Even with all its limitations, my iPad hooks into my Windows- and Microsoft-dominated world quite nicely.  I have hundreds of ripped DVDs on my Windows Home Server for viewing on my Xbox 360 through Media Center Extender.  Do I also want to view those videos curled up in bed with my iPad?  To quote Apple’s less-than-meek advertising slogan, “There’s an app for that.”  While I hate, hate, hate Apple’s uncanny ability to command attention, that doesn’t mean they don’t make some pretty nifty products.

Why do I have a picture of my iPad and Zune making hearts to each other?  It just so happens that I want to download an album that isn’t available on the Zune Marketplace.  Checking Amazon MP3, I discovered that the album wasn’t available there either.  What about iTunes?  I tapped open the iTunes app on my iPad, and sure enough there it is.  What’s great about DRM-free music?  I can download a song from iTunes, on my iPad, and sync it over to my Zune.  (I would say this is interoperability at its finest, but I suspect to have a less-than-satisfactory user experience with iTunes on Windows.)

The point, however, is that less and less consumers are having to choose sides.  Mac or PC?  The real issue is AAC or OOG, or why not support both?  The platform is losing significance.  Microsoft Exchange, a protocol for synchronizing email, calendar, and contacts, is available on Windows Phones, Android Phones, and iPhones.  The protocol itself is being served up not just by enterprises in business-type scenaros, but also for consumers.  Gmail, for example, offers Exchange support for free.  When every platform speaks a common set of protocols and file formats, something customers shouldn’t have to bother worrying about anyway, customers can more easily mix-and-match different devices and services.  A year ago got a Windows Mobile phone because it would easily synchronies with my Windows Live Mail.  Now, however, the phone and the email service can easily be interchanged independently, since both pieces can speak Exchange. (side note: yes, yes, IMAP exists blah blah.  That only synchronizes email.)

How long until there’s a Zune app for iOS?  What about a PlayStation Home app for Windows Phone?  Arguably the latter is more likely to happen, but all is possible in the magical world of technology.

Here are some short videos that I made:

Unboxing:

link

Out-of-the-box experience:

link

First-sync experience:

link

I’ve been at it for a couple days, and I’m still migrating data onto the server.

Youch!

I had already spent a bunch of money fixing my Zune the first time, so I wasn’t too eager to spend more money.  Since the original accident Microsoft began offering a repair service for broken glass and screens… for $80.  I opted for a cheaper solution in every sense of the word.  Instead of replacing the front glass, I decided to remove the broken pieces and simply put the Zune in a clear plastic case.  I clicked around Amazon.com and found the a cheap clear case for $3.27.  (As of today, the price is $3.10.)  The whole deal as $6.25 with shipping.

The first step in the repair was to remove the broken pieces from in front of the LCD screen.  I began to take apart the Zune, but then I thought I might be able to pick off the pieces with a small pick—I used the flathead screwdriver that came with my Rapid Repair kit.  The process was oddly reminiscent of pealing a hard-boiled egg.  Note that I was only able to peal away the glass because it was the cheap Rapid Repair stuff.  The glass that comes on Zunes is much stronger and stays in one piece even after it cracks.

After I got all of the pieces off I sprayed a bit of Windex on a paper towel and cleaned  up the remaining dust.  (The blemish at the top of the frame is from when I replaced the glass the first time.)

With the case on my Zune is basically as good as new.  My only concern now is that dust will get up under the cover and I’ll have to clean it out.  Time will tell for that.

As for the case itself, the only problem that it seems to have is that it makes the hold switch inaccessible without something like a toothpick or paperclip.  The case does come with the necessary parts to clip the Zune to a belt, so it might not be a big deal if I decide to do that.

I almost decided to ditch this Zune, an 8GB model, for a larger 16GB model, but I hear a new model, the Zune HD, is coming out later this year.  I’ll be paying close attention to that as well!

site note:  look at the funky wallpaper that is included with the release candidate via Flicker.

