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Even at a time when I was looking for maximum performance out of every computer I purchased, ultraportables always caught my eye, for one reason or another. Perhaps it was their cuteness, or perhaps it was the jet-setting lifestyle that they were associated with. Whatever the reason, they’ve held a soft spot in my heart, but prices have always been a hard knock for my wallet.
Intel became a victim of their own success in the Atom processor. Although margins on the product are pretty high, they cannibalized sales of more expensive processors, especially during the economic downturn of late. Sure, they’re still making money from Atom, but less revenues equals (=) bad for most companies.
Intel launched the Consumer Ultra-Low-Voltage (CULV) lineup of processors to help combat falling ASPs, starting with single core SU2700 and SU3500 processors. Since then, they’ve broadened the lineup to include dual core Celeron SU2300, Pentium SU4100, Core 2 Duo SU7300, and more. I always thought it would be AMD that forced ultraportables into my price range; it’s ironic that Intel’s own upselling strategy put the ultraportable within my budget.
ASUS launched their CULV notebook products in early September 2009, and a couple months later, the UL20A began shipping in North America. The smallest of the bunch, the 12.1″ UL20A brings decent dual core performance down to something not much bigger than the larger netbooks, which range all the way up to 11.6″. In fact, one of the “netbooks” I’ll compare the UL20A to, the Atom + ION powered HP Mini 311, is less than 0.1lbs lighter and 0.4″ narrower and shorter.
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.3GHz)
1×2GB DDR2-800 RAM (1 open slot)
250GB 5400RPM HDD (Hitachi 5K500.B)
12.1″ LED-backlit display (1366×768)
Intel GMA X4500MHD
10/100Mbps Ethernet
0.3MP webcam
Intel WiFi Link 1000 802.11bgn
6-cell battery – 4400mAh (47.5Whr)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Dimensions: 11.8″ (W) x 8.4″ (L) x 1.0″ (H)
Weight: 3.3lbs (6-cell battery)
Price: $599 CAD
My choice of laptop would paint a pretty accurate picture of my interests and hobbies over the last five years. When I entered university, I went for a desktop replacement for power and gaming, an ASUS Z71V. Two years later, I downsized to a Dell XPS M1330, albeit with the discrete NVIDIA graphics, as I realized absolute performance was no longer the most useful asset of a laptop, with portability starting to trump. And now, as I wrap up my university career, I’m moving further down the size and performance food-chain with the ASUS UL20A. Without space limitations, a powerful desktop takes care of all my high-end photographic work.
Despite some drama around the time of the Dell-NVIDIA GPU issues, the M1330 has served me quite well for 2.5 years. That’s about as long as I’ve held onto any one piece of technology. The combination of portability and performance is not lost on me, and it served its purpose quite well. However, 2.5 years is a long time for the lithium-ion batteries, and both the 6 cell and the 9 cell started to wear out. To maintain portability away from power outlets, I needed to look for something new.
With a desktop holding down the performance fort, I went on the lookout for a small laptop, with good battery life. Cheap was also a bonus, as my place of employment would provide me with a laptop for business use. Really, this would be a toss-around for trips and lounging at home. Think netbook, but marginally more powerful.
I wanted something smaller than the M1330, so I juggled the Acer 1410T, 1810T, the ASUS UL20A, and the Dell Inspiron 11z.
In the end, I compromised with the prettier option, an English keyboard, and decent battery life in the UL20A. The laptop was purchased from NCIX.com for $599.95.
MIX10 is underway! Windows Phone 7 Series, XBoxLive integration, third-party applications, Silverlight 4, Expression Blend 4, SDKs. Oh my! And tomorrow Internet Explorer 9, along with its hardware-accelerated engine. This is likely the most exciting MIX ever, showcasing a highly reinvigorated Microsoft. I’ve never seen so much enthusiastic press coverage of a Microsoft event.
