Squircle Love

I don't have time for a full post, but I just have to reinforce that the squircle eats the click-wheel alive. I get to the songs I want and navigate with ease and speed. Tactility owns.

I'm also diggin on the "drag and sync" friendliness of the new Zune software.

Step aside iPod, my Zune is here.

After a many bidding wars on Ebay, I finally picked up an 8GB Zune. After setting up and using it for a few minutes, I'm quite pleased.

A quick comparison to my 4GB Nano shows that the Zune is slightly bigger. The screen dwarfs the old Nano; I believe it's a little smaller than the unsightly wide Nanos of late. I'll compare it with the girlfriend's Wide Nano later.

As needed, I went to the website and installed the Zune software. Once running, it's quite noticeable how much more elegant it looks compared to iTunes. Unfortunately, I think the Zune software is a less user-friendly. It took some tinkering but I was setup and ready to go in minutes. Per zunescene.com's recommendations, I set everything to manual and made sure run a quick tag-check on my old mp3 files.

The stock standard earbuds look a little cheap, but they sound much better than the stock iPod earbuds. Even radio stations came in better than expected. The controls are extremely user friendly as well. The squircle allows the user to choose either touch motions or button pressing. I end up using both. It puts the annoying click-wheel to shame, and is far more accurate.

There are positives and negatives to both the iPod and the Zune, but so far I'm glad I didn't buy another iPod.

Techbug Posts for 01-27-08

Xbox Profitable

Video Games are crack for kids; TV gets the thumbs up

HD-DVD sales drop sharply due to Warner defection?

PS3 Parental Controls Suck

It's a cop-out sort of, but why double my posts? :)

Making news out of minute sales differences

I'm getting tired of the gaming media making headlines about minor changes in sales statistics. Sometimes they compare a 100,000 or less difference when discussing millions of units sold. Whether it's the PS3, 360, or Wii, it's getting a bit out of hand. 5-10% or more may be numbers to be concerned with, but anything less is just market flux.

When it comes down to the wire, it is very realistic that we could see an even market. The Wii has captured the world, but we still question such over the long term. The DS has consistently had plenty of stellar games where the Wii cannot say as much. This could easily change, but it is too soon to say.

Prices on the more advanced consoles are coming down. One thing the 360 and PS3 can do is perform anything technical that the Wii can do. They are just a motion controller away (the PS3 will probably need a different controller form factor). The Wii can't do what the other consoles do, however. Once the more powerful, more feature-filled consoles are affordable to the masses...it's hard to imagine the Wii holding its top spot. However, don't consider that a proclamation that it will drop to the bottom. More than likely, they'll all stay evenly spaced unless a brunt of million-selling games ends up on one specific console.

Last time, the PS2 got most of the games, and plenty of exclusives. At its continually dropping price, it's no wonder why it came out on top. But in this generation, exclusivity is fading leaving many widely popular titles available on gamers' preferred platforms.

Seeing the market with these aspects in mind, I think the gaming media should ease up on the war. We've already lost a solid movie format because the media didn't concentrate on what made HD-DVD better, but rather Blu-ray's arbitrary maximum storage number. Rather than worrying about who sold a few more or few less units in a month or year, we should be correlating that information to specific game releases. Even better, we should be concentrating on what the console manufacturers will be doing to keep us entertained, not on meaningless short-term numbers.

Steve Jobs mocks Robbie Bach's Zune Optimism

Yeah, yeah. So the populous had decided that the over-proprietary, under-featured iPod. Steve Jobs is letting it go to his head, which isn't surprising. Bach was optimistic at CES about the Zune, and Jobs snidely asked if he was drunk.

I've been steering people toward any music player beside the iPod. Most DAP's have more features than the iPod and often cost less. I usually recommend the Zune, but Creative and SansDisk's offerings are great, too. So no, Steve. Bach wasn't drunk. Consumers just don't realize your company makes an overpriced junk of a product.

PS3 gets it's own failure acronym: YLOD (Yellow light of death)

So far, this occurrence is rare in comparison to RRoD, but it's interesting how these acronyms get flooded through the online community.

Sony is likely thankful they don't have to deal with continued RRoD issues. They must have learned from PS2 DRE?

Traveling again.

Where now, Suicide?

I'm going to Los Angeles for Cisco Bootcamp (note: this school is not the one I'm attending). I'll be dealing with a upped-security Cisco network for my job, so they are sending my boss and me to the camp.

It's going to take 5 days. Each day, we will be there for 12 hours. Not to mention there is a few hours of pre-work and post-work. I imagine it will be really stressful.

Usually when I go on these business trips, I have extra time for blogging and such. That isn't the case this time. I fly out tomorrow and come back on Saturday. I'm also generally excited for these things, but this doesn't seem like it will an exciting experience.

See you in a week.

SuicideNinja not dead; just not affected Xbox Live outages

Last month has been pretty ridiculous. Between the Christmas season, non-stop assignments at work, and an evolving love life, there's been little time for any type of gaming. That doesn't include the other usual activities that are on my regular schedule. Lastly, I've been directing most of my blogging attention to techbugtv.com since they have given me a quota.

People have been asking me about the Xbox Live downtime and I just haven't experienced because I haven't touched any of my consoles. My family played the Wii on Christmas, but aside from that I haven't even been able to find time to get passed the training portion of COD4. I've really wanted to play Halo 3 some more but there just hasn't been a continuous chunk of free time to do so.

I'm hoping that once I get my house and the dust settles, things can get a bit more evened out and I can get back to regular posting. Getting through this fiscal year at work will help as well (ends in March).

I may move to a new place in the interim; if this is the case, then I will definitely be playing more games. Here's hoping!