Why should web developers be happy?  Internet Explorer 8 is the most standards-compliant version of IE yet.  That means less time writing “special” code for IE and more time adding polish.  End users should like some new features such as accelerators, improved speed, an improved favorites bar, and especially new search features.

My favorite feature is search suggestions from within the search box.  This is especially great for when I don’t know exactly what to Google for.

For more information check out Paul Thurott’s review of Internet Explorer 8.

This time the problem wasn’t the storage.  Last week I broke my 8GB, second generation Microsoft Zune, but this time I could repair the thing myself!

I reI got the tools and replacement glass from rapidrepair.com.  Everything (including shipping) cost $45.97.  I used RapidRepair’s general disassembly guide and a YouTube video as references for the repair process.

The first step was to remove the silver backing insert.  I wedged the safe open tool into the top to accomplish this.
 

This exposed two Tri-wing screws, which I removed with the Tri-wing.  I found that the bigger (red) Tri-wing screwdriver worked on all of the screws in the Zune.

Now I could remove the back casing, so I used the safe open tool to undo all of the snaps around the edges.

With the back off, I saw three more screws to remove.

The communications board is now only connected by the Zune by a cable.  I didn’t remove the board at this point, doing so would have made the process ahead a bit easier.

The communications board is attached by wide, orange ribbon cable.  You can detach one end by flipping the little black latch that goes along the width of the cable at either connection point.

Now I had to remove the battery.  I was a bit concerned that the battery flexed a bit when I tried to pry it off, but the Zune still works after my repair, so I can only assume that this was normal.  The battery is afixed to the rest of the Zune with an adhesive.  I used the safe open tool for the task.
 

(at this point the communications board got in the way too much and I removed it.

Removing the battery exposed a final Tri-screw.  (You can see it in the previous picture.)  I’ve been puting all of the screws in a headphone case to keep track of them.

At this point the rapidrepair tutorial became a bit unclear, so I started to poke around to figure out the next step.

Here I pull up the board with the memory chips.  Notice how this piece connects with the navigation controls below it.  (There is are little “docks” on each component that fit together.  This tripped me up the first time, because those to pieces weren’t making contact.  I could only turn on the Zune by plugging it into my computer, and then the Zune would start up, shut down, and restart.)

After a bunch of finagling I got the screen and it’s frame out.  I’m sure there are very specific clips that I had to simply detach with the safe remove tool, but I didn’t find them all the first time.  The inner frame has some week points, so be ginger.

Now I had everything apart, and access to the back side of the glass.

I pushed around the edges of the glass from the back to break the adhesive.  The glass came of fairly easily.

At this point I used Windex and a paper towel to clean up the area on the Zune that the new glass would stick to.

Do you remember that big spool of foam from the first picture?  That was protecting this itty-bitty piece of glass:

I stuck the new glass on no problem.  (This was the easy part!)

Remember how I said that the inner frame had some weak points?  I know that because I broke part of it.  It doesn’t seem to matter much, though.

Now everything goes back together in reverse order.  I got some dust on the LCD screen, so I sprayed a mist of Windex on a paper towel and gently whipped the surface of the screen.  After watching all of the liquid evaporate from the surface of the screen, I put that piece back into place in the Zune.

Make sure to put the memory board back into place before you put in the first screw.  If you put in the screw first, not only will the memory board not secured, but the tiny difference in position will prevent that board from communicating with the navigation controls.  (I made this mistake…)

After all of that effort (which was mostly fun), my Zune was back to normal.

Edit, May 23, 2009:

The Rapid Repair glass broke a few weeks after I installed it.  More on that here.

Here’s the Soapbox video:

This picture isn’t great, but it shows the evidence.  …For a better view of the area, why not try the Google Street View of the place?

Making fun of Microsoft is always fun, but let’s not forget that Live Maps has some great features like their “Bird’s Eye View” and in-browser (IE or Firefox) 3D rendering (with Xbox 360  controller support, of course).  To be fair, I remember seeing a Live demo for a Street-View-esque navigator a while ago, even before Google Street View went public.  I guess imagery captured by the Live Local vans will be used for a more polished and integrated version of that.  I’m interested to see how it works out.

