Best Buy Blue Label: A Step in the Right Direction

Best Buy has recently released its Blue Label product line, based on their customer forum program that aimed to get actual customer feedback as to what they want in a product (similar to Dell's Community which resulted in Ubuntu being pre-loaded on many Dell computers).  Seems like good enough of an idea.  Best Buy partnered with Toshiba and HP to release the first products in the Blue Label line, two laptops.  The laptops are designed to meet consumers needs, and both laptops hit the mark pretty well.  The main guidelines laid out by consumers is a lightweight and thin design, back lit keyboard, extended service and anti-virus support, and long battery life.  These are pretty reasonable requests, nothing extravagant or cutting edge technology, yet there are very few reasonable priced laptops that meet these needs of the consumer.

 Both laptops are priced attractively below $1,200, and have impressive specs.  Both have Core 2 Duo processor, 4 gb RAM, 320 gb hard drive, all pretty standard for laptops today.  The laptops differ on screen size and batter life.  The HP has a 13.3" screen and a rated 4 hour 15 min battery life.  The Toshiba has a 14.1" screen and a rated 5 hour 30 min battery life.  Either of these laptops would be prefect for everyday use, and can handle any general computing task you have.  These are great laptops for high school and college students.  The extended service support also is great for the non-techie people looking for a laptop.  Both these laptops are worth a look the next time you are shopping for a computer.  I look forward to seeing Best Buy extend their Blue Label line in the future with more great and practicle offerings like these.

October 14, New MacBook Pro?

 

Apple has begun to send out its invitations to an even to be held on October 14th, and judging by the obvious photo on the invite it will be about the notebook side of Apple's products.  The Macbook Pro's have been due for a design refresh for quite some time.  The design has not changed for almost 7 years now (the insides have changed, but not the overall look).  I'm really excited to see what Apple comes up with.  The MacBook Pros are Apple's high end laptop and usually the notebook of choice in the creative community,  Whatever Apple announces could set a new tone of the company in the coming years as well as get Apple an even greater market share (they are currenty at around an 8% market share in personal computers).

Weekend Fun: Mr. Picasso Head

Mr. Picasso Head is a fun flash website that lets you create your own work of art portraits in the unique Picasso style.  The program works by giving you a set of standard shape and brush strokes to use to great your work of art.  The shapes and brush strokes can be rotates, enlarged and distorted so they fit the best way into your creation.  You can even sign your work of art in Picasso handwriting.  If nothing else this program is fun way to kill some time on the weekend and create a cool work of art in the process.

Next Installement of the Gates, Seinfeld Microsoft Advertisements

Earlier, we talked about Microsoft's 300 million dollar advertising campaign to get people interested in Windows again.  We featured the first commercial from the serious of advertisement featuring, Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, and famous comedian, Jerry Seinfeld.  Microsoft has put the second commercial on the internet today for your viewing pleasure.

Are these ads working for anyone?  I find them somewhat funny and they are a nice introduction before a full advertising campaign pushing Windows in your face.  Leave your thoughts in the comments if you enjoy the ads or not?

Microsoft Updates Their Zune and Harware

We told you earlier that Apple wasn't the only one with news to announce on the 9th, and Microsoft didn't disappoint.  Microsoft released a couple interesting updates to both their Zune music player and their computer hardware accessories.  Microsoft hardware has come a long way, and it's now become one of the standards for gamers and hardcore computer users who demand a high level out of their computer parts.  There latest improvement is the use of BlueTrack Technology in their mice.  BlueTrack is being presented as the next evolution in optical tracking technology.  It allows a person to use their mouse on many different services, even if they are not a solid or consistent color or texture (no need for a mouse pad).  This may not seem that big but anyone that uses a mouse on the road will be happy, no more need to carry a mouse pad or find a nice clean surface to use.  It will even work on carpet, which is nice for some lazy Sunday browsing in your living room.  My favorite new hardware is the Arc Mouse (pictured above).  This is a mobile mouse that has an interesting fold up design that allows it to collapse for travel as well as storing its own wireless usb transceiver.

Next Up, we have the new Zune.  The only appearance different is that there is a new color available, blue, everything else is internal and software changes.  The flash Zune player (pictured right) is now available in both 8gb and 16gb versions for $149 and $199 respectively.  This is staying on par with Apple's new iPod Nano in price per gigabyte.  For the larger hard drive based Zune, Microsoft has bumped the storage from 80gb to 120gb.  Available for $249, this is also staying on par with Apple's iPod classic. 