While it’s expected that Microsoft would put the emphasis on applications for WP7S at a developer-oriented conference like MIX, the front-and-center placement of the platform during the keynote shows how much they want it to succeed. The applications shown by Joe Belfiore (Associated Press, Hush Hush Diary, Harvest) were of serious quality. Windows Phone 7 Series isn’t just a pretty face, a one-trick pony. There’s going to be some spectacular applications added to the OS by third parties. Plus, there’s a huge pool of .NET developers who I’m certain will love dabbling. I’ve already installed the SDK on my laptop.
Now we just have to hope the install base grows quickly. It’s a chicken and egg dilemma – people will buy when they see a compelling platform and developers will create applications when there is a market that can support them. I don’t mind taking the risk and jumping in as a developer right now.
The best Winter Olympics ever? As a Canadian, I can hardly be seen as an impartial judge of that, but I think the world has seen first-hand the warmth, friendliness, fun, inclusion and patriotism that is this country.
The games began with not a bang, but rather stuttery whimper, with the tragic passing of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, then a mechanical failure in the opening ceremonies. Conditions at Cypress Mountain were abysmal to start the games and Whistler didn’t fare much better, with rain and fog postponing the alpine events.
The early going wasn’t great for Team Canada either. After a lot of pump-up with the “Own the Podium” program, which I still don’t like, it looked like we owned the podium, but were letting a whole lot of other people stand on it. There were uncomfortable upsets, and a medal eeked out here and there. Alexandre Bilodeau gave the country something to cheer about, saying his was but the first of many gold medals to come for Canada. At the same time, I felt terrible for Jenn Heil. The media descended on her silver as though she should be ashamed of it. Shame on the media instead.
Sure, setting out the goal of winning the most medals at the Winter Olympics on home soil was an aspiration, but was it unnecessary pressure? Melissa Hollingsworth’s emotional interview showed how much the athletes thought the country cared about medals above all else. Do we? She thought she let the country down. Were we all standing on her shoulders? That’s a heavy burden to bear. There are bound to be disappointments in the Olympics, if not for our country then for the ones we compete against. Not everyone can win, but everyone is giving it their all.
Nine or ten days into the Olympics and the skeptics came out to play in force. Was Own the Podium a complete, utter failure? Denny Morrison seemed to think so, telling the country that the program prevented him from training with his long-time training partner Shani Davis, who won gold in the 1000m long track event. All of a sudden, the goal wasn’t to win the Olympics, but rather try to make it to perhaps 20 medals. Let’s try not to embarrass ourselves in light of the hoopla surrounding medal count. The Americans joked about their “Rent the Podium” program.
It was probably around the time Jon Montgomery won the men’s skeleton gold that the country got pumped again. Jon is quite the character, a banner athlete for Canada certainly. His enthusiasm is electrifying and contagious. Perhaps it was just that for Team Canada. A few days later, Joannie Rochette puts up a fantastic perform in the face of grave emotional pain and lands a bronze medal. That was perhaps the most inspirational story of the games, garnering her a share of the Terry Fox award as well carrying Canada’s flag into the closing ceremony.
The rest is pretty much history – 5 gold medals in the last few days of competition brought Canada’s medal count to 26 and gold count to 14, the highest in Olympic history for any nation. Of course that record-breaking gold came courtesy of the men’s Team Canada hockey team, a game that I watched with the utmost excitement and gut-wrenching worry. When Crosby scored that overtime goal, I thought I was in a dazed dream. The streets were immediately filled with honking cars. It’s very unique to be in a country that can be united so strongly under a single hope. Perhaps this day will become a national holiday! 
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happy moment bring so many people together anywhere in the world. We love our hockey and our country.
Team Canada has made this nation more proud than it’s ever been. These Vancouver Winter Olympics will be remembered for a very, very long time for the excitement a country brought the world. We’ve never been ones to boast or belittle. But these Olympics have shown how strong our will is and how big our hearts are.
Thank you Vancouver for uniting this country under the maple leaf and giving the world a taste of what I’ve lived and loved for nearly 20 years.
