Atom Smashing, White Hot Thingtag:www.gregsandell.com,2007:/blog/whiteHotThing/32007-11-02T19:42:50ZShort Comments on Web Software DevelopmentMovable Type Publishing Platform 4.0The Zune, Surprisingly Enjoyabletag:www.gregsandell.com,2007:/blog/whiteHotThing//3.142007-11-02T01:42:48Z2007-11-02T19:42:50ZI bought a Zune off of woot.com at a huge discount and tried it out. It's really a nice little box that compares favorably with the iPod....
I bought a Zune off of woot.com at a huge discount and tried it out. It's really a nice little box that compares favorably with the iPod.
Packaging and Out-of-Box Experience
Ever seen the parody of what Microsoft would do to the iPod packaging if their marketing had a chance? (I think it is here on youTube.) Word has it that Microsoft itself made that parody. Well, that bit of self-knowledge shows in the packaging for the Zune, which for Microsoft is surprisingly subtle, artsy and tasteful (except maybe for the silly "Come to the Social" slogan that appears on the inside). The Zune itself is in the center of the box, and the headphones, USB cable and CD-ROM are tucked away in clever little compartments of their own.
Hardware and Casing
It comes with no separate AC cord/plug...you use the USB cable for recharging.
Of course it has a big color display which you have to see to appreciate. When it shows pictures or movies, it flips to portrait mode, and the axes of the control buttons switch too (nice). There also many ways in which the display shows multiple dimensions of information at once (see my description of scrolling below), or overlays one set of information with another (like putting track information on top of the album cover). Very attractive.
It's lighter weight and has less heft than the iPod. The audio quality seems like it might be a notch better than my iPod, although in fairness my iPod is not a very recent model.
I deliberately chose the brown model. Although woot.com seems to think brown is absurdly ugly (and they slashed $20 off their price recently if you chose a brown one), I think the design is quite beautiful. The brown plastic is translucent and has green trim that is differently visible depending on how you hold it. As their marketing material shows, it is quite nice looking against a natural background (e.g. grainy woods).
Controls
The buttons pretty much replicated what an iPod has. There is a pause button that also turns the unit off (although you have to hold it down much longer than on an iPod). A left-arrow button replicates the Menu button on the iPod. There is a large center button, that resembles the iPod wheel. The left, right, up, down and center parts of the wheel are clickable like the ipod, but there is no wheel control itself (which must be patented on the iPod?).
While you are in track mode, right/left are forward/back one track, or fast forward/reverse when held down (but you can't hear the music in fast mode); up/down change the volume. Center button gives you more detail on the song and gives you access to ratings. It's nice that control over volume, track change and track location are always there for you, as opposed to the three-way mode on the iPod. On the down side, setting a rating (if you're into that kind of thing) is more of a bother, requiring more clicks than the iPod.
In other modes, the wheel-like button provides customary click-to-select, up/down, left/right navigation through the various menus.
At first I thought the lack of a wheel control would mean slower, more tedious navigation through a long list of songs or artists. Not so. Similar to wheel twirling on the iPod, the longer you hold the button up or down, the faster it goes (just like twirling the ipod wheel) and...here's a brilliant creative stroke...a large display showing the first letter of the item at the current scroll position, so you see the alphabet flying past as you scroll. It's a bit hard to describe. But I find it much easier to use than iPod's scroll.
The on/off functionality of the pause button has slightly different behavior from the iPod: one click turns the device back on in a neutral state, while a second click resumes to the track you were last playing before you shut down.
Pressing the next or previous buttons to change songs changes the audio right away, but leaves the information of the previous song on the screen for a few seconds. This seemed strange at first, but I appreciate it now as a smart feature: usually you change tracks after your player has been idle for a while, and therefore the screen is unilluminated; this way, you see where you were at first before switching.
The battery charge icon, when being charged, not only shows a "now charging" animation, but it shows the amount of charge currently attained as well; I haven't seen that on other portable devices.
The Zune gives you control over randomizing the same way as the iPod (randomize song or artist or album, etc.) but it improves on one thing that drives me crazy about the iPod. When you start a playlist, the iPod always picks the same starting song to randomize on; the Zune always picks a new first song.
Synchronizing and the Zune Client App
The Zune client app is not as easy to use as iTunes, or at least it seems that way to me so far. It has the ability to distinguish between songs that are in your "library" (i.e. the sum total of all your music on your hard drives) and what you actually put on your Zune, but controlling that is somewhat mysterious. With iTunes, adding new tracks to your library or the iPod defaults to being essentially the same thing; with the Zune, you add to the library by dragging files to one place, and add to the Zune by dragging to somewhere else. When something is on your Zune, and you don't want it there any more, exactly how you're supposed to remove it is also obscure. I tried to remove some tracks several times in a row...they appeared to go away at first, but then they came right back again. Eventually through trial and error I got the tracks removed, but the app is definitely lacking in intuitiveness.