Edit at 11:31pm:

PaoloM, on the Channel9 forums, referred me to the “Street-View-like” demo that I thought of.  He sent me a link to this blog post, which was created in early 2006.  The preview is currently still available at http://preview.local.live.com/

It seems to work fine otherwise, but obviously I want to get this thing fixed.  I called Zune customer support (1-877-GET-ZUNE) and got some irritating news.  I already knew that my Zune was out of warranty, but apparently the Zune team doesn’t provide a paid repair service for out-of-warranty devices.  All hope had seemed lost until I asked the guy if there were any third-party repair options.  The customer support representative told me to go to “triple W dot live dot com”.  I thought it was odd that he would refer me to Microsoft’s online services front, until he added “and search for ‘Zune repair centers’”.  I got the message and Goggled it instead.

It seems that I can buy the screen for $20 (plus $6 for tools) from rapidrepair.com.  While I think it is a bit unreasonable for Microsoft to not offer a pair repair service for their out-of-warranty products that are still in production, it will be cheaper and more fun to do the repair myself.  RapidRepair has a general tutorial for dissecting the Zune, and I’ll look around for a more specific tutorial.  Until then!

I believe WGA in XP is basically just a nag from the system notification area.  In Vista RTM (pre service pack 1), WGA would disable AERO when the user logged in and only give an Internet Explorer window for the user to purchase a key.  (Of course, the IE window allowed the user to open up the command prompt to do various things to get the system back without paying, but that’s not what this post is about.)  Vista SP1’s WGA behavior was less of a show-stopper, and did allow the user to get to the desktop and use the computer semi-normally, but onto the Windows 7 behavior.

After a month of avoiding putting in my Windows 7 Beta key, I was greeted this dialogue box while using the computer:

You may be a victim of software counterfeiting.

To use all Microsoft Windows® features, such as all updates from Windows Update; get the latest updates and receive product support, your copy of Microsoft Windows® must be validated as genuine.

That was after the occasional reminder-to-activate message balloon from the system notification area before the 30 days was up.

With the 30 days up, whenever I logged in I was greeted with the following message box. (It’s taken with a camera because I had no other way of saving a screenshot.)

Clicking “Activate Now” brought me to this screen:

Clicking “Buy a new product key online” brought me to this webpage:

All of the other options in the activation wizard were to either type in a key or put off the task for later.

After neglecting to put in a key again, I was allowed back onto my desktop.  I found that the desktop wallpaper was changed to plain black, and an “This copy of Windows” is not genuine” was placed in the lower-right corner of the desktop.  (The other text is because the release of Windows that I am using is the public beta.)

I could change the wallpaper back, but every time I logged in the desktop would revert to plain black.

Finally, ever time I opened the Control Panel I was greeted with the following message.  (Apparently I also changed the window color sometime between the time the previous screenshot was taken and this one. )

That’s it.  In the end, it seems that the OS all together still works.  The desktop nag and login messages are nuisances, but the lack of Windows Update support is a strong motivator to get the thing activated.  For someone who doesn’t want to spend the money, however, it seems that the less he restarts the computer the less of a haste the WGA nags would be.

Keep in mind that this is the behavior in the Windows 7 beta, but I think it’s safe to assume that the behavior won’t change much in the coming release candidate and final release.

Clicking on it, this window opened:

This is great!  This tells me that Windows Update now has a streamlined path for new features and updates to current Windows-bundled applications.  In the past, Microsoft has been very timid about updating programs bundled with Windows, which is one reason why Microsoft pulled many of them out into Windows Live.  (Internet Explorer 7 was a big deal to update.  At some point Windows Update in XP would open up the installer, right in the user’s face.  The alternative would be to update IE automatically, that’s not fair to the user.)  Microsoft would never push a new program (with a whole new UI, etc.) to an end user without asking first, and it seems that this path allows Microsoft to easily ask that question.  (The question would be queued in the Action Center maybe?)

Since I’ve had the Windows 7 Beta running for a few weeks, I’m guessing that this Windows Update type was itself an update, which just goes to show the extreme flexibility of Windows Update.

I’m looking forward to the release candidate in April!

Unfortunately, multi-touch doesn’t work on my Toshiba Protégé M700 tablet PC yet, but I’m still hopeful that Toshiba will put out drivers before 7 is released.

edit: Here’s another:

A simple double-click on an ISO file will bring up this simple interface:

It couldn’t be simpler, but you will still need some third-party software if you want to create a disk image.

Now there is a “movies” menu front and center in Media Center’s start menu.

Selecting the “Movie Library” item shows the following screen.  I started taking screenshots of the process of adding the DVD’s into the library, but the process was so “duh” obvious that I decided to leave the process out.

After I told Media Center where the DVDs were it found all of them and put them in the menu for me to play.

Selecting a DVD brings up a menu about the DVD.  (This menu is the same template as for selecting an album in a list of music or a video in a list of videos.)  There seems to be a lot of room for metadata.  I don’t know how that is supposed to work, but hopefully there’s more to come.

Pressing right bring up a list of actions, which for DVDs apparently only lets me edit the disk title.

When I select “restart” my experience is just as though I put in a DVD, except more responsive.  I have found that skipping around in the video is much more responsive in this version of Media Center, as compared with Vista’s.

After holding right for a seconds, the selector switches from jumping from one item to the next slowly to this new scrolling mode in Media Center.  I forget it’s specific name, but what it does is great.  All of the items in the background fade out a little and wizz by, while only a few items show up slowly on top.  This allows the user to jump to the general area of an item in a big list.  When the user lets go of the left or right button, the item shown in the forground is left selected, and the items in the background fade back in.  The whole process is very well animated and seems useful as well.

However, this still is a beta after all, so currently in the Windows 7 beta if the DVD that it selects to show in the foreground begins with “The”, media center will select those letters as the current position.  It’s nice that Media Center ignores words like “the” in it’s alphabetizing algorithm, but the guys who wrote the quick scrolling feature didn’t seem to get the memo.  I’m sure this will be fixed by the time the Release Candidate is released.

Another nifty new feature of Media Center in Windows 7 is that the user can now, finally, change the position of the video by clicking and dragging the position indicator.  It’s acceptable that this wasn’t possible in the past; Media Center is primarily intended to be used on a couch with a remote control, but it’s nice that Media Center is getting this feature as well.  (Side note: Media Center is also receiving many touch-related features, but more on that later.)

I wonder if this thing supports ripped BluRay disks…  I’ll have to investigate.

When the user first opens Windows Media Center, he is greeted with the following screen.  He may pan left and right to get an overview of the software’s features, as I will do through a series of screenshots.

After clicking “Continue” the user is greeted with the following:

The Learn More item apparently brings the user to a simple Media Center application with a few demo and tutorial videos.  Keeping in mind that this stuff is still in beta, it is a unfortunate that in the time between selecting “Learn More” and seeing a list of videos, there is no loading animation or status indicator of any kind.  Hopefully this will be fixed in the final release.

Back to setup.  Selecting “Express” does some things and then brings the user to the Media Center start menu (if that’s what it’s called.).  I was curious to select that, but I wanted to see what “Custom” had to offer.

Media Center did some processing for maybe a minute, which was curious.

Here is the obligatory “may we collect statistics?” choice.  This is one reason why I usually choose “Custom” for things like this, because I like to participate, but I don’t think the epxress option opts me in.

And of course a privacy statement…

w00t!

Now I have more options.  I don’t have a TV tuner any more, so the first option is not applicable to me, and the other two are not really that exciting or necessary for my system.  I was curious about the media libraries option, however, so I selected that.

Just as I thought, there is a “DVD movies” option now.  Move on that later…

I’m done, so I selected “I have finished”.

w00t!

And here’s the new start menu.

I’ve already played around with Media Center for a bit, and am really excited about a lot of the new features and improvements.  I’ll be writing most posts about them in the future.

Windows Vista:

Windows 7:

…it looks like it’s breathing.