MS Expo Event Review. Office XP, Win Xp, Xbox.

[Living-In-Clip]

Today was the MS Expo Event, for us Kentucky-type people. It was a two hour drive and started at one. A nice rainy day, forecasted the day.


Arrival :

We got to the Louisiville ShowCase Cinema\'s an hour early, but they let us in. I showed them my ticket, and they gave me a Office Xp calander, Office Xp notebook, Office XP ink pen (which died within 10 mintues..gee) and a piece of paper to fill out on how I rated the Expo. Oh wait, and a free soda and popcorn, which was easily the highlight of the gifts. So, I went and found a seat and waited for 30 mintues, while a slideshow presented us with older Expo Event footage. Not exciting to say the very least.. Then, it happened.

Start :

The start of the Expo was live from Redmond, Washington, via Sattelite. It started out with what Microsoft calls the "new home". The house was all controlled by one remote control. Even the piano was digital and connected to the internet. The microwave was networked to everything in the house also. It was quite impressive, but one can\'t help and wonder how they will or plan to implement this new technology, as they didn\'t say. Infact, they only spent a brief few mintues on this. Obviously, this is something we\'ll see more from later down the road.

MS Reader

Microsoft wants you to forget all about paper books. They are totally over-rated. With MS Reader for the PDA and Wintel computer, you can go to Barnes & Nobles.com, download the new "E-books" and never have to actually use a real book again.

Microsoft has done a simply amazing job with how the text does look like a book on the screen. Other features include bookmarks and so on. But, still, who cares? I\'m sure it would be nice for limited use, but nothing can ever beat the feel of an actual book in your hand. If MS has its way, within the next twenty years we won\'t have books, but I truly doubt they have their way on this.

Office Xp

I won\'t spend much time explaining this, as most people already know about it. They spent the most time explaining Office Xp new features and hype-words like "smart-tags".  Personally, I was not impressed. Alot of these so called "new features" was nothing more then improved paste from one application to another.

Office Xp, and all the Xp products seem to be intergrated out of the ass. Click one thing, it goes over to get it from  I.E. Click something from Outlook and it goes to MSN Messanger for something. I for one, have never been a fan of intergration like this, but it was to be expected.

Oh, and for those curious.. Office Xp frooze twice on them. Yikes!:)

Windows XP

Oh god, where do I begin? I am sitting here, looking over my notes I took durin\' the show and I realize just how terrible this OS is.

First, lets address the GUI interface. A few of you saw the early build release screens and called it the "Fisher Price OS". Well, if you only knew..  When you boot it up, it goes to a multi-user screen that looks exactly like the MAC OS multi-user screen. From there, you launch into hell.. Okay, one thing, everything is bright blue and has a huge 3D effect goin\' on once again, ala Apple. The \'Start Menu\' is now a big 3D green button and takes up at least %60 of the screen. Folders? Like Windows ME, they tried to inplement "files into folders" feature. What this means, is per say No-OnE has five porn pictures in his folder called "pRon". When he goes to his C: drive for that folder, he will see it and on the folder it has thumbnails of the pictures he has. Nice feature that will suck up system resources no doubt.

The rest of the Windows Xp new feature discussion actually just moved to how the version of Windows Media Player that will ship with Xp is "awesome". It plays DVD, it downloads movies like DIVX, and it can write to 16x CD-RW! Big, whoopie doo.

XBOX

The big, black XBox. Personally, I was and everyone else at the Expo under the impression that we would get a hands on with the Xbox. Not the case, so natrually I was slightly dissapointed.

It started out with some video footage of games like RailRoad Simulator, Air Force Delta, MechWarrior, and some other games. While these games did look pretty, I must say they was not interesting and the graphics did have a "PC feel" about them.

Then, they showed us the controller, which was actually rather nice. I must say I do like the Xbox controller... Then, back to more video clips.