I haven’t written about piano in quite some time, since it’s no longer the huge part of my life it once was. Still, I’m extremely happy I have that skill, and today, I was able to get some great enjoyment out of it.
Watching Gattaca, which is a fantastic movie, I came upon the scene where the ‘12-fingered’ pianist plays Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3 in G-flat Major. Loving the gorgeous melodic lines, I decided to have a go at it myself, with merely 10 fingers available to me.
Listening to and enjoying music gets elevated to a completely different level when one can recreate that music him/herself. For me, I can derive far more enjoyment when I’m playing the piece myself, taking the interpretations on the lines as I see fit and putting my heart and soul into it.
I typically play a few pieces each time I’m home from university, but I practiced this piece for about an hour and a half today, probably the longest I’ve played on end in the entire 5 years of university. I have the first of six pages in good shape.
My eight years of piano have defined a large part of who I am today. The discipline, determination, and possibly intelligence I have can be traced back, at least indirectly, to the things I learned sitting in front of the ivories. Now I get to reap those benefits. Being able to tickle the ivories without embarrassing myself is nice too!
Disclaimer: Heck of a long post ahead. It’s divided into three sections for quick perusal. 1. Microsoft’s change over the past few years. 2. Windows Phone 7 – The Product. 3. Windows Phone 7 – The Team. Enjoy.
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Today, I’m proud.
When I tell people I’m going to work at Microsoft after graduation, I usually get one of two reactions. The first is the regular congratulations, typically from people outside of the information technology field. The second starts with a raised eyebrow, then a comment: “I hear it’s pretty stodgy over there.”
Reading blog posts and tech sites disparage this or that about Microsoft makes me cringe. I’m nothing if not loyal. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t at some points wish I could tell people I was associated with Apple or Google or Amazon or anyone else.
Hip. Innovative. Modern.
Those are certainly not things that you normally hear said in the same sentence as ‘Microsoft’, except when the word ‘not’ is in there as well. Perhaps that was true up until a few years ago. I even had this conversation with my GPM. Microsoft’s changing on the inside, but no one seems to know it. How can we show people what the Microsoft of the 21st century is all about?
Different parts of Microsoft are changing at different rates. In the Business Division, things are somewhat more difficult to change. Over in the Entertainment and Devices group, you’re seeing what an increased focus on really delighting the user has already done. Xbox 360, Zune HD, Surface, Project Natal, and, most recently, Windows Phone 7 Series show what is brewing within the ‘Borg’.
It is that latter project that I want to talk about in depth here, both from a product standpoint, as well as its affect on me, several months ago. As you may know, I interned at Microsoft this past Fall (2009) in the Office InfoPath PM team. During my interviews, I had requested a design-oriented position, citing Office’s Ribbon UI overhaul as something I found pretty cool. Well, I got placed on an Office team. Perhaps not exactly what I wanted, but I was determined to make the best of it.
I had a fantastic semester with a great team, but I wasn’t certain if the enterprise space was right for me. Three things convinced me to give it a shot in a full-time position.
At the time, I was strongly considering graduate studies in the HCI space, hoping to work on the next generation of mobile computing. I surmised that the mobile phone, of all computing technology, was most aligned with a task-oriented operating design. The concept of applications is, in my opinion, already kludgy on the desktop and laptop. It makes even less sense on a smartphone. I saw mobile phones as the first place where an operating system could change the way people use computing technology today.
Instead of opening and closing applications, which has little analog with the mental and physical tasks we perform in the real world, the mobile should be centered around accomplishing logical (groupings of) tasks. I want to communicate with my friend. How, be it SMS, email, phone, or Facebook, is really secondary to that primary goal. I don’t want to think about which application to launch, because that precedes the goal of communication with a conscious and limiting decision. Once I have that SMS app up, I’m limited to 140 characters. Perhaps what I had to say requires many more. Over to email I go. That’s no good.
