Microsoft Student Insider Training Day 2: The first day at Microsoft Part 2
Welcome back to my series of posts from my Microsoft Student Insider Training trip to the Microsoft campus in Redmond. This is part 2 of 3 from Day 2, so lets pick up right where we left off! Read about Day 1 and Day 2 part 1 if you haven't already.
After the legal discussion, we broke for lunch back at the Commons. This time, I got to explore the commons and all the various different food stations it has to offer, from seafood to pizza, if you want it, they probably have it. The variety of food you can get there really is amazing. What really amazed me is that it is not just food, but there are cell phone stores from a couple of carriers, a bank and even a bike shop in the Commons area so Microsoft employees can get their bike worked on or make changes to their wireless carrier while they are at lunch. During each of our visits to the commons, we had various Microsoft employees come and eat with us and talk to us about everything from the products that they work on to the health benefits that Microsoft offers their employees. Unfortunately I don't recall the names of everybody we met with over lunch but it was great talking with them and learning about what they do and what Microsoft does for its employees and how much they love the company for it.
After lunch, we split up and got to meet with people from various teams throughout Microsoft for most of the afternoon. First, I got to meet with Mark Hopkins and Luis Cabrera-Cordon who work on the Microsoft Surface team. We got to spend close to a half an hour playing with Surface (something I have done on a couple of other occasions but only to a small extent) and learning about how it works, Microsoft's vision for the product, what powers it, how they test it and how crazy expensive it is($12,500 for just the unit, $15000 for a developer unit according to wikipedia which is a little higher than I believe we were told but in the same ballpark). It is amazing what the Surface tables can do. It uses 5 IR cameras to detect whatever is touching the table and uses special tags, kind of like a bar code to bring up information about something. This was demonstrated to us with business cards where the card was placed on the Surface and the persons information was read from the tag and brought up on the table. We were shown all kinds of really cool things and I have a video of most of it which I will try to get posted soon so you guys can see just how cool the device is. After we finished learning about and playing with the Surface, I headed to yet another building (pretty much everything was in a different building. It is amazing just how many buildings that Microsoft has) to meet Dan Fernandez (blog) and Brian Keller (blog) from Channel 9. They had planned for me to be on This Week in Channel 9 but unfortunately that wasn't communicated to whoever planned our schedule and because I had to be at the Scott Hanselman (blog) presentation, I never got to take advantage of that opportunity. I did get to check out the Channel 9 studios however and the equipment in there is amazing. From some awesome lighting to all of the recording equipment, it was everything I could do to keep from drooling and trying to sneak out with some equipment to spice up the Global Geek News Podcast. Someday I hope to make it back so that I can be on one of the Channel 9 shows but who knows when that day will come.
Like I mentioned, my next stop was a meeting with Scott Hanselman in yet another building where I met back up with the other insiders. At the time, I didn't realize how big of a deal it was to meet Scott. Apparently in the developers/Microsoft employee circles, he is a bit of an all star in the company and even has a great podcast. Apparently he works in another state and rarely makes it to the Microsoft main campus so the fact that we could steal an hour of his time is a big deal or so I am told. The meeting with Scott was a lot of fun as he is a barrel of laughs. He spent the hour talking to us about parallel computing and showing us just how efficient it is. He showed us some code that blew my mind (I haven't done any parallel programming in all of my years as a programmer). He showed us code for doing parallel queries to a SQL database and demonstrated just how much faster it is when you take advantage of the multiple cores on today's processors. I was quite impressed to say the least. Speaking of numbers, after our meeting with Scott, I got to go visit with Josh Carroll.
Josh Carroll works on the Telemetry team. Never heard of the Telemetry team? Neither had I, but I quickly found out just how important the team was at for various products at Microsoft. The telemetry team is responsible for the automatically collected data such as crash information and details sent through the feedback tool and such and relays the data back to the teams in charge of the various products so that they can fix bugs and see how users are trying to use the software for future improvements. The information that they interpret and pass on to the product teams played a large part in how great Windows 7 is. For a little more on the team and how the information they gathered was used to shape the final release of Windows 7, I highly recommend checking out this article at Ars Technica. Anyway, the meeting with Josh went great and it gave me some great insight into what happens when users send those crash reports to Microsoft when something goes wrong. I have always been one to submit my crash reports whenever I have them but never realized that they were really being used much until now. Thanks to this meeting, whenever somebody asks if they should submit crash reports, I always make sure to tell them to do it because it can make a big difference in future patches and releases.
I will cut off part 2 of day 2 right here. Stay tuned for the final part of Day 2, our night activities, which should be up within the next 24 hours and then we will be on to the most exciting day, Day 3 which includes my appearance on 1 vs 100 Live!
