Microsoft Sets Release Date for Windows 7 RC1. Two of Them, Actually!

Enough with the rumors, educated guesses, and BitTorrent leaks: Microsoft is saying when it’ll release Windows 7 Release Candidate 1, the version that’s likely to be the last major one before the OS is finalized. As Ina Fried reports over at Cnet, developers who are members of Microsoft’s MSDN program can download it on April 30th; everyone else will get it on May 5th. The RC will feature a lot of minor tweaks compared to the beta, but if it involves any surprises it’ll be…surprising! Absent wild-card scenarios like government interference, it seems all but certain that the computers folks buy for back-to-school season and the holidays will get the shipping version of the OS.

I’ll install it and share thoughts when I can get my hands on it; if you give it a test drive, I’d love to know what you think.

The Trouble With Tiny Windows Computers

Things don’t look good for OQO, the company behind a series of handheld computers that ran full-blown Windows. As Eliot Buskirk reports over at Wired.com, the company has lost its CEO and resellers have stopped taking preorders for its next-generation model; rumors are that it’s running out of time to make it as a stand-alone entity.

If OQO folds, it’ll be sad–but the funny thing is that it’s already a pock-marked survivor in the product category of tiny Windows devices. The similar FlipStart PC (backed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen) was on the market for only a year. And as far as I can tell, Sony has discontinued its pocket-sized UX handheld. Microsoft’s once-hyped Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) platform, meanwhile, is alive but far from thriving.

And yet, the funny thing is that there’s never been more interest in extremely portable computing devices than there is today, nor as many attractive choices. It’s just that very few of them bear much resemblance to the OQO and its direct rivals. Smartphones like the iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1 are pocket-sized computers by any definition I can imagine; netbooks such as Asus’s Eee PC 1000HE are bigger than the OQO but smaller than garden-variety notebooks.

So how come OQO-class machines have never caught on? I can think of several reasons:

Windows was never designed to run on devices that small. It wants a display with both decent resolution and a fair amount of physical space. They assume the availability of a decent QWERTY keyboard (and I’ve never seen an OQO-class gadget that even had as good a keyboard as I think could be crammed into the available space). They benefit from a mouse, or at least a large touchpad. The whole idea behind these devices is providing the benefits of the world’s most widely-used operating system–such as scads of applications–but the fundamental usability hassles canceled the virtues out for most folks.

They’re full of advanced engineering that didn’t deliver enough user benefit. It’s a small miracle that OQO was able to get full-strength Windows to run on a machine that small at all, and a tribute to the company’s designers. But smartphone engineers have a head start, since they aren’t stuck with the challenge of making a desktop OS run on a tiny device. And netbooks, almost by definition, don’t include any sophistcated engineering–and don’t have to, since they’re large enough that miniaturization isn’t required. (There’s a reason why most netbooks are actually rather chunky.)

They’re too dang expensive. A couple of years ago, the OQO and FlipStart both cost $2000, or more than most people pay for a traditional notebook. Today, OQO starts at a grand. You could buy both a smartphone and a netbook for that, and have money left over.

I know that there are people who are passionate fans of the OQO and similar devices–but there don’t seem to be enough of them to add up to a robust business, and that just isn’t that surprising. Will OQO’s woes scare other companies off from building other computers of this sort? Maybe not: Intel is forging ahead with its Mobile Internet Device platform.  I wish it luck. But I’m thinking that consumers have already rendered their verdict–and as usual, theirs is the only one that counts.

Apple May Be Immune to Economy, But Stores Aren’t

Apple certainly made it through this past quarter in great shape. Nobody is complaining about the company’s results, which by all accounts were stellar. However, Cupertino does have a retail arm, and like any other it’s beginning to struggle.

Average revenue per store is down 17 percent – falling from $7.1 million in the year ago quarter to $5.9 million. It could be argued that the only reason overall sales numbers were up slightly (1 percent) was the fact that 46 new locations have been added since then.