These videoclips was alot better to be honest. We got to see Munch, Amped, Azurke, Gotham, Halo and alot more. But, still, it was just compiled video clips! I had seen alot of this before, so I wasn\'t that impressed...At least not yet...

They showed us as the Product Manager (his name escapes me and I didn\'t write it down--no not J.Allard) played Amped. This game, in my opinion looks like total crap. They just kept talking about how complete mountains was in the game thanks to the HD in the Xbox.

Then, he showed us a certain game called "Project Gotham Racing". Three words. . . Oh My God ! This game was beyond beautiful. The textures and detail goin\' on in this racing game was just simply breath-taking. The car takes damage and yet still looks amazing. I really just can\'t focus on how well this game looks . It only makes me wish I would of got a hands on with it! Damn, MS!

Overall, I was not impressed with their Xbox showing.  For the most part, the games didn\'t interest me as much as I hoped or they just wasn\'t impressive with the exception of Munch and Gotham. Will I get an Xbox launch day? I\'m thinking not. I had planned on it, but now I\'m getting closer to not becoming an early-adopter.

Final:

MS Expo Event was simply propaganda. They kept using the hype-word "innovation" and I saw it in none of their programs. People who read most my post, realize I do not sit and trash MS. Infact, I have always supported the Xbox and told people if they didn\'t like Windows to get another OS, but to stop *****ing. But, I couldn\'t help but write in my notes one thing in big writing.

"Innovation--keyword they keep using but have yet to actually use in the new line of \'X\' products."

Was I being harsh? No, not really. I saw nothing innovated. Improved Paste? Who cares? Improved intergration of MS products? To be expected. Xbox? The games look re-hashed mostly. Document Recovery in Word? Well, they should of thought of that along time ago and what if the OS crashes?

Overall, the event was tedious and  I recommend avoiding it.

Oh, and when you leave you get a free XP shirt and they tell you they\'ll mail you your copy of Win XP. Eww...

i hope they fix the problems with XP office seeing that thats the App i use the most for all of my work, WORD/EXCELL Etc.

For me the jury is still out on Windows XP, ill stick with "good" old Win 98 second edition until i konw whether or not it\'s a good idea and not just another Win Me or 2000.

Like the idea of the thumb nails for your files, but then again it will slow down your sytem everything you go to your Work folder and have a look.

but i have to say i am MOST upset over the reather Apple mac looking slender blue folders and other features of WIN XP.

Conclusion.

Ill wait till my brother installs and runs Both before i part with any money.

He gets to try them first, because he works at Microsoft licened printers and packegers and he gets to test the batches before they get packaged for sale.

or if there is a problem wit hthe batch etc etc etc.....

[Living-In-Clip]

Originally posted by ooseven


For me the jury is still out on Windows XP, ill stick with "good" old Win 98 second edition until i konw whether or not it\'s a good idea and not just another Win Me or 2000.

Like the idea of the thumb nails for your files, but then again it will slow down your sytem everything you go to your Work folder and have a look.

but i have to say i am MOST upset over the reather Apple mac looking slender blue folders and other features of WIN XP.

Conclusion.

Ill wait till my brother installs and runs Both before i part with any money.

He gets to try them first, because he works at Microsoft licened printers and packegers and he gets to test the batches before they get packaged for sale.

or if there is a problem wit hthe batch etc etc etc.....

Microsoft is hoping to make Windows XP the next big upgrade in the same vein of Windows 95. I don\'t see this happening for a few reasons.

They want users to upgrade from their 98/ME machine to Windows XP, yet the user interface looks completely different. As you can imagine, the common user, who cannot be hassled with learning their way around a new OS is just going to be frustrated. They are comfortable with the older look. While, they may be amazed at first with the new colors and so forth, they will quickly grow tired and annoyed when they can\'t find their way around it.

