While this isn’t really a gadget, per se, I’m really loving Windows 7.  I now have it installed on 5 different machines, all serving different purposes, and it’s really shining in every role I can throw at it.

Main Desktop

My main desktop machine, where I do most of my gaming and just general personal computing, was the first machine that I migrated to the Windows 7 Beta.  I had some issues with video card drivers at first, but that was quickly resolved.  Other than occasional video weirdness, which I think may actually be hardware related, it performs wonderfully.  I haven’t had any problems with games that would’t play or performance or anything.

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I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m a bit of a Microsoft fanboy.  I don’t take it to the levels that Apple Fanboys often take their fanboydom, but I do tend to like a lot of things that Microsoft does.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I see a lot of the deficiencies in their systems and software and it annoys me just as much as the next guy.  And I’ll be the first one to admit that Apple has got serious style.  But I like the flexibility of Microsoft’s ecosystem rather than the Steve Jobs dictatorship over at Apple.

My first portable media player (PMP) was an Apple iPod Mini.  I think it was a 4GB Blue model.  It was fine, I guess, but I ran out of space on it and needed to upgrade to get more.  I upgraded to the Apple iPod Video (5th Generation iPod, I think), which was a 30GB model.  It was fine as far as space goes, but I REALLY hated iTunes and the DRMed to all hell music that I supposedly owned when I bought it from the iTunes Music Store.  I was also disappointed in the way iTunes and the iPod handled podcasts.

When Microsoft launched the second generation Zune, I was ready to make a switch.  I bought my 80GB black Zune 2 the day they came out and I’ve never looked back.  There are so many things to love about this device and the software and services associated with it.  Sure, there’s a few annoyances as well, but not too many in my book.

I’m sure I may miss a few, but here are the major reasons I love my Zune:

1. The hardware itself is really nice.  Sure, it’s not as sleek as an iPod.  But the navigation pad (the squircle) is awesome.  You flick your finger in the direction you want to scroll and the items scroll really quickly.  Press the squircle in the direction and it moves one item at a time.  Just really convenient, easy to use navigation mechanisms.  The screen is nice, though a larger, higher resolution screen would be on my wish list.
2. The device software is awesome.  I always hated the navigation on the iPods.  It always felt like I was hitting back, back, back a lot to navigate to a new section.  The Zune software has a crossbar navigation mechanism that allows you to scroll up and down and left and right.  For instance, when you go into Music, you can scroll left and right to get to the different filters (Artist, Album, Genre, Playlist, etc.) and up and down for the results of that filter.  If you, for instance, go to Artist and select an artist, you’re then presented with a left/right scroll list of all of your artists and an up/down scroll list of the albums for the artist you’re on.
3. The Zune PC software is very clean and easy to use.  It’s taken a few versions of the new software, but I think it’s finally there.  There’s some really cool features like Mixview, which allows you to view related artists, other listeners and various other related information about a song you’re playing.  It’s a great way to explore similar or related music and other people with similar tastes to yours to see what they’re listening to.
4. The Zune Pass.  This, to me, is the best part of being a Zune user.  For $14.95 a month, you get unlimited, all you can eat, access to most of the Zune Marketplace’s music content.  Download 5, 10, 15 albums a month, it doesn’t matter.  Sure, you’re “renting” the music and if you stop paying your subscription, your content expires.  But if you typically buy an average of an album a month, the Zune Pass is worth it, especially considering that you get 10 free tracks per month to keep.  Those are completely free, non-expiring tracks.

I’m sure there’s more things that I love about the Zune that I’ll think of after I finish writing this post, such as the fact that you can sync your Zune over wi-fi, can access the Zune Marketplace and stream music over wi-fi, and can stream music to your PC from the Zune Marketplace even on computers that you don’t download your music collection to.

All in all, if you’re looking for a new portable media player, consider the Zune.  It’s a great device!

I’ve been reading through some of the threads on The Green Button about the Windows Media Center included in the forthcoming Windows 7 and it’s starting to get me really excited.  From what I understand, they’ve done some really cool things with the interface to really polish it up.  The interface on Vista Media Center was already pretty cool, but it sounds like they’ve done some “fit and finish” type upgrades to it for Windows 7.

There are some screenshots of the interface on The Media Center Blog.  They’re kind of small but they give you an idea of what the interface looks like.

I admit that some of the features I’m looking forward to are already available in the TV Pack.  However, I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to install the TV Pack, as it doesn’t seem like it’s really a straightforward process.  The biggest feature I’m looking forward to is guide favorites so that I can set up a “Kids” favorites, etc. to make it easier to find groups of channels.

I’m attending an MSDN Developer Conference in January and we’re supposed to be receiving a DVD with the beta copy of Windows 7 on it.  In fact, as far as I can tell we’ll be the first group of people to to get it, as I’m attending the first conference that it will be available at.  I’ll report back once I get my hands on it.

I mentioned in a previous post that I would tell you some more about my media setup in our house, so I thought I’d take a few minutes and do that now.

In my living room, I have a Dell XPS 420 PC running Windows Vista Home Premium.  The 420 has two ATI Digital Cable tuners attached to it, in which I have cablecards to receive HDTV through Comcast, and a Blu-ray drive as well.  The 420 is connected to a Bose Lifestyle V20 home theater system.  I also have an Xbox 360 Elite connected to the Bose system.  The Bose outputs to a Samsung LN46A650 46″ 1080p LCD TV.

Upstairs I have two more Xbox 360s attached to LCD TVs in two of the bedrooms.  Each of these Xbox 360s have Linksys WGA600N Dual-band Wireless-N Gaming Adapters connected to them, allowing them to connect to my 5Ghz 802.11n network.  This allows me to not have to connect the TVs to a coaxial cable jack and place them where it is most convenient in the rooms.

The Xbox 360s in the bedrooms act as Media Center Extenders and are set to boot directly into the Media Center interface.  We can stream live HD TV, recorded programs, music and any other content stored on the network to each TV in the bedroom, even simultaneously.

As I’ve already stated on the site, I have a Drobo attached to the media center PC in the living room, providing a little over 4TB of storage for media.  The great thing about this system is that all of our media can be accessed from any TV in the house, whenever we want.  As soon as I manage to get all my DVDs ripped to the Drobo, that is.  It’s a time consuming process, but well worth it for the convenience it offers down the road.

I’ll be talking about Windows Media Center more as time goes on, including some of the plugins I’m using and some I wish existed.

The Drobo is very, very cool.  The only thing I’ve found so far that’s slightly annoying is that when you format your drives you have to tell Drobo how big to make the partitions, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB or 16TB.  Even if you don’t have that much hard drive space, you can tell it to use 16TB and Windows will see the drive as a 16TB drive, which can be a little confusing.  If you select one of the smaller amounts and then add more space down the road, Drobo will simply create another partition of the size you selected.

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.