(Imagine the Wall Street carnage if Apple hadn’t opened a single store — eek.)

Thus, the company’s gotta do what its gotta do. That means layoffs — 1,600 full time employees will be cut across its 250+ stores. That would amount to about 10% off its current total workforce of around 15,600.

One thing is for sure however: the frantic pace at which Apple had been opening new retail locations appears to be a thing of the past. Sign of the times, ain’t?

More about Apple’s plans can be found in this SEC filing.

Gamefly Accuses Postal Service of “Discrimination”

Video games tend to be frowned upon as second-class media, but the US Postal Service is taking that stance literally, according to a complaint by Gamefly, which rents video games through the mail.

In a 17-page complaint filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission (via Ars Technica), GameFly says that 1 percent to 2 percent of its games are breaking in transit. Even more interesting is Gamefly’s allegation that the postal service gives “preferential treatment” to Netflix and Blockbuster.

Gamefly takes issue with the use of an automated sorting system that has a tendency to damage discs. While the postal service manually sorts out “a large percentage” of DVDs from Blockbuster and Netflix, it refuses to do the same for Gamefly under equal terms.

Adding insult to injury, the postal service boasted in a July 2008 press release that it was helping Gamefly prosper when the company opened a new shipping center. “GameFly may be a relatively new company, but it’s using an old idea— getting USPS to help it grow,” the statement said.

Gamefly filed the complaint on four counts, among them “Unlawful Discrimination Among DVD Mailers” and “Unlawful Discrimination Among Flats Mailers.” The company says it wants the same terms and prices that Netflix and Blockbuster are getting and may seek “additional forms of relief as the evidentiary record justifies.”

With 590,000 discs going out per month, Gamefly is shelling out almost $300,000 per month to replace broken discs if you assume a cost of $50 per game. That hurts enough on its own, but as Gamefly points out, Blockbuster is getting into mail-order game rentals now, allegedly without the same shipping headaches.

This explains why I’ve received a few different varieties of mailers during my two years of membership with Gamefly. I used to get cardboard inserts in the mail, but that practice was abandoned last year at one point abandoned, and has since continued again. Apparently, it was too expensive because of the weight increase, and it didn’t the extra cost still doesn’t stop all the discs from breaking.

5Words for April 24th, 2009

How’s your Friday so far?

MySpace has a new boss.

New Windows 7 hits BitTorrent.

The ObamaBerry is almost ready.

Hollywood vs. ReadDVD: trial underway.

Google Toolbar knows your location.

“Movie Cowboy?” Love that name!

Facebook users approve new policies.

T-Mobile sells one million G1s.

The economy hits the Apple Store.

Hands on with new Ubuntu.

Don’t Be Like Salma Hayek!

Poor Salma Hayek. She may be a gorgeous, accomplished, award-winning actress, but she’s apparently not very good at keeping her online accounts secure. A post at Electronic Pulp reports that pranksters have figured out how to get into her e-mail at Apple’s MobileMe service by using the “Forgot Password?” feature to reset her password. And they’ve been sharing stuff they’ve found (nothing scandalous).

Could this have been prevented? Did Salma do anything wrong? Did Apple? If the reports are true, the answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Continue reading this story…

A Bad Quarter for Microsoft. But Not Necessarily a Sea Change.

Today, Microsoft’s released its third quarter financial reports, and for the first time, saw a decline in its year-to-year quarterly results.

The company reported that its quarterly revenues were $13.65 billion, approximately 6 percent lower than they were this time last year. That missed Thomson Reuters’ sales forecast of $14.09 billion. Its net income was $2.98 billion, earning shareholders 33 cents per share.

In its filings, Microsoft noted that its earnings per share would have amounted to 39 cents if it were not for one time charges for employee severance costs and investment impairments. That figure would have met analysts’ estimates, according to reports.

I would be hesitant to say that Microsoft’s slumping performance is indicative of any type of sea change happening in the industry. Yes, by the company’s own omission, Windows client license revenues are down, but that does not mean that netbooks loaded with Linux are going to permanently displace Windows.

