For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

Introducing Hubs

One of the new concepts in Windows Phone 7 Series is the idea of “hubs.”  These are areas of the phone that bring together features and functionality that are related to a specific concept into one easy to understand user interface.  The hubs are essentially a widescreen view into a particular area of the phone and your phone screen shows you a “window” into that view.  You can scroll left and right to move around the whole page:

I really like this interface and the metaphor it represents. It makes the device feel more expansive, as if there’s a bigger device hidden in an extra-dimensional pocket behind the phone screen.  If you look at the Pictures Hub, you’ll also notice the What’s New section, which brings in new pictures from web services such as Facebook.  I presume that other photo-related web services such as Flickr will also be available as options.  It’s interesting to note that the galleries available for display on the phone also incorporate online galleries, so the walls between what you have on your phone and what is available online clearly are being torn down.  Instead of having to go to two separate locations or apps on your phone to view pictures they are all viewable from one easy to use location.

It’s a Phone; It’s a Zune; It’s Both

I have owned a Zune HD since they day they launched.  I owned a Zune 80GB second generation before that.  I love my Zune.  I love the Zune Pass music subscription service.

What I don’t love is having to carry a separate phone and Zune.  Thankfully, Windows Phone 7 Series will ship with the full Zune software experience embedded in it.  Not only do you get all the features and functionality of the Zune in Windows Phone 7, but you actually get a pretty close reproduction of the user interface of the Zune HD software as well, which is great.

As you can see in the picture above, the far right side of the Music and Video Hub appears to feature a place for music and video related applications.  Windows Phone 7 Series will reportedly have a Pandora application available at launch that will plug in to this Hub.

Final Thoughts and What We’re Still Waiting On

I won’t go into details on some of the other areas of the OS that Microsoft showed off, but I’ll touch on a few points.  While they didn’t give much detail, the Office and Exchange integration looks great.  Seeing as I use my phone for both business and personal use, that’s important to me.  The Xbox gaming integration looks really interesting, but we’ll have to see how that plays out with game developers.  I really like the social networking integration into the core phone experience, rather than through a separate application.  It’s a very people-centric phone, which seems to make sense to me.

As I’m sure you can tell, I am really looking forward to the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series.  From everything we know so far it is exactly what I was hoping Microsoft would do with its mobile platform and strategy.  Of course, it is still early and there are a lot of details that we just don’t know yet.  Microsoft will be announcing and discussing a lot of the technical and development details at the MIX 10 conference next month, which I think will clear up a lot of the unanswered questions.  I’m pretty convinced at this point that I’ll be getting a Windows Phone 7 device later this year, but I will reserve final judgement until I see the information presented at MIX.

I haven’t talked about Windows Mobile much on the site, mainly because there hasn’t been much news regarding the platform for a while. Sure, Windows Mobile 6.5 and subsequent versions were released, and they were an improvement (somewhat) over previous versions. But they weren’t the big, revolutionary leap forward that we’ve been expecting. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will fulfill that promise from Microsoft, we’ll have to wait and see.

I have used Windows Mobile phones exclusively for at least the last 5 years, and while the platform is definitely long in the tooth, I have come to love it. Sure, it has some problems: lack of capacitive touch capability; outdated and often inconsistent user interface; perceived and sometimes actual complexity and other problems. Even with all those issues, I’ve found that Windows Mobile has fit my needs better than other platforms out there.

That being said, I’m at a tipping point now. What Microsoft announces for Windows Mobile 7 will help me determine if it’s time to switch to another platform, probably Android, and I imagine I’m not alone amongst Windows Mobile users. In my opinion, it bodes well that Microsoft decided to push back WM7 and launch WM 6.5 as a stop-gap, because that means they’re taking WM7 seriously and don’t want to screw it up. It wouldn’t be the first time, however, that Microsoft needed to not screw up and did anyway.

I’m really looking forward to some of the rumored features, providing they’re delivered right, especially the Zune integration. I love my Zune HD, but I’d love to have the same features and functionality on my phone so I can carry one device.

I don’t want to do this to you, Microsoft, but if you don’t get it right this time, I’m going to have to break up with you on my phone. I look forward to the announcement at Mobile World Congress and the follow-up, in depth development info that will be coming out at MIX 2010. I’ll likely be getting a new phone this fall. It remains to be seen whether it will be a new Windows Mobile phone.

I’ll write up a more in depth review after I’ve had some time to play with it, but I’ll give a few quick observations here. First, I immediately put the Windows 7 beta on it, and it performs really well.  It’s not as fast as a full blown laptop or desktop machine, but the performance is completely acceptable for casual, every day web use.  While the keyboard is smaller than I’m used to (my “real” laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad R61), it has a very nice feel to it.  The screen is bright and beautiful, and about as small as I can see myself using at 10.2″.

It has built in 802.11g wireless, which so far shows really solid performance.  The two USB ports allow for some nice expansion options and make it easy for me to use my Sprint EVDO card for on-the-go wireless whereever I am.  Even though there’s no optical drive, I can easily plug in an external DVD drive via USB when I absolutely need it.

The HP Mini is a tad bit heavier than other netbooks I’ve seen, but it’s not uncomfortable to carry.  It has a similar case design to other HP notebooks, which is very attractive.

