Month: May 2006

Review: PC Magazine calls the SanDisk Sansa e260 “seriously sexy”

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 31/05/2006
5 Comments on Review: PC Magazine calls the SanDisk Sansa e260 “seriously sexy”

As I’ve written previously, I’m a fan of the new crop of Windows Media music players, in particular the Sandisk Sansa m240, with a gigabyte of storage, USB 2.0, an FM radio and long battery life from a rechargeable AAA battery. (Bonus feature: when you dock with your PC via USB to move new content on to the Sandisk player, you also recharge the battery! if you have installed a AA rechargeable.) Now, PC Magazine has a review of the new Sandisk Sansa e260 player…

“Why make MP3 players in an iPod world? According to a SanDisk rep I talked to over a year ago, it’s because they can do it cheaper and better – because they make the memory chips themselves! Now, finally, that boast has become true with the new e260. This amazing new player offers great features, wonderful style, and good ease of use.

“The SanDisk Sansa e260 is a seriously sexy MP3 player that represents a very strong effort on SanDisk’s part to compete in the premium market against Apple’s iPod nano.”

This new PlaysForSure compatible device received the same high rating (4 1/2 out of 5) as the Apple iPod Nano, yet it didn’t garner an Editor’s Choice award.

IMHO, that is an oversight.

I had a chance to play with one of these players over the weekend and found it easy to use and very high quality. In addition, Sandisk provides a photo viewer and an FM radio, both features I would use in a multifunction device. It’s available in 2GB and 4GB models, and also as a 6GB model: the first time we’ve seen such a configuration. Unlike PCMag’s findings, I found the playlist to be straight-forward and the buttons providing a good feel and response. As for WMA lossless support, that’s not something I look for in a portable device as I’m usually in less than a critical listening situtation (car, airplane or even the office). I will agree that having a single app to handle loading of music and photos would be best, perhaps either via a drag-and-drop folder interface or through the more comprehensive Windows Media Player 11.

I’ll venture guess that it’s not long until we see a video viewer in this small form factor: my hope is that one will be available for end of year 2006 holiday gift giving. With many one hour shows (44 minutes edited) transcoding down to less than 100MB to my Smartphone and PPC, I could just about fit a season’s worth of primetime shows from my Media Center to a 4GB device like the Sansa… and still have room for more than 100 hrs of music in Windos Media Audio format. If this type of a product were to come to market — perhaps with a larger battery — that would be a 5 out of 5 in my book.

Tags: Microsoft, Sansa, Sandisk, digital music, MSN Music, PlaysForSure.

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Gigabit Internet at 5x the cost of 6Mbps? Yes, in Asia

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 31/05/2006
4 Comments on Gigabit Internet at 5x the cost of 6Mbps? Yes, in Asia

If you’re in North America, you may see speeds for high speed data approaching 8Mbps as Comcast recently announced. And with the average cost for HSD coming in around $40-50 per month these days, wouldn’t it be great to find faster access?

If you live in Hong Kong, you can find 1 Gigabit residential internet access for about four times what we see in the States. That would map to about 200Mbps for $40.

“Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN), a wholly owned subsidiary of City Telecom (HK) Limited announced the official launch of its bb1000 service, a symmetric 1Gbps for the Residential market.

“bb1000 is the fastest Internet access service in Hong Kong, being up to 166x faster downstream and 1,950x faster upstream than the advertised bandwidth by the leading Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) deployment in Hong Kong. Priced at HK$1,680/month (US$215) for unlimited access, bb1000 targets premium residential users, such as Home Office or Remote Office access applications. As an introductory offer, HKBN is offering a three-month rebate for the first 200 customers who commit to 15 months contracts.”

The company estimates that about a third of the more than 2 million households in the Hong Kong market are close enough to the Fibre-to-the-Home infrastructure to get the 1Gbps service. If you’re looking for a comparable priced high-speed data service, Om reported earlier this year in Business 2.0 that HK’s City Telecom offers 100Mbps service for about US$25 a month.