It is simply too soon to begin speaking about any long term trends taking hold, and there are too many variables. Despite its lowered earnings and occasional missteps, Microsoft remains in a competitive position in a number of product categories–without having ever accrued any long term debt. It is a strong company that is making operational and structural changes to adapt to the economic environment.

PC sales will spike this fall when Microsoft releases Windows 7 in October (unless it turns out to be January). I’m prepared to be underwhelmed due to fallout from the worldwide economic downturn, but when things begin to turn around, many people are going to want to buy new PCs loaded with Windows 7 and Office 14.

Whatever Happened to the Top 15 Web Properties of April, 1999?

As I quietly lamented (or at least noted) the impending death of GeoCities today, I wanted to double-check my memory that it was once one of the very largest sites on the Web. Yup–ten years ago, in April 1999, Web measurement company Media Metrix rated it as the sixth largest online property. Which got me to wondering: How many of 1999′s Web giants remain gigantic today–assuming they still exist at all?

That’s a relatively easy question to answer, since the Media Metrix report (which is now conducted by ComScore) still comes out monthly. In fact, Comscore released the numbers for March 2009 yesterday. So I did a comparison between the April 1999 report and the March 2009 one. Are you stunned to learn that more companies fell off the top 15 than stayed on it, and that some of 2009′s biggest properties didn’t exist at all in 1999?

Continue reading this story…

VHS Lives On Through Mail-Order Arthouse Rentals

Netflix it’s not, but a new mail-order rental service from Chicago-based Facets Multimedia has something for the super-dedicated indie niche.

The Facets service rents DVDs and, more interestingly, VHS tapes of independent, experimental and world films, and launched last month with little fanfare, Video Business reports. While Netflix and Facets overlap a bit on the DVD side, some of Facets’ offerings are so obscure that they only exist on VHS.

Among these films are Johnny Guitar (1954), a campy cult film about two women trying to control a frontier boom town; The Devils (1971), a film based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun; and The Emigrants (1971), about a young Swedish family setting out to America. Not all the picks are that obscure: The Cable Guy and Caddyshack are among the lighter fare offered on VHS. For DVDs, you’ll find import rarities such as Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) along with mainstream titles like 2006′s Oscar-nominated Babel.

Facets hosts over 30,000 titles in all, 500 of which come from the 26-year-old company’s exclusive release and distribution catalog. The volume and wide appeal of the films is important, because it’s conceivable that someone with enough offbeat tastes could rely on this service instead of Netflix and still satisfy an occasional mainstream urge. Pricing is competitive at $8.99 per month for a one-movie plan and $14.99 for two movies at a time, with a variety of other packages and prepaid options available.

I’m wondering if a service like this will catapult VHS to the status of music’s vinyl records. Sure, you can’t make any arguments for video quality, but maybe there’s a tactile satisfaction to sliding one of those bulky tapes into the player and fiddling with the tracking button.

Enough Already: Stop Malware, Spyware, and Trojans

They’re out to get you: Sleaze balls writing devious, sneaky programs that load you system with junk. I’ll show you a few quick ways to protect yourself from Windows Trojans that want your credit card number, malware that slows your system, and spyware that tracks your keystrokes.

Over the years I’ve played with at least 3 million security programs–Norton, McAfee (the program that AOL uses), Kaspersky, Spyware Doctor, Vipre, Avast, AVG, and Trend, to name just a few. They all give adequate protection. (I know, I didn’t mention your favorite. Get over it.) While all these tools do the job, there are differences: For instance, I think Spyware Doctor reports too many false positives and AVG, a former favorite, gets bigger with each iteration.

If you’re comfortable with your existing protection program, and confident it’s protecting you, (read: you haven’t been infected recently), stick with it.

However, I often get e-mails asking if it’s a good idea to switch products.