They also hope a buisness will upgrade. It isn\'t going to happen, lets face it. First off, 2K which finally alot of buisnesses updated to, is still new. Can a buisness be hassled with setting out plans to deploy Windows Xp in the buisness enviorment? Not likely. Can a buisness be hassled with teaching each employee their way around the new OS? Most certainly not. Companies want productivity and comfort. Upgrading each system to Windows XP offers neither of those .

On another set of complications, they have the fact that Windows XP appears to be a huge resource hog. Anyone who uses Windows 2K knows that, it is also a resource hog. Yet, with XP, it looks to be even worse. Bill Gates said in a keynote , when XP was known as "Whislter" that he wanted this OS to be the one that made people go out and buy a new computer to "xperience" (get it?) the true power of the OS. I think what he meant to say, is his company was in the process of making a OS that hogged and bogged all the resources to crawl, so don\'t even think of trying it unless you have 256 megs of RAM, which, by the way, these 98/ME users for the most part do not have.

Finally, do we need another OS? Windows ME and 2K are still very new, infants in fact. Windows NT made it up to what, service pack 6, I believe? Why not take the Windows ME (eww) and 2K and continue to focus on these OS\'es for a good 4-5 years. Sort of like the upgrade from 3.1 to 95. There was plenty of time in bewteen the releases. This allows people to wait awhile before they have to buy a new computer to use that full power of the OS and it also allows the companies to get an OS out there and work on the bugs and get it to be extremely stable.


One other thing, that I just thought of. Microsoft has a deadline to get Win2k certifited and they killed the NT workstation courses, so will they do the same with XP? If so, I think you are going to see alot of MCSE\'s upset about having to take another test and learning a new OS.

I forgot to go Saturday..... I broke my hand too when I punched the tile floor in the kitchen.

I went as well, all around good show, however, their focus was obviously not on the X-Box.  From what I saw, graphics were superb, but nothing over the line, extreme(as they say)

I went on Saturday and I also expected a hands-on with the X-box. I didn\'t expect the show to be more about XP than Xbox. Project Gotham did indeed look incredible.  I guess it was pretty much the same for everyone. I didn\'t even get any cool gifts to take home.

BTW, I could have sworn they said hands on with the Xbox when I first signed up. That was my only reason for signing up. Although it was a decent way to waste a Saturday afternoon.

Originally posted by ViVi
I forgot to go Saturday..... I broke my hand too when I punched the tile floor in the kitchen.

Ummm ,  Why the hell did you punch the kitch......   ahhh nevermind

I uh am sticking with Windows 98. always will. It\'s decent for my needs right now... I don\'t really want an Xbox.

XP is trash.  I won\'t even go into the audio-blocking feature.

I got Win2k, and am wiping one machine of 98 and going to Red Hat 7.

Originally posted by EmperorRob
I got Win2k, and am wiping one machine of 98 and going to Red Hat 7.

OH MY GAWD!!!! Red Hat is SOOOOO nice. My buddy has that on two of his boxes and they run like fine tuned ferarri\'s. That is seriously a great move. I just don\'t like that it doesn\'t support some of my favorite games.

Well i didn\'t sign up and i am kinda glad too - since it seems that i didn\'t miss a whole lot

oh well - its not like i can\'t watch vids of games for Xbox anyway

[Living-In-Clip]

I really doubt I install the pre-release version of XP on my machine. I didn\'t see anything I cared for.

I\'m rather happy with 2K, \'cept it sucks up resources. I swear NT didn\'t suck resources up, so I\'m not quite sure why 2K does it.

[nO-One]

Originally posted by EmperorRob
XP is trash.  I won\'t even go into the audio-blocking feature.

I got Win2k, and am wiping one machine of 98 and going to Red Hat 7.

I agree.
I to have win2k on my box,I used to have BeOS (preview edition) aswell but I had to trash it recently because I needed more hd space for prOn.

I\'m going to get another hd (30 gig IBM) and I\'m going to set them both up in RAID.

I\'m also thinking about putting Linux up on machine.I haven\'t played with it for some time now.I had it on my old machine.