Ken Levy - Showing off his gadgets

The Discussion

• 

  I guess pressure inside MS is building. On Scobles last video they even chatted it up about the iPod on his desk. All loyalties aside, it seems funny for him to trade it in to an inferior product. A friend of mine has one to test (he writes for a tech-paper) and it's a lot like the rest of them. Small, color screen but not really usable. But it is WM10 compliant
  

• 

  If anyone is thinking about at getting a PSP to view videos then check out the Gizmondo: (www.gizmondo.com) - it supports WMV natively (so no conversion required).  It also uses SD cards (which are a little cheaper than Memory Stick DUO cards).  It also fits better in my trouser pocket!
  
  Oh hec .. I am just a sucker for these things (I've got both .. so shoot me ...)

• 

  Btw, if anyone is in redmond and wants to check out the players, there's a sample of the Samsung player in the video in the Microsoft Visitors Center.
  
  As far as I know, it's open to the public so...
  

• 

  It's all about the gadgets these days, eh? Well, I can be found these days with: my Motorola MPx220 Windows Smartphone, my 20GB iPod, my PSP, and as soon as it's available, the Nokia 770.
  
  I love my smartphone but I think as soon as the Peabody is available by my carrier in my area I'll be upgrading. This phone is neat, but I'm unimpressed with the Voice support (so much easier in voice supported non-Microsoft phones) and the digital picture quality is really, really poor. The integration with Office, however, is really exceptional and call quality is good. My bluetooth headset is wonderful.
  
  I'm not even going to bother talking up the iPod... everyone already knows.
  
  The PSP is simply fun and I got mostly because:
  1) It's better than a portable DVD player.... games.
  2) Cheaper than the Portable Media Centers.
  3) Very, very hackable.
  
  The Nokia 770 is just a really cool concept. I'd LOVE to be able to afford a Windows Tablet... but it's just too expensive and this promises to do everything I want in a small form factor and I can easily customize it however I want because of it's open source base.
  

• 

  Orbit86 wrote:

  larryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...whats upppp...
  
  when will we see you again?
  
  do you still use VC++ or C++.Net?
  

  
  
  Don't know.  I use C++ (an interim version of the Whidbey compiler), and Epsilon as my editor.
  
  So I don't use either VC++ or C++.NET.  Though my son's using VB.NET 2K3 to learn programming...
  
  Edit: Orbit86: Check the front page
  

• 

  Semantics aside, I think you'd have a much easier time going from VB6 to VB.NET. Keep in mind here that if you're writing completely managed code both of these languages target the .NET Framework identically. Once you are comfortable with VB.NET making the switch to C# is far simpler because you're already comfortable with the framework. Likewise, C# is the likely path of choice coming from the C++ world (well, after Managed C++).
  

• 

  I know this is kind of snobbish to point out, but the PSP's screen resolution is not that great (480x272). I also understand that current encoding techniques require the video to actually be 320x240.
  
  Some people might think that's acceptable quality, but I beg to differ. The purpose of a portable media player (for me anyway) is to watch things I normally would have wanted to watch sitting in front of an HDTV but couldn't because I have to be traveling.
  
  I use the Sony U71, which has a vastly superior 800x600 screen that basically gives you full-dvd resolution. You lose none of the detail and none of the experience. I know it costs $2000 instead of $250, but then again, it's a fully functioning laptop as well. I don't understand why more people don't bring up this amazing machine when talking about the supposed "great quality" of the PSP screen. I guess just not enough people have seen what Sony can really do.