Windows Phone 7’s concept of ‘hubs’ are task-centers in disguise. Look at how they’re designed. One is people-centric. I want to communicate with a person. Let me decide how to do that after I get all the information I want/need about that person.
Another is media-centric. I have some time to kill. Launch the Zune hub and all my media needs can be satisfied there, whether it be radio, stored music, streamed music, or videos. No separate apps for Pandora. It’s all in one place.
Then there’s the Productivity hub, with Mobile Office. Again, you’re not launching individual Office applications. Instead, your documents are there – the application itself isn’t important – and you can work on any of them within the same hub experience.
Photographs can come from a multitude of places. They could be saved. They could be taken on the camera on the device. But in addition, Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook are just a few of a multitude of services that are connected in the cloud. Again, why have applications for each service? I want to view photos and all of these services provide photos. Give them to me in one place so I can accomplish my task in one place.
The design doesn’t punish a poor or wrong decision. It removes that potential for a wrong decision altogether, but still gives all the options.
Several of the screens shown are quite busy, as many have noted, especially the homescreen. The METRO UI theme takes cues from mass data displays such as airport flight monitors, which also update rather frequently. It’s proven to be an efficient way to present a lot of data in many situations, so perhaps it’ll work on the phone as well. Albert Shum, Director of Mobile Experience Design alludes to this in the following video.
I believe Windows Phone 7 is easily the closest out of all the smartphone platforms to reaching that task-oriented design I dream of. I’m very excited about Windows Phone 7, sure, but more than that, I’m interested to see if this is the start of a more task-oriented design to all the computing technology that surrounds us. That means PC operating systems as well. I’d be a staunch supporter of such a design path.
Let’s be clear here – the Windows Phone 7 Series announced yesterday isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the beginning. There are so many more things in the pipeline that continue to break down the walls between siloed applications. More and more, the operating system will be about helping you accomplish tasks in an efficient and delightful way.
As I mentioned earlier, I had the privilege to get a look into the workings of the team that worked on Windows Phone 7. Hopefully I’m okay to write about it now, since the product has been announced. You might have noticed that Joe Belfiore mentioned he came to the Windows Phone team from Zune a bit more than a year ago. The person I spoke with also previously worked on the Zune team. I even met the lead designer for the Zune UI, and you guessed it, he was also working on Windows Phone. The UI shown today makes it clear that this was an ex-Zune team led effort. In fact, I imagine the upper echelons of the Zune team were simply plucked up and placed in Windows Phone somewhat more than a year ago.
That also gives you an idea of the time frame of what was accomplished and why it’s going to take until the holidays 2010 for shipping product.
But that team. It’s very different. I’m sure they were this way when they were working on the Zune, but upon moving to Windows Mobile/Phone, the team grew significantly. Getting everyone on board with the user-centric design mentality was a monumental accomplishment. I spoke with the PM on this point – how can you sufficiently convince people of such a large shift in design philosophy? Numerous points were discussed, but the short of the story was the team belief in creating a fantastic user experience, and progress along that path only solidified the idea that this was simply the right thing to do. The results created a feedback loop of buy-in. Of course, the stick had to come out a few times, to make sure things didn’t degenerate into the previous mess, but all in all, a very successful story of a real shift in the workings of a major team within Microsoft.
The team is simply different from any other I’ve seen thus far Microsoft. The people are ‘hip’. They talk about emotional design. They believe in it. I had a chance to see the lab where a lot of the magic happens, and my, my, I imagine Apple’s design labs aren’t much different. You see some of it in the video earlier on. The team is even physically laid out in a different way from most of the rest of Microsoft. I hope to take some of those learnings anywhere I go. It looks like it works.
Windows Phone 7 was a highly guarded secret, and the shock and awe value they got today was exactly the effect they were aiming for. I happily kept my mouth (and fingers) shut for the past couple months because that’s the least this wonderful team deserves, to reap the fruits of their hard labor.
This is why I’m super proud. Congratulations Windows Phone 7 team! I’ll be looking forward to the end of this year with great anticipation!