Synchonization speed seems strangely slow compared to the iPod, even when I've confirmed that USB 2 is in use. Visually, the Zune app provides more information during sync, in the form of animated progress bars for each song, which is visually cool. But it made me wonder if iTunes batches its songs to sync, and Zune is slower because it does each one in sequence.
On the very first sync, the Zune copied my playlists from my iTunes...obviously it snuck into iTune's external XML file to do that...which was kind of a nice way for me to bridge my listening habits from iPod to Zune. But for this to work, you have to allow Zune to process your entire hard drive(s) of music into its Zune library, which is amazingly slow.
iTunes provides nice Finder or Windows Explorer style navigation panes and sorting capabilities. The Zune app seems to offer less information. For example, I can't see any way to sort by ratings.
Speaking of ratings, there are five stars available like the iPod, but only the iPod offers a "no stars" setting. So effectively the Zune has one less rating possibility than the iPod. For a new track, the Zune defaults to a three star rating, whereas the iPod defaults to no stars. I happen to be particularly attached to ratings...I use them to manage which tracks I want to eventually remove from my iPod...so I'm not excited about having to re-tool my habits for the Zune.
Radio and Wireless
The onboard FM radio is a nice touch that gives your player extra possibilities. I've noticed that when I show my Zune to people who are frequent radio listeners, they immediately begin coveting the Zune.
I can't quite imagine what Microsoft had in mind when they put on wireless capabilities on the Zune. All it lets you do is (1) find if there are other Zunes near you and (2) share songs with them. Their slogan "Come to the Social" seems to imply that they enivision people gathering at Starbuck's and squirting songs to each other...uh, right. It seems to me that they should have put texting ability on there as well; that way you could actually make friends with your Zune.
Am I Joining the Other Team?
The Zune is just about nice enough for me to make it my fulltime player. Certainly the cheap price, the 30 gig capacity and the nifty visual features are a temptation over my older 10 gig iPod. But when all is said and done, iTunes is a better app and makes more sense to me. I may use this experience as an excuse to upgrade to a better, and larger capacity iPod. But I wouldn't have any trouble recommending the Zune as a player of choice to someone who wasn't habituated by iTunes.
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Syncing a handheld with Vistatag:www.18thStreet.net,2007:/blog/whiteHotThing//3.102007-08-22T03:56:17Z2007-08-27T20:27:26ZI own an iPaq rz1710 running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and I have been syncing it to Outlook data on Win XP for several years now. Before that, in the Win2k days, I had Win CE devices that I...
I own an iPaq rz1710 running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and I have been syncing it to Outlook data on Win XP for several years now. Before that, in the Win2k days, I had Win CE devices that I synced up. With Vista I couldn't get the Outlook data to sync up...at first. After fighting with it for a while, I finally figured it out.
A few basics: ActiveSync on the desktop has been replaced by "Windows mobile Device Center" (WMDC), while ActiveSync remains on the handheld. Your Vista machine may already have WMDC, but there is a critical upgrade you need to get from Microsoft (easily found if you search on WMDC). Whether you're installing WMDC or upgrading it, have your handheld connected by USB (or whatever you use) during the upgrade.
After getting WMDC upgraded, my desktop and handheld formed a parternership right away, but the Outlook data was not coming over. I may be a special freak case because I maintain multiple .pst files. My main .pst file actually resides on a jump drive, while the .pst that resides in the conventional location on the C: drive is just an empty shell. I noticed that when I added a new contact on the handheld and then sync'd up, the new contact did show up on my desktop Outlook, but in the C: drive .pst file. That's because Outlook regards the C: location of the .pst as primary and anything else secondary.
So I fixed it by (1) setting the jump drive .pst file as the primary; that wasn't enough to fix it so I also had to (2) delete the reference to the C: drive .pst file from Outlook. Microsoft has you do (1) in a funny way. You go to outlook, tools menu, email accounts, view or change existing accounts, then select the preferred .pst file from the dropdown titled "Deliver new email to the following location". Step (2) is done by navigating: Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup -> Data Files, select .pst file to remove reference to, and click Remove.
After that I had to shut down WMDC and Outlook, then restart WMDC. Now, when I pressed sync, I saw the little bugger go to work and download all my Outlook contacts, calendar items, notes and tasks to the handheld.
One other annoying thing about the Vista approach to handhelds is that the client software is really split between two areas, the "Sync Center" of the Control Panel, and WMDC itself. A lot of tasks seem to start in the Sync Center, but the real work (such as selecting what items you want sync'd up) is done in WMDC. Microsoft makes it hard for you to launch WMDC from the Sync Center, but here's the secret: go to View Sync Partnerships, then double click on your device.
Good luck!
IDEA with Tomcat 6 Integrationtag:www.18thStreet.net,2007:/blog/whiteHotThing//3.82007-08-15T11:12:46Z2007-08-15T11:17:12ZIf you like running Tomcat from within IDEA and you want to be a Tomcat version 6, you need to stick with Tomcat 6.0.10 for a while. Any later version causes this complaint to come up when you launch Tomcat:...