Continue reading this story…

Japan’s Wii Video is No YouTube or Hulu

There appears to be a world domination plot afoot with Nintendo’s “Wii no Ma” video service, which will launch next week in Japan.

Until now, details on the service were slim, other than an announced partnership between Nintendo and media giant Dentsu to produce original content. The full scoop, revealed on Nintendo’s Japanese Web site and conveniently translated by Andria Sang, talks of a virtual world that blends eerily with the real.

The channel places Mii characters in a living room, where time passes by in equal proportion to the outside world. This is the hub for various other services offered in the channel. Foremost is the video channel, providing paid and ad-supported shows, as previously reported. Partner companies will have their own content, accessed by clicking on a plant in the room, as well as product samples that can be delivered to a pre-entered real world address. Weirder still, celebrities will occasionally visit the virtual home as “concierges” peddling additional programming.

In addition, DSi owners will be able to sync the handheld to the channel and download virtual coupons, which can be redeemed at participating retailers.

This is all pretty wild stuff — sort of like Second Life, but much more restrained — and you have to wonder how much of it, if any, will make it out of Japan. I can see the original content coming west, as it allows Nintendo to bypass the licensing kerfuffles that are making a mess of existing online video sites. And the delivery system is smart, drawing families in with another channel for their Miis.

But samples in the mail? Celebrity avatars invading your virtual home? They could be failures stateside, or Nintendo could strike gold again. I won’t venture a prediction.

Yahoo Winds Down GeoCities. (Waitaminnit, GeoCities Still Exists?)

Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, build-your-own-Website services like GeoCities were the easiest way for folks without much technical expertise to get content onto the Web. So it wasn’t an utter act of insanity when Yahoo spent $3.57 billion to acquire GeoCities in 1999. Well, okay, the $3.57 billion part was irrational, but the world needed GeoCities.

By the turn of the millennium, though, GeoCities and its rivals started to be overshadowed by blogging–and today, it’s blogging services such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and others that serve the purpose that GeoCities once did. I hadn’t given GeoCities much thought in years–until today, when I read on TechCrunch that Yahoo has stopped signing up new GeoCities members and will close the service altogether at some unspecified date later this year. Let’s hope that Yahoo does a better job of helping GeoCities users migrate to other options than AOL did when it shuttered its similar, similarly venerable AOL Hometown service last year–it gave users only a month’s warning, then purged their data and redirected their URLs to a terse blog post saying that Hometown was no more.

Yahoo’s GeoCities FAQ on the closure says that the service is going away “as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways.” Which is a vague way of saying “GeoCities is no longer a priority for us.” Presumably it’s part of Yahoo’s ongoing housecleaning, elimination of redundant services (it also offers Yahoo Web Hosting), and focus on core offerings with a high potential for profit.

There’s probably some alternate universe where GeoCities changed with the times and stayed popular, but it felt a tad dinosaurish even back when Yahoo bought it, thanks to a weird “homesteading” system that forced users to choose a neighborhood and street for their site, and annoyances such as a GeoCities logo that stayed on the screen even when you scrolled down on the page. On the other hand, a bunch of its 1990s competitors have managed to stick around–Homestead (now owned by Intuit and focused on small businesses), Tripod, and FortuneCity. Wonder if any of them will make a concerted effort to welcome the GeoCities residents who Yahoo is evicting?

Two Possible Apple Responses to the Netbook

In normal times, it’s standard operating procedure for Apple watchers to listen to Steve Jobs dismiss a product category, then come to the conclusion that his negativity simply means that Apple isn’t ready to enter it yet. At the moment, it’s acting CEO Tim Cook whose comments get parsed. As Jason Snell notes over at Macworld, Cook was pretty darn harsh about the downsides of netbooks during yesterday’s Apple financial conference call:

For us, it’s about doing great products. And when I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience… that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so it’s not a space, as it exists today, that we’re interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in.