Microsoft’s CES Keynote was a major snooze
Greetings Readers!
As I am sure many of you are aware, last night was Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote and if you watched it, you know that the most exciting thing that came out of the keynote was the power failure that delayed it close to 30 minutes (We live blogged it here). As I stated last night, I would give my thoughts, both good and bad right here (Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Student Insider), so here we go.
I was rather surprised at the lack of announcements coming out of the keynote compared to years past. For those hoping for a big announcement regarding the rumored new features behind Ford's Sync, you are out of luck. Those are apparently being saved until Ford's keynote. Hoping for a major announcement about the Zune HD? Nope, nothing here either. Windows 8? Wishful thinking. A portable version of the Xbox? This will remain every gamers fantasy. What was announced? Ballmer really didn't announce much. He gave some lines about Windows 7 being the fastest selling OS of all time and some analyst speculation that PC sales will increase considerably this year but I don't really call those announcements. Steve announced that the HTC HD 2 running Windows Mobile will be coming to T-mobile but I am not sure anybody cares since we are talking Windows Mobile after all and T-mobile doesn't help either. Steve said they would talk more about the future of Windows Mobile at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next month. Ballmer did show off some prototype "Slate PCs" that will hopefully combat anything Apple announces later this month. The one he really demonstrated was an HP prototype that was running Windows 7 and the Kindle PC software to demonstrate how good of an e-book reader it could be and it looked to be about the same size as the Kindle 2. Sounds nice and I will definitely buy one, but if you are going to try to compete with Apple, you need to show something that will come out a little sooner rather than some prototype. Wait, you really wanted to know what was announced? Ok.
As far as REAL announcements go, there are a couple fairly minor announcements. Bing is now going to be the default home page and search engine for all HP computers. Excited yet? They also demonstrated what a Cable Card and a pc in your tv could do and said that with it, you can record 4 HD channels simultaneously which was probably the most impressive thing from they keynote. They talked a bit about Media Room and some partnership with AT&T's U-verse that I still don't understand and finally they had a couple interesting Xbox announcements. Besides all of the interesting number like units sold and games sold, Robby Bach announced that Project Natal will ship as an attachment to existing Xbox 360 systems in time for Christmas 2010. No price although I would expect that around E3. There was also no demo which was kind of disappointing. They also teased a new Halo game only to have it turn out to be a trailer for Halo Reach which was announced back at E3. I was rather disappointed but the audience seemed to love it since they could see the trailer and everybody watching the stream could not. The big Xbox 360 announcement was Game Room.
What is Game Room? Game Room seems to be a virtual space similar to the PS3's Home where you can run around a giant arcade as your avatar and buy and play old arcade games that look like the arcade units you would spend tons of quarters on in years gone by. Over 1000 games are planned for the next year that will be released in weekly batches that you will have to purchase. The coolest part is that this will be not only for the Xbox 360 but for PCs too! How much are these games going to cost you ask? If you want to play an arcade game on both platforms, you will be paying 400 Microsoft points aka $5. To get it on one platform, it is 240 points or $3. If you really want the old school experience, you can pay 40 points or $.50 and get two quarters worth of playing time on the old machines. The games can be played with other people, in 1080p and there are cross-platform leaderboards and achievements. This is coming in the Spring update to Xbox Live. Personally, I am really looking forward to this because lately I have had the urge to start buying old arcade machines and turning my basement into a small arcade but now I will be able to do it virtually instead of having to completely redo the basement. This was the only real announcement with any cool factor to it other than the HD recording. If you would like to see the demo that the people watching the live stream couldn't watch, you can check it out here.
That was pretty much about it. It was a very boring keynote and ended kind of out of nowhere. It certainly doesn't make me super excited about Microsoft this year but hopefully that will change. What did you think about the Microsoft CES 2010 keynote? Good? Bad? Boring? Exciting? Let us know!