All in all, a great package from what I can tell so far.  I ran into a problem getting the Sierra Wireless drivers installed for my Sprint EVDO card on Windows 7, but it was an easy fix (I’ll post a full writeup on this in a separate post).  I also had to manually install the touchpad drivers, as Windows 7 saw it only as a PS/2 mouse.  The default drivers allowed the touchpad to work as a mouse with no problems, but I missed my “scroll area” on the touchpad, so I grabbed the drivers from the Synaptics website.

I’m looking forward to playing with this new netbook!

Earlier this weekend I mistakenly drove off from my garage with my Kindle on the back of my Toyota Prius. I had set the Kindle down there when I was unloading my car and apparently forgot to come grab it afterwards.  Later on, I left to go play some poker, not remembering that my Kindle was still perched on the rear end of my car.

My Kindle is now somewhere between Aurora and Rockford, likely on the side of the road somewhere.

I’ve ordered my new Kindle 2 and a leather cover for it (since the new version doesn’t come with a case). It’s scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday.  I suppose I’ll have to live without my Kindle fix for a day or two.

But there are a few things that are annoying about it, such as the placement of the Previous/Next buttons, the page turn lag that is sometimes experienced and the overall ugliness of the design. I’ve figured out ways to live with all of those things, of course.  Which is what is causing my dilemma.

The Kindle 2 looks much nicer than the original.  The button placement is better.  The screen now boasts 16 shades of gray, for crisper text and images.  The page turns and other display elements are supposed to be much faster.  The battery life is better.  It’s all around a better device.  But is that enough for me to drop the $359 on it?

I suppose it depends on whether I can sell my original Kindle to recoup part of the cost.  Anyone interested in buying a Kindle 1?

Since I had already written a post regarding why I love my Zune, I figured it was time for me to extoll the virtues of one of the other gadgets that I love, namely my Amazon Kindle.

When I first heard about the Kindle, I was definately intrigued.  I’ve always been interested in the idea of e-book readers, since I read an enormous amount of books.  I can easily go through 15-20 novels a month when I can find the time to go out and buy them.  My appetite for science fiction and fantasy has lead to a, shall we say, large collection of physical books (at last count, somewhere in the 1500-2000 range).

While I’ve always loved the feel of a book in my hand, I wasn’t wedded to the concept.  It’s the content, not the form factor, that I enjoy.  So anything that can reduce the amount of physical books I have to store as well as the amount of natural resources used up to print those books was a good thing in my book (pun intended).

So, the reduction of paper books was my number one reason for buying the Kindle.  There are a few more, however, that I feel are pretty close to the same level of importance.

I love the convenience of being able to purchase a book whenever I want.  The Kindle includes high speed wireless access to the Amazon store.  Amazon calls this Amazon Whispernet.  It’s essentially 3G EVDO access running on the Sprint network.  There’s no monthly fees for access to this network, however, so it’s a great deal.  You simply access the storefront from your Kindle or from another internet connected device, make your purchase, and the new content is downloaded to your Kindle wirelessly in a matter of seconds.

To go along with that, you can subscribe to newspapers, magazines, even blogs on your Kindle.  New content from these subscriptions are downloaded automatically to your Kindle when the content is made available.  These subscriptions are usually less than their physical media counterparts, as well.

As far as cost goes, even though the Kindle is not cheap as an up front investment, if you read as much as I do, you’ll easily make back the money you spent on it through the savings on the content.  Most books are priced significantly lower than their physical counterparts.

The last thing I’ll say is that I love the fact that with my Kindle with me, I have access to all the books I’ve ordered through it.  As I build up my library, I’ll be able to take all my books with me wherever I go.  It’s really nice to be able to keep all that information in one place.

To upgrade the firmware, grab the SD1A firmware version from Newegg:

Download Firmware – 8h_SD1A.zip

1 – Unzip the files into a DOS Bootable directory or media. I used a USB key created with the instructions found at http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm.  If you’re going to go that route, make sure your BIOS both supports and is configured to boot off a USB device.  Otherwise you can use a DOS boot disk or CD-ROM.

2 – Attach a Single ST31500341AS 1.5TB unit to a compatible system used previously for Seagate HDD interface firmware loads. My system has a RAID array on it.  I left the RAID plugged in and unplugged my Blu-ray player and plugged the drive in to that cable, which worked with no problems.

3 – Boot the system into DOS and connect to the directory with the firmware files. Then execute the batch file 8HSD1A.BAT. It took less than a minute to flash the firmware.  Since I had four drives to do, I turned off the computer, unplugged the drive and plugged a new one in, started it back up and repeated the process.

Everything seems to be working fine now and I’m really happy with the Drobo.

The other issue I ran into isn’t with the Drobo, but with the 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas that I bought for it.  Apparently there’s an issue with the firmware on the drives and it needs to be flashed.  While this normally wouldn’t be a problem, when using the drives in the Drobo you essentially have to pull all four drives out, unplug the main system drives and plug the Seagates in one at a time.  Boot from a boot CD, run the flash util, power down and do it again.  Not difficult, just a pain.  That will be my project for this evening, I guess.

Why do I need 6 TB of space?  Well, because Drobo does data protection I won’t actually get to use all 6 TB of that space, but I’ll be using it to store media on.  I have a distributed media system here in the house (which I’ll outline in a later post) so I need lots of storage to store all of our DVDs and recorded TV on.  It’s a pretty cool system that works really well, but it does suck up the hard drive space, that’s for sure!

So, looks like it will be another day or two before I get the Drobo and can start playing with it.  Good thing I still have some hard drive space left to record my TV shows!