But Cook didn’t say that Apple wouldn’t make a netbook, or something sort of like a netbook. Actually, he said that it might well do so:

That said, we do look at the space and are interested to see how customers respond to it. People that want a small computer (so to speak) that does browsing and e-mail might want to buy an iPod touch or an iPhone. So we have other products to accomplish some of what people buy netbooks for. So in that way we play in an indirect basis.

And if we can find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, then we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas in this space. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. If you look at the past, in 17 of the last 18 quarters we’ve exceeded the market rate of growth, and to exceed it in this horrendous economy is quite an accomplishment, especially if you look at these very low-cost netbooks that I think is a stretch to call it a personal computer, that are really propping up unit numbers as a whole.

Deconstructing all this, Cook seems to be saying that Apple won’t make a product with:

1) a cramped keyboard

2) terrible software

3) junky hardware

4) a very small screen

That would seem to rule out anything that’s an exact counterpart to today’s netbooks. But it does leave room for two other products that Apple could make:

1) The widely-rumored tablet--which, I’m thinking, would more logically run the iPhone OS than the Mac OS. No keyboard, and an interface tailored to work well on a small screen. (I like my Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but there’s no question that Windows XP is a poor match for its screen resolution–I’m reminded of that every time I press the Start button and get a warning that it can’t display all the times.)

2) A computer which I still think there’s a good chance Apple will introduce–a replacement for today’s $999 white MacBook that’s a pretty traditional Mac notebook that costs more than a netbook ($800, maybe?) but is also posher than one, with a 13-inch screen and a full-sized keyboard.

Of course, there’s no reason why Apple couldn’t release both of these products, since they’d be complementary more than competitive.

I have no inside info; I try to steer clear of assuming that Apple will make products because they seem logical to me; I know that the fact that the company’s public statements suggest that it might go in a particular direction doesn’t mean it will. But if Apple were to make either or both of these products, I think it would at least be consistent with both Cook’s comments yesterday and the company’s overall philosophies.

5Words for April 23rd, 2009

Hey, BlackBerry fans, good news:

Spy shots: Skyfire’s BlackBerry browser.

YouTube gets a chat feature.

New Ubuntu available for download.

Microsoft: still under antitrust watch.

$9000 Leica camera: pretty, white.

MSI readying Android-based netbooks?

OQO’s future doesn’t look bright.

Trade your HD-DVDs for Blu-Ray.

Lost laptops cost $50,000. Supposedly.

Asus releases a 17.3″ notebook.

Amazon deletes bribe-revealing reviews.

New Jawbone Headset: More Comfortable, Better Sound, Flashy Colors

I feel like I should start anything I write about headsets with a disclaimer: I’ve still never met one I can love unreservedly. I have trouble getting them to stay in my ear; I find myself having to futz with buttons and Bluetooth; and sound quality, of course, remains variable. That said, I admire what Aliph has done over the past few years with its Jawbone headset. And tonight the company is announcing Jawbone Prime, a new version that replaces the eleven-month-old Jawbone 2. I’ve only spent a little time with the new model so far, but it aims to improve on its predecessor on all the above fronts: comfort, control, Bluetooth, and sound quality.

The basic industrial design hasn’t really changed: It’s still small and stylish (as befits its $130 price). But a new indentation–which is very subtle–makes it a bit easier for your finger to find the button you use for functions such as turning the headset on and off.

Earloops are the bane of my phone-using existence–I can never figure out how to get them over my ear–and while the Jawbone Prime comes with one, it attempts to let most people do without it by providing six rubber earbuds in three different sizes. Three of the buds have a sort of nub that helps to lodge the bud in your ear, and it seems to work well–I was able to shake my head back and forth vigorously without the Jawbone flying out.

The single most important thing about any headset, of course, is that you can hear and be heard. I haven’t used the new Jawbone enough to judge whether it’s an advance on the old one, but Aliph claims much better sound quality in a variety of environments, from quiet areas to ones with a jackhammer blasting in the background. The Jawbone’s noise reduction works best if you let the tip touch your face, but the company says that the Prime works far better than earlier models if it loses contact. It’s also the first Jawbone that aims specifically to help with wind. (Although the company is guarded about its promise there–the headset’s packaging says in one place that it “Eliminates Noise, but another label states merely that it “Reduces Wind Noise.”