PDC 2009 Day 1: Three Screens and a Cloud
Greetings readers! This is the first of a several posts and a number of videos from my experience at Microsoft's PDC for 2009. Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Student Insider (Find out a little bit more about this in one of my previous posts). Day 1 of PDC started off great despite the fact that a few minutes after arriving that I had forgot my camera back at the hotel (so no pictures from day one). Registration was as simple as handing them my ID and they gave me my badge. I found out the hard way that being there for Microsoft, I don't get any of the goodies like the Acer bag and whatever came in it. The big disappointment as far as free goodies came on Day 2 which I will talk about in the next post. Anyway, shortly after getting my badge, I followed the signs through the huge maze that is the Los Angeles Convention Center. For those that haven't been here, this is quite the huge, impressive structure and when you are going from hall to hall, you will be doing a fair bit of walking. I managed to find they hall for the keynote and jumped into the line that was weaving its way down the long halls. Despite the long line, once the doors were open everybody flooded in and took a seat rather quickly. After a short wait, Ray Ozzy, the top architect at Microsoft since the stepping down of Bill Gates, came on stage and presented us with the idea of "Three Screens and a Cloud." The keynote focused on having the same experience on a computer, mobile device and tv and using Microsoft's cloud OS, Azure, to do that. Since last year's Azure announcement was in fairly cloudy terms, I never really got excited about it but after seeing what it can do and how it can scale, I think if all goes as planned, it is going to be amazing. The major announcement in terms of Azure is that it goes into service at the first of the year and billing begins in February and that you only pay for what you use. If you have a company with a large web presence, this is definitely something to look into, especially if you have traffic spikes and want to be able to scale up to those spikes but not have all of the server overhead when you don't need all of the power.
After the keynote, I spent the rest of they day going to sessions, eating, and having fun with the vendors that were there. Although this was the case all three days, some of the sessions were interesting while others were so far above my head that I thought they were speaking in another language. Although there were some sessions throughout the event focused on aspects of Windows 7, compared to other topics like Azure, there was very little talk about Windows 7 which I found kind of disappointing since it just came out a few weeks ago. I also was disappointed but little to no mention of the next version of Windows. Apparently Microsoft sees the future as everybody having their head in the clouds.
For the sake of keeping these posts short and to the point, I will talk more about some of the sessions I attended and what I learned in a separate post from my daily summaries. I will post the happenings from day 2 at PDC in the next post to likely come out tonight or tomorrow and day 3 shortly after that. I also have a number of photos and videos to upload when I get home too. It might take a few days to get everything up as my school quarter started yesterday and now that this trip is coming to an end (I am sitting in LAX as I write this), I need to focus on making sure i don't fall behind in that. I also have a number of other things to talk about as well as soon as I get a chance including the new Chrome OS. Stay tuned!
Microsoft’s PDC 2009 Coverage
Greetings Readers!
In the last post, I alluded to the fact that Microsoft has sent me to PDC 2009 (Professional Developers Conference) in LA since I am now a Student Insider and as part of that, I am going to be writing numerous blog posts throughout the week about the stuff that is being announced and talked about here. I have also been equipped with a Flip Ultra HD camcorder to take video of what I see. Since I got the Flip this afternoon, I will have to wait until tonight to charge it up and try it out but I should be able to shoot some video the next two days and I will likely have to wait until I return home on Friday to begin uploading them as internet speeds around here seem to vary somewhere between dial-up speeds during the keynote and around 1.5mbps at other times.
I am mainly focusing on Windows 7 stuff and various developer technologies that interest me and alter how I do my pet programming projects. If there is anything specifically that you would like me to report on, let me know in the comments. Feel free to check out the schedule at the PDC 2009 site and point me towards the sessions you would be most interested in me reporting on. Also, once I get the video working, I will be doing interviews as well, so expect some cool stuff from that. There are also a number of the Microsoft Surface tables here so I will get some videos of those too.
I am getting ready to go into another session so I will blog more tonight about what I saw today and just what I think about everything that is being shown off. Stay tuned!
I am now a Microsoft Student Insider, changes are coming
Greetings Readers!
I have some absolutely amazing news to share with all of you. As of today, I am officially a Microsoft Student Insider. What is that you ask? Essentially, it is an unpaid job to blog about various topics that they would like me to blog about. There is one student insider to talk about a specific topic. In my case, I am the chosen one to speak about all things Windows 7. Normally, I wouldn't take an unpaid position, but the perks of the job are good enough that I don't mind it.
While I will be writing a minimum of 15 blog posts for Microsoft over the next year, I am also being sent, all expenses paid, to whatever conferences they want to send me to cover. While I don't yet know a schedule of everywhere I am going to be sent, I do know that I am being sent to cover PDC in LA all of next week. It seems a bit fast considering I just got the job today, but I don't think I can complain too much about a free trip to LA and entrance into an expensive conference and I am getting some awesome stuff too. As part of being a Student Insider, to help me cover the event and others like it, I am being given a Flip HD camcorder, an ASUS eee pc netbook, a Microsoft shirt and some various other things to help with cab fair and such. I am also told that I will have access to talk to higher up people within Microsoft like various product managers and stuff, possibly even some board members either next week or at other times.