The firmware update for the Zune is due to be released on September 16th and will be backwards compatible.  Meaning the firmware will be available for previous versions of Zune's as well as new ones (teaching an old dog new tricks).  This has become standard practice for Microsoft, as not to leave their early adopters in the dust, much unlike Apple.  The new software will feature "buy from FM" that allows users to listen to a song through the FM radio on the Zune, and then download the song they were just listening to through the Zune's wi-fi capabilities (hear it, download it).  A nice feature that one-ups the Apple wi-fi Music Store.  We'll see if this feature works as well in practice as it does in theory though.  The Zune is slowly but surely becoming a nice full featured device.  It offers certain upgrades on the iPod but seems to be lacking in the user interface and ease-of-use software that apple is known for.  Hopefully Microsoft can get their act together and make the Zune a true competitor to the iPod, in the portable media player market.

Say Hello to Your New iPod

As expected, Apple released their new line of iPods today.  There is a completely new iPod Nano, a slight update to the exterior of the iPod Touch, a spec change in the iPod Classic, and new software for all.  The Nano is by far the most changed.  The combination of a bigger screen, taller overall design in a much thinner frame, and a new collection of available colors makes the Nano a more attractive choice for buyers.  The Nano comes in 8gb and 16gb capacities for $149 and $199 respectively.

The iPod Touch got the same treatment as the iPhone 3G, in terms of physical design.  The iTouch has the same curved design but is much thinner than the iPhone.  Other features include dedicated volume buttons, a
speaker, and integrated Nike+ syncing. The software is very similar to the iPhone 3G as well, with the App Store, Google Maps, and Mail program.  (It's essentially an iPhone without the cell tower connection, i.e you have to be connected to a wi-fi hotspot to use most of the features)  The iTouch is available in 8gb, 16gb, and 32gb for $229, $299, and $399, that's a hundred dollars cheaper than the previous generation iTouch.

The iPod Classic received no appearance changes, only size and option changes.  The iPod Classic is now only available in the 120gb capacity for $249.  This is the same capacity as offered by Microsoft's Zune player.  It seems strange that Apple would downgrade it's 160gb iPod to a 120gb, but i'm sure they have their reasons (to keep costs down for sure).

The software introduced is, iTunes 8, the newest installment of the iTunes line.  iTunes is rapidly becoming the center for your digital rather than just organizing your music collection.  iTunes 8 continues to bring the trend of making music more image oriented by using album and artist art to browse music rather than just having an alphabetical list of files.  Look for a more indepth review of all the new features and how to use them by the end of the week.

Google Chrome: One Week Later

So it's been one week since our review of Google Chrome, and we wanted to provide an update to how it's working beyond our initial use.

Pros:

• Simplistic design is very easy to use
• Omnibox is convenient and reduces screen clutter
• It's open source and already has a thriving developer community
• expect a lot of add-ons and variations to emerge soon (similar to firefox extensions)
• It's Google so it has great potential to incorporate many of the other service from Google (i.e. Gmail, Docs, Google Talk, iGoogle, and many other services)

Cons:

• The Custom Panel Start Page wasn't very useful
• If I'm going to one of my most visited websites, I know the URL and it's just as easy to type it than click on it
• If you use CCleaner to remove your history regularly, the start page doesn't show much except websites you just visited.
• Truly a beta program
• the program crashed and froze numerous times
• had problems running certain websites, including Google's own blogging website, Blogger (crashed while writing this post)
• Google had a bit of trouble with their End User License Agreement 
• Google makes it's money off advertising and collecting user data (what should make Chrome any different)
• once Google has you using their browser there's no telling when they will incorporate ads in.
• Google collects data on your browsing, "Privacy advocates are already warning users that the id can be used to create exact user profiles of a user’s actions while using Google Chrome." via ghacks

Overall, Google Chrome has huge potential and it'll be interesting to see where it goes.  Google can go in many different directions and make this browser a force to be reckoned with in the already competitive market of internet browsers.  The only downside could be that this may actually help Microsoft more than hurt it, which was Google's aim.  For the longest time, if you didn't use Internet Explorer, you used Firefox.  And to use Firefox you had to make a conscious decision to not use Internet Explorer, which is the default on Windows Computers.  Now people looking for an alternative have Chrome as well as Firefox.  Chrome has potential to make the browser market harder for the underdog rather than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  It'll be interesting to see how this ends up and it's definitely something to keep an eye on.  

We've Been Blogged

One of our awesome readers submitted this blog to Blogged.com (sounds redundant, I know) and it was accepted into their directory.  Blogged , in their own words, "is about discovering what the best bloggers are blogging about right now, and about finding the blogs that will interest you the most."  The Blogged editors review each website submitted and give them a rating based on a 10 point scale, taking into account "frequency of updates, relevance of content, site design, and writing style."  Overall this blog recieved an initial rating of 7.8.  I think we can make this rating higher though, feel free to head over to Blogged and give this site a rating.