlikely.

Which brings me to GameStop. And for that matter, most physical retail stores. As we progress to the digital age, where one no longer needs to go to Best Buy and pay far too much for a DVD or CD, the only thing holding us back is the subpar service of the mailing system. It’s a matter of instant satisfaction. I doubt most people could name one store they actually enjoy going to nowadays that’s not independent. Can’t do it. It’s because they can charge considerably higher for that instant feel good sensation of having the product in your hands that second. GameStop only exists because people are too lazy to list their game on eBay or Amazon Marketplace, wait for it to sell, and ship it. It’s almost guaranteed that more money will be had through independent selling; only the delivery method holds us back. The reverse is also true: going into GameStop is highway robbery, and yet many people will pay the premium just to have it at that very second. Currently, GameStop sells Madden 10 at full MSRP, $59.99, used at $54.99. Currently, both are cheaper (and tax-free for most) on Amazon- $57 for new, and $47 for used. But, the major hassle of waiting and then having a likely shipping issue is clearly worth it to some, and they are the ones who continue to fund the profit machines of GameStop.

tl;dr UPS sucks because they do, and retail only exists because they do suck.

My cataloging of UPS' fail

Twitter catalogs UPS' fail.

Amazon.com Discussion On Why UPS Sucks

Thumbnail from flickr.

MH907 Son Ericsson IEM’s

This is much more practical than digging out your phone or mp3 player to pause and play your music. An answer to our growing laziness!

LG chocolate phones have always been eye candy, but not the best phone out there. Announced earlier in August was the BL40, also dubbed the New Chocolate BL40. It really looked like a chocolate bar, with a bizarre design around a massive 4.01 inch capacitative touch screen with 16M colours! Wifi? Check. 5MP camera? Check. 3G? Check. I could go on…

However, not everyone likes a big old chocolate bar. LG resurrects the Chocolate 1 slide-phone form factor with the new LG New Chocolate BL20. This phone runs the same S-Class interface as the BL40. It also has the 5MP camera, and a very sexy red keypad.

There’s an official video of the BL20 right below.

watch?v=m6f49K0tpNo&feature=player_embedded#t=59

First of all, the General Outlook:

The general outlook of the Cowon S9 is nice and curvy. Coming in Titanium and chrome for the sides, I ultimately decided against chrome due to its tendency to get scratched up within a day of use. i.e. iTouch. *Cough cough*. The back is of that nice velvety plastic/rubber material, which we are beginning to see a lot of in new tech. Screen is very nice, and it is nice and light,but just heavy enough to not feel like a dollar store toy.  I will cover the screen in a bit more detail later. The buttons, conveniently located at the top, (two for volume, two for forward,backwards, and one in the middle for play/pause) are good for when you don’t want to take the damn thing out of your pocket and have to unlock the screen and everything.  Screen cover is scratchproof glass. I’ve tried to prove them wrong. I failed. It’s scratchproof.

GUI:

The GUI is your classic touch screen menu. Gridlike. However, there’s a handy widget mode, and you can use the widget mode as your main menu instead. I personally prefer the main menu. Browsing is nice and simple. You have your classic browsing buttons located at the bottom of your screen. There’s the BACK button, the RETURN TO ROOT (up) button, a FUNCTION button (usually add to playlist) and a DEETE button. right beside the delete button is a “flip” button, which flips your button menu into a zoom bar, good for those people who are not so good at seeing. The Time is located top left, and battery is always shown top right. Volume is also shown in this top bar at all times, so when you turn the player on and go to music, you should have ample warning before having to apply for medical insurance for both ears.

VIDEO:

I love the support of codecs for video. And also with the AMOLED screen, you’re bound to get clearer pictures and more shiny colors. The G-sensor automatically detects which direction your player is tilted in, so if ur watching your video upside down, it’ll rotate for you. buttons at the bottom, just like in browsing mood. There is Skip left, skip right, play/pause, EQ (yes there is EQ for video too) and a “menu” button, which creates its own scene selection menu. That’s only for when its upright. When horizontal, you have a “add to playlist button, the skip and play buttons, fastfoward, andA-B Repeat. Press flip and you have a variety of buttons that i dont understand, i do know that one is to adjust the screen size, one is to lock the G-sensor, and one is for taking a screenshot. I think it also stores playback information on up to 3 videos, so if you close one and go to another, you can go back to the one you were watching earlier and not lose your spot.

AUDIO:

One of the best parts of this player is the JetEffect settings. The sound is absolutely astonishing. With the new Crystal Clear preset EQ, I’m hearing ride cymbals like i’ve never heard them before. (cliche, yes, but nojk) There’s also a variety of settings for custom presets you can fool around with. By setting my EQ, I managed to make my weak-bass Shure E3C’s into Thumping techno cannons. Fun =D. IT also has a lot of different functions in the buttons area, but im too lazy to go over them all. However, what i really want to mention is the Sony Ericson Walkmen-esque flick-wrist-to-switch-songs function. I flick the player, it changes songs. Great fun. Also supports bluetooth headphones.

FLASH PLAYER:

Nothing need be said here. Flash is Flash.

Utilities:

There’s a calculator, a paint function, a typewriter, a G-sensor based evasion game. there’s also a built in recorder, and the player has LINE IN/OUT through the USB port, another dongle you need to buy for that to work. and there’s FM Radio. There’s also a Ebook reader, and photo see-er, for all those that were wondering.

AMOLED:

The S9 uses some new in between LED and OLED technology (i think). This makes for blacker blacks, redder reds, crisper greens. whatever. Its nice and i like it. And plus it uses Capacitive Touchscreen technology, which IMO is better than resistive. With these hardware perks, The S9’s battery life is significantly increased to 55 hours of audio playback on a full charge and 11 (may have increased) hours of video playback on a full charge.

At 199 CAD, this was a great buy. I’d take this over the iTupperware any day.

This post has been rather drab, but I haven’t had the practice i sorely need in writing reviews in a long time. SORRY! (sadface) = (

Expect to see a BargainBin Sony Alpha 200 review soon.

Image: http://gizmodo.com/5134111/cowon-s9-review

The Ps3 Slim Sony used to deny is for real! As of today, the old PS3 (160GB) is going down in price by a meaty $100 to drop to 399, or you could wait for a slim, matte PS3 for 299.

The Slim will come with a 120GB HDD. It’s almost 4LBS lighter than the older PS3, using 30W less power at 250W compared to the old 280W. As you might know, the old PS3’s could be set up vertically or horizontally, however the Slim requires you to buy a $24 stand if you want to go vertical.

Was this a desperation move from Sony to boost PS3 sales? Will this be able to take off successfully?

EDIT: Old PS3 price updated, thanks Kelvin for the tip, my friend and fellow Tech In Hiding blogger.