I will tell the story of how I got the position in either another post or on the next episode of the podcast which is at a time to be determined since I will be en route to LA at our normal recording time, but I do want to address what this means for the blog.
Although I have wanted a sponsor for some time for the show or the blog or whatever, mainly to help pay for my hosting fees, domain fees and such, at the same time, I have always dreaded the idea. I have build the podcast and this blog on a goal of being 100% honest, 100% of the time with no BS. I have always dreaded the idea of the sponsor because I don't like the feeling that I can't say what I want to say about a topic because I don't want to worry about offending them. The last thing I want to do is open up my mouth and scare way people who want to throw money at me. When I found out more about this position, I hesitated for a bit because of this, but I have decided that despite what I am being given or where I am being sent, I will do everything I can not to allow it to influence my opinions so that I appear to be nothing but a mouthpiece for a company. I will gladly blog about the topics that they request I blog about, but in the end, I will express how I really feel. I will do my absolute best not to censor myself. I will allow Microsoft or anybody else to present their case to me and I will forward it on to my audience, but in the end, my opinion is my own.
If all goes the way I hope, the type of content on here and the podcast will not change, there will just be more Windows 7 related stuff and when it is something that Microsoft wants me to talk about, I will make that very clear so that you can factor that into your judgment of my writing when you read my posts.
I primarily see this as an opening door that I have been trying to work my way into for the past 2 years. As many know, I have been trying to get a job at Microsoft for nearly 2 years and I see this as my way in and I will do whatever I can to achieve my dream while keeping my integrity in regards to Global Geek News but I suppose we will see how it plays out. Anyway, there may or may not be a podcast next week. Since I will likely be in flight when the show is recorded, it will definitely not be released on Tuesday like normal. There is a small chance of recording on Wednesday but at this point, I am not holding my breath. It is most likely the case that we will end up skipping a weeks show but I don't yet know. I will keep you all informed.
More to come!
Don't forget to follow Global Geek News on Twitter and listen to the podcast!
Windows 7 to hit stores October 22nd
Greetings Readers!
Microsoft has announced on the Windows 7 Team Blog that Windows 7 will be in stores on October 22, 2009. Windows 7 should hit RTM (release to manufacturing) sometime in the second have of July. Half of the mystery still remains as we don't know what Windows 7 will cost other than the fact that it will be more expensive than Vista.
Personally, I can't wait for it to be released. As I stated on episode #25 of the Global Geek News Podcast, I have loved nearly every minute I have spent with Windows 7 (BSOD aside). I think it is by far the best OS that I have ever used and it is an amazing improvement over Vista. If I had to pick a favorite feature, it would be the new taskbar. Anyway, I hope time flies so I can replace the RC on my main computer with the retail version of Windows 7.
Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Why must Windows take forever to shut down?
Greetings Readers!
First off, I want to apologize for not blogging much lately. Life has been very busy and I have been rather uninspired until a day or two ago. Also, the Global Geek News Podcast will return next week. Now that that is out of th way...
Have you ever noticed how terribly long it takes for virtually any version of windows to shut down? Unless it is a completely fresh install, it often can take 5-10 minutes. In my case, its usually closer to 10 minutes. For a shutdown time, that is pathetic. We don't put up with it from other devices such as our tvs or game consoles, why do we have to put up with it from Windows?
I have noticed this problem for many years. Whether it is with XP, Vista, or to a slightly lesser extent, Windows 7, it seems like it takes forever for Windows to shut down. If you have to reboot, you might as well go to the movies because the bootup times are typically as bad or worse. What is windows doing that it is taking it so long to shut down? I have tried many things but nothing seems to help. I have tried killing every application and process I have running before shutting down but it seems to make no difference. What could the problem possibly be and why hasn't it been fixed in all these years?
In my fairly limited Linux experience, I never had this issue. I don't know if this problem affects Macs or not but I certainly never hear of it having this issue. If it does or you have an experience you would like to share, please do so in the comments.
Microsoft really needs to address this issue as it is a huge productivity killer and electricity user. I can't say I have gone looking much lately but I have never heard any comment on this. Occasionally I come accross some guides that supposedly help with the problem but still don't solve it. I think its time we put pressure on Microsoft to fix this issue that is a plague on all Windows users. We must demand a higher standard from the company we have come to depend upon.
What has your experience been with this? Post it in th comments as well as tips or links to tips to help this problem.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Is Microsoft repeating its Vista version mistakes with Windows 7?
Greetings Readers!
Have you or somebody you know experienced confusion with Windows Vista because of the large number of versions? While I admit that I was never confused by the version differences other than the fact that I found the whole idea stupid, it seems that Microsoft wants to create more confusion yet again with 5 versions of Windows 7.