If you like running Tomcat from within IDEA and you want to be a Tomcat version 6, you need to stick with Tomcat 6.0.10 for a while. Any later version causes this complaint to come up when you launch Tomcat: "Error running Tomcat6: Cannot find configuration of jsp built-in servlet in C:\Users\greg\.IntelliJIdea60\system\tomcat_Unnamed_7dbqbe5b1\web.xml". I noticed just the other day that Tomcat 6.0.14 came out and I confirmed that this version has the problem too.
Vista Guinea Pigtag:www.18thStreet.net,2007:/blog/whiteHotThing//3.72007-07-27T17:09:47Z2007-08-27T20:29:23ZI just bought myself a Lenovo desktop machine for my home office, and it came with Vista Business. This is the first time I've submitted myself to being a guinea pig for a new, pre-service-pack OS. Here are a few...
I just bought myself a Lenovo desktop machine for my home office, and it came with Vista Business. This is the first time I've submitted myself to being a guinea pig for a new, pre-service-pack OS. Here are a few reactions, gripes and maybe even some left-handed praises.
instructions on disabling indexing on the web.
In the course of loading up my customary developer software, I had to use the Explorer a lot, set environment variables, etc. (Note that whenever I say 'Explorer' I always mean the file browsing app 'Windows Explorer', not the web browser 'Internet Explorer.') The customary alienation that one gets trying do to routine things in a new OS's GUI was running pretty high for me. Like every MS-Windows incarnation before it, if you don't want to blindly follow Microsoft's vision of where your files should be (i.e. "My Documents"), you have to work a lot harder. After a few evening's work, I know how to get around, in the course of which I learned two disappointments about Vista.
Disappointment 1: Vista is just a big shiny wrapper around MS Windows XP. Once you've dug deep enough, you find that the Explorer does little more than it did before, and all the Control Panel applets offer all the same functionality as before.
Disappointment 2: I'm guessing that the motivation for the Shiny Wrapper came out of a need to "keep up with the Jobses" :-) and give Windows a glassy, 3-d look like the Mac. But the imitation is so shallow and naive. I get the impression that it was designed by people who don't actually "get" the Mac. It's like they made decisions like "the Mac uses shiny red buttons in the lower corners, let's do that and then they'll like us too"...but the end result is an incoherent mess. With the clever GUIs that Apple makes for iPods, Macs, iPhones and the like, you immerse, understand and say Wow. The Vista folks wanted Wow, but all they're going to get is, "Sigh. Why?"
Okay, having gotten that gripe out of the way, I've noticed a few good things. I'm having no trouble loading open source and developer software on the machine. I've got Tomcat 6 with JDK 1.5 running. Ant, Vim, Cygwin, Gimp and Intellij IDEA are fine. I installed all of Office 2003 and so far Word, Excel and Outlook run correctly. But I've had some problems too. My cheap-o Visioneer scanner won't load. A favorite convenience app of mine, Shortcuts Map, will load and run, but I can't close the app without using the task manager.
My user 'home' directory are now c:\Users\greg instead of the old, space-character plagued c:\Documents and Settings\greg. As far as names go, I can see actually using that as my 'home' directory, except that it is filled with the usual junk that is unrelated to what I actually use my computer for: 'My Documents', 'My Music', etc. And not surprisingly, Microsoft still presents it in Explorer as though its a special entity, like Desktop and My Computer, and not just an ordinary folder, which it is.
Another good thing is that Explorer is now remembing recently used locations. It makes it much faster to get to your stuff that way. Nice to know that Microsoft finally found a way to do something the Mac has been doing for 20 years already.
Back to what I wrote about at the top, the indexing that slowed down the hard drive by a factor of four...I guess Microsoft, showing its usual insecurity over competitor's innovations, figured they needed to make Vista like Google, i.e. searchable. And they bet the farm on it to the point that they hoped that users wouldn't mind if the first 7 hours of their Vista experience with a disk drive constantly churning and taking away productivity. Can they really be so clueless? Indexing, whether for a 160 gigabyte drive, or a giant corporate website, should be done in the early morning hours, when noone is at work, or at least on dedicated machines. Oh, they could have included some instructions to this effect: "After you finish using your new PC for the day, we suggest that you run Index Manager (tm) and leave your machine on overnight. The next time you use your machine you will find that you can search the entire computer quickly and easily." But I don't think that fits in with Microsoft's estimation of their user base's intelligence.
The conventional wisdom I've read on the net about Vista, and which I now agree is: don't be a guinea pig, stick with XP until Vista's first service pack comes out. But if you're buying a new machine, and Vista is forced upon you, and you can afford a few days to re-tool, Vista is fine. You'll just be that much more on top of things when the first service pack comes out and you'll be wanting to switch...because presumably Vista has a bunch of features that we'll be wanting. As I discover what they are, I'll write another blog entry about it.]]>