Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Another week, another couple of rumours about the forthcoming Zune HD. First up, price points: the 16 GB and 32 GB capacities seem all but confirmed at this point, and now Electronista has some information about the price point of the 16 GB Zune HD being between $249 and $279 USD. The price point make it a little less expensive than the 16 GB iPod Touch, which is a good move for Microsoft. No word on the pricing of the 32 GB Zune HD, but I'd guess we'll see it in the $349 to $379 realm. There's also a rumour about a 64 GB Zune coming "down the road", which isn't shocking - this is all about the price point of Flash, nothing more. Microsoft could release a 128 GB Zune HD, but it would probably cost $899. So for all of you who have full Zune 120s, this is not the device for you.

Moving along to the issue of battery life, we have (supposedly) a Microsoft employee who likes to blab to a fellow named Ryan Rea (Volvoshine), and the result is a claim of 5x battery life over the current iPod Touch. The iPod Touch 2nd gen unit is rated for 36 hours of audio or six hours of video. If the 5x factor proves to be true, on paper at least we'd be looking at 180 hours of audio or 30 hours of video. That seems virtually impossible - I'm expecting to see some battery life gains by moving to the OLED screen and the Tegra chip, but 5x? I'm calling hoax on this one. I hope I'm wrong, because that kind of battery life is game-changing, but when something seems too good to be true, it usually is...

This is a bit off topic for some sites in our network, but a good deal is a good deal: our hardware affiliate partner Expansys is selling the Linux-based version of the Acer Aspire One for $199, which is an excellent deal. This version of the Aspire One has an 8.9 inch screen, 1 GB of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive, and uses the 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom CPU. Combine that netbook with a $49 copy of Windows 7, and you've got yourself a nice little piece of mobile computing technology (just be sure to also have an external USB-based optical drive). I haven't installed Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire One, but I suspect it would work just fine - Windows 7 identified all the important hardware on my MSI Wind and HP Mini 1000 netbooks without a problem. At the time of this writing, Expansys only has 58 left in stock, so don't delay.

This week brings two Zune Marketplace freebies that you can download, play back, burn to a CD, and sync to your Zune device. You'll need a Zune account to download the free content. Clicking on the link(s) below will automatically launch the Zune software and take you to the artist's page, so please ensure that the software is installed on your PC.

• Title: Hold the Line
• Artist: Major Lazer, Mr. Lex & Santigold
• Genre: Reggae/Dancehall
• Length: 3:39
• DRM-free MP3: Yes

• Title: Heavy Cross
• Artist: The Gossip
• