November 2005 Entries
OK, so I want one... still, I went to 2 stores to check out the mood... it was 7pm... Best Buy has 75 machines... with about 100 people in line... Walmart had 30 machines with 50 people waiting.
This is nuts, I mean sure the Xbox is indeed hot, but is it really that hard for a manufacturer to know that there is going to be a huge demand for these things? Of course on Friday, there will be nothing but a bunch of angry, bitter consumers looking to buy the hot item for Christmas and there will be nothing in the stores.
If the marketing department thinks its great to build a buzz, I am betting its going to backfire on them when there is nothing in the store on the biggest shopping day of the year. (or is this the best kept secret... all the stores get restocked with hundreds of units on Wednesday night... methinksnot)
Had they actually planned for stock to be there, they would have sold many many times the amount they could have buy trying to build such a buzz. Perhaps they really don't want to sell them since they are supposedly taking a loss on them again. In the quantities they are making these things, they probably will make a profit, but I suspect that they could have ramped up more stock if they really wanted to get one in everyone's hands who wanted one for Christmas.
I am annoyed and have a real mind to just not get one now since I will have time to reconsider whether it really will be what I want to use as my entertainment terminal. I'm not a gamer, sure the games will be great in HD, but I want one more for the media capabilities it offers. A PC doesn't cost THAT much more for what you get, the Asus S-Presso is a good alternative.
Here is another really stupid move...
“At this time, access to development tools for the Xbox 360™ video game console is limited to developers working on approved titles for licensed publishers. This will change over time, so check back for more information in the future.” from http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/developingforxbox360.htm
Microsoft has always made a point to make development tools available for Windows, why are they restricting the Xbox so much if they really want wide spread third-party support for applications. Perhaps they are just trying to micro-control what goes on these things or they are afraid of little geniuses like DVD John spoiling their control of the platform.
Whatever they are trying to do, its irritating me. I hope these shortcomings don't create another potentially great media center (like the Mac Mini) which falls flat on its face by the shortsightedness of the marketers who should have put these in the hands of people who can really make it great.
I don't want to develop for the PS3, its going to run some bizarre *nix variant that will be a pain in the butt to code for. Since the Xbox is running some flavor of Windows creating something amazing with VB.Net or C#, the Compact Framework and DirectX shoud be a breeze if it ever sees the light of day to those who don't want to sign an NDA just to right some code.
Launch fever is in full swing.
Today I helped volunteer at the “official” Microsoft Launch event in Phoenix. The Demos given were pretty good and showed many of the new features in both SQL2005 and VS2005.
Don't let blog post like this one scare you... We will make every effort to make the community event in Phoenix a success despite the lack of “help” we are getting so far. As User Group Leaders, the AZGroups leadership has some plans up their sleeve to insure a great event. This event should NOT be missed, even if you think you have already seen all the demos, I assure you... you haven't.
I plan to skip most of the “no code“ demos that many people have seen already and dive down into the changes in real code that we can write now in both ASP and Smart Clients. There are some terrific new features that will make your life as a developer much easier even when you are writing lots of code.
I still find that the “no-code” approach even in VS2005 will not be employed by any professional developer as it does not conform to some of the best practices we should be employing in our development to create manageable and maintainable code.
I look forward to showing off some of the great new features from Partial Classes, Generics, Custom Controls, Web Parts, and some of the great new ways we can use SQL including the CLR and Native XML support.
Carl and Richard rolled “the boat“ into town yesterday. [Link to the Audio of the Show]
It was a pleasure to see Carl Franklin again and to meet Richard Campbell and Mark Miller.
The event was very informative, Carl demonstrated some of the great new UI features as well as some snazzy changes in the VB Language that are new to VB8.
Two nice third party controls were demoed as well, these were CodeRush and Refactor! Pro.
Mark has done a great job with these two tools and the best part is that you don't have to wait for VS2005 to use them, you can get them NOW and start using them with VS2003. These will boost your productivity tremendously by cutting down on the busy work all coding takes (like creating properties and classes). Carl and Mark have a couple of videos showing how the tool works in VS2005, go check them out.
The Basic Refactor tool is a free download for VS2005, but if you are serious about using it, you'll want the Pro version and its certainly worth the price. These are professional tools for professional developers and will pay for themselves on your first project in the time savings.
Richard showed some cool toys that are here for use now and talked about what is coming with Windows Mobile 5. I know I just got a new phone about 6 months ago, but as soon as I see a decent CDMA phone with Windows Mobil 5 and a Camera, I am getting one. I am not moving from CDMA and EVDO anytime soon, I don't care how cool the GSM phones are, the US network for GSM is pathetic compared to CDMA.
A few of us had the pleasure after the event of being interviewed for the show and to get some insight into some of the equipment and techniques Carl, Richard and Geoff use to produce such a great show. Most “podcasts“ are so amateur in their production that it make you wonder just how long this “fad“ will last or if it will really become a staple like blogs have. I personally haven't tried podcasting yet because I know what it take to produce something of superior quality and can't devote the time necessary to achieve something I would feel comfortable unleashing to the world.
Thanks for stopping in town guys, we hope you will come back soon.
I am VERY happy to report that VS2005 Installed (the first time) on my TabletPC and a couple VPC images with NO problems at all.
My Tablet (Toshiba M205) even had Beta2 installed at one time (which had to be uninstalled first)
This is great, I remember having some 'problems' with VS2003 installing the first time.
Note: On another development machine I am using, I have the DPI set to 150% and the resolution is 1360x768. I use this for demos, etc. on a large 32” LCD. I could not get through the installer with these settings because the installer windows were too high to allow me to click the next button. Simply restoring the 96dpi default solved this, but I think the windows should at least be sizeable on these wizards. I doubt 800x600 at the default dpi would work.
It will be very nice when WPF gets here and these raster annoyances go away; then we can start dealing with all the vector annoyances :)
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Copyright © 2003-2004 H. Steele Price, IV -
All opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer, your mother, or any government agency.