The challenge for most areas is that these low-cost/ high-peed packages are available where you have high-density apartment developments in the city that can leverage a high-speed connection. Which is why we see some of the fastest broadband services that are also the least expensive in the world in major cities:

Cities with the lowest monthly cost per megabit per second (lowest to highest, according to Business 2.0’s research)

Hong Kong — City Telecom
Tokyo — Yahoo BB
Seoul — KT Megapass
Paris — France Telecom
New York — Verizon Fios
San Francisco — Comcast High-Speed Internet

There have been a number of announcements rolling out more and more FiOS (FIOS) services video service in a selected community. FiOS service includes Internet access at speeds up to 30 Mbps downstream/5 Mbps upstream. (PDF link) According to the Wiki, here’s an example of three tiers of residential Internet service available now in the States:

5 Mbit/s Downstream/2 Mbit/s Up Price: $34.95 or $39.95/month
15 Mbit/s Downstream/2Mbit/s Up Price: $44.95 or $49.95/month
30 Mbit/s Downstream/5 Mbit/s Up Price: $179.95 or $199.95/month (note that this tier is offered at $55-60 in some markets)

So, for the same price as 1Gbit access in HK, you can have up to 30Mbps in New Jersey and other major markets. In Japan, you can find Ethernet and FTTH up to 30Mbps of bandwidth: last year, analysts estimated that these high-speed lines are used by 22% of subscribers.

Tags: Microsoft, consumers, ISP, FiOS, FTTH, Internet.

Tags internet, Web

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Links: Using Microsoft Windows Movie Maker

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 31/05/2006
3 Comments on Links: Using Microsoft Windows Movie Maker

This evening a friend was asking a few questions on using Microsoft Windows Movie Maker. I use this app as a great, quick editing tool for home videos as well as shorts for work, when I don’t need the power of Adobe Premiere Pro…

I recently purchased Digital Image Suite PLUS which includes a copy of Pinnacle Systems’ Studio (now Avid) video editing tools, but I haven’t kicked that off yet (it’s a good summer project). With Studio, I may finally move up from Movie Maker for quick projects.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Movie Maker.

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eWeek: What Retailers Don’t Tell Consumers

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 30/05/2006

Interesting opinion column from eWeek this weekend on “What Retailers Don’t Tell Consumers”

“Some of the largest Web retailers use the same product-comparison database. But a comparison of those sites with each other—and with the full database—shows what they’re choosing to keep from their customers.”

Tags: products, shopping.

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Microsoft Product Feedback Links

Post author By M3 Sweatt
Post date 27/05/2006
1 Comment on Microsoft Product Feedback Links

I was asked the pther day about the number of different Microsoft sites that are available for providing product feedback, bug reports and suggestions. Laurentiu Cristofor notes in his blog a few of the most popular sites, including:

MSDN Product Feedback Center enables you to reportissues in a product directly to the respective product team

Microsoft Technical Forums

Microsoft Security Response Center’s “Report a Security Vulnerability” for reporting security vulnerabilities

In addition, here are a few more product feedback sites:

http://connect.microsoft.com/ – Microsoft Connect, the new product development collaboration site at Microsoft. And a sneak peek at the new Connect 2.0…

Send a Smile – http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/26/607768.aspx

The article on “Finding Trends in Customer Feedback” by Suzanne Ross. “Have you ever sent an email to Microsoft, asking a question, suggesting a new feature, telling them about how you use their products? Millions of people read Microsoft Web sites every day, and many of them send emails. Do you wonder if anyone reads those emails?”

MSN Product Feedback – http://feedback.msn.com/feedback.aspx?mkt=en-us

MSN Search Feedback – http://feedback.search.msn.com/default.aspx

Microsoft Macintosh Product Feedback (on Mactopia) – http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=feedback

Mary Jo Foley’s article on how “Microsoft Rethinks the Beta Process”

“If Paul Flessner and his SQL Server team have their way, traditional beta releases may soon be a thing of the past. And they aren’t the only Softies who are pushing to overhaul the way Microsoft builds software to more closely emulate the open source process.”

Tags: microsoft, Vista, Windows, CTP, feedback.