Late last week, a screenshot surfaced from what is supposedly build 7025 of Windows 7 showing 5 different versions of Windows 7. Apparently Microsoft didn't get the memo that having so many versions is confusing to the average consumer. The average consumer doesn't understand the differences between Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate, rather less business or anything else. Few consumers know what the different features are at the time of purchase rather less if they will use it. The average Joe doesn't understand things like full drive encryption or some of the media capabilities that come with Windows. Unfortunately, Microsoft has taken the route of confusion instead of making things easy on the consumer.
Of course this is better for Microsoft than it is the consumer. Rather than trying to limit customer confusion and be the customer friendly operating system, they try to make money by making people think that premium is better than basic and ultimate is better than both and trying to get consumers to purchase them whether they need it or not based on the fact that it sounds better. After reading the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Windows 7 Starter is likely the most stripped down piece of crap version of Windows 7 there is (I am not saying that Windows 7 is crap, I actually love it, I am just comparing it based on the names of the other SKUs). Assuming this isn't a completely stripped down version for Netbooks (the beta which is Ultimate runs quite well on netbooks), Microsoft actually expects to sell few if any of this version. Why have this version you ask? To make the others look better. If the price difference isn't that huge, the average person is going to go for the version that sounds better. Microsoft is simply trying to capitalize on this.
The bad part about this strategy is that it leads to confusion. What is the difference between the versions? What is the best bang for my buck? What features do they have? Will I ever use these features? Are there better third party alternatives to what is offered built in? These are only some of the bigger questions that the average consumer is stuck with when you have so many different versions. If you want to be seen as the most consumer friendly version, especially with companies such as Apple gaining strength, confusion should be your enemy.
I will admit that just having a single version of Windows isn't necessarily the best answer. I believe that there should only be 2 versions of Windows, a business version and a home version for everybody else. Much like the business version of Vista, the Business version of Windows 7 should have things such as full hard drive encryption, more protection against hardware failure, remoting support among other things that the average consumer doesn't really need. Of course there are plenty of other vendors that sell such software, so if there are any power users out there that need this functionality, they can easily get it. Business should also be stripped of some of the media capabilities since it is usually better to have employees working rather than streaming movies to their Xbox. The consumer version on the other hand should have a plethora of media capabilities and the stuff that the consumers might want to do.
That said, I know there are some consumers that want some of the business features such as the hard drive encryption but don't want to use other software such as TrueCrypt. I also understand that some businesses are very media focused. My solution to this is to have a store where you can buy certain features of the other version if necessary. By using a method such as this, people will get what they want on their machine without all of the other crap. This would greatly simplify things and make it much easier for consumers to determine what they need and get it instead of being up-sold to the Ultimate or whatever version so you can have the features of everything even if you don't need it.
Get rid of the Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium and Ultimate versions and just call it Windows 7 Home and then the Windows 7 Business version. Two versions is all you need. Anything more and it causes confusion. If Microsoft wants to put Vista behind them, they need to fix the mistakes they made with Vista and I believe this is probably the biggest one.
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-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Windows 7 is… Windows 7?!
Greetings Readers!
In case you haven't heard, Microsoft has announced that the name of Windows 7 will be... Windows 7. Sounds fancy doesn't it?
In the announcement, they listed some reasons why they went with the name, such as not wanting to go with a year because its not a yearly release and that an aspirational name like Vista wouldn't do the new OS justice. Since this is the seventh release of Windows, they say that Windows 7 just makes sense.
While that logic would have made sense if they had been going with this naming scheme from the beginning, the average consumer won't give any thought to this being the 7th Windows OS. My theory? I think the marketing department was on vacation when this decision was made after thier latest batch of 'I'm a PC' commercials which still don't make sense.
This is just the latest example showing how out-of-touch Microsoft really is when it comes to branding a widely used product. Microsoft needs to get some marketing people with a little bit of creativity and that actually understand the average consumer. Calling the new OS Windows XP 2.0 would have been a better idea since they are looking to put Vista behind them and people already love the experience of XP rather than Vista. Personally, I will always be a fan of the Longhorn name until the day I die.
The first thing people will hear about the new OS is its name, so it needs to be something that inspires curiosity and confidence at the same time. While the name certainly isn't everything, it is probably the single most important thing from a marketing standpoint. Until the new Windows OS can prove itself, it will have to rely on marketing, something that is already very restricted with this name choice.
Only time will tell if this is a good move or not, but I'm predicting this merely be the first mistake of the new operating system.
Do you think this is a good name? Do you have other ideas for names? If so, leave a comment!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
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