This is also the first Jawbone that supports multipoint Bluetooth–letting you use it with two phones at once. And it comes in a total of seven colors, including understated platinum, black, and brown, and four not-understated-at-all “Ear Candy” colors:

As a Californian, I can’t avoid headsets altogether unless I flout state law or never use my phone while driving. I recently bought one that’s a sort of anti-Jawbone: a cheap, ugly wired model with no advanced features whatsoever. I bought it mostly to try and sidestep-Bluetooth related issues, including the need to charge the headset and establish a wireless connection with my phone. (Aliph, incidentally, says that talk time for the new Jawbone is about the same as for the old one–4.5 hours.) But over the next few weeks, I’m going to do a personal faceoff between the wired headset’s old, unglamorous technology and everything that the Jawbone Prime promises. I may never have fallen in love with any headset, but I’ve got an open mind…

Windows 7 Starter Edition: It’s Trialware!

Yesterday, I wrote about Ed Bott’s hands-on experience with Windows 7 Starter Edition, which limits you to three open applications at a time, with some exceptions. Ed thinks Starter might be okay if you’re working mostly in your browser on a netbook, but would likely be a headache for more traditional applications on a more traditional notebook.

Ed’s take on Starter is about as positive as you’re likely to find right now. Other folks–most of who, like me, presumably haven’t actually tried it–are using words like joke and farce to describe it.

But the more I think about Starter Edition, the more I think that’s something I hinted at in my earlier post: trialware. Or, in other words, a piece of software that has had an artificial limitation placed on it that greatly reduces its usefulness while still giving you enough power to learn the ropes and whet your appetite. One that has a relatively inexpensive upgrade path to a full version that doesn’t have the limitations. We already know that Windows 7 will be designed to permit easy upgrades from one version of the OS to another.

If Microsoft makes $25 or less per copy of Windows 7 Starter Edition that’s preinstalled on a computer (which is Ed’s guess) but can convince a meaningful minority of people who buy netbooks that run it to spend–oh, say, $70 to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Basic, it’ll be able to recover some of the Windows profits that are vanishing as the market shifts to netbooks and other super-cheap laptops. And if Starter’s limitations are truly onerous, you gotta think that a decent percentage of netbook buyers will be willing to pay Microsoft to eliminate the pain.

(I know that a lot of trialware times out after thirty days or otherwise becomes completely unsable, but not all of it–some of it is designed to continue working forever, but in a fahion that’s just annoying enough that you’ll spring for a paid edition. It’s that form of trialware that Starter Edition seems to me to be an example of.)

Meanwhile, another line of thought on Starter Edition that’s cropping up seems irrefutable to me: It’s not in Microsoft’s long-term interest to release a version of Windows that cripples the user’s ability to run Windows apps, thereby making it all the more tempting to use Web apps instead. Starter Edition’s limitations may not only make Linux a more viable alternative right away, but also push people into the browser, thereby making them less reliant on the Windows ecosystem over the long haul.

Oh, and is the idea of a computer with a fundamentally hobbled operating system unthinkable? Maybe so by today’s standards, but I’ve been writing about this stuff for long enough that I remember the days when it wasn’t uncommon for a computer’s base price to be sans OS, period. A computer with Starter Edition sounds like it will tippy-toe back in that direction without being completely unusable out of the box.

Note that none of the above amounts to a defense of Starter Edition, particularly: I’m just trying to figure out Microsoft’s thinking, and why it thinks Starter Edition makes sense. If real live consumers react to it as negatively as pundits have so far, it wouldn’t stun me to see Microsoft loosen the restrictions at some point–a Starter Edition that the market finds intolerable would need to be rethought quickly.

Those are my thoughts as of ten minutes to five on a Wednesday afternoon. Let’s end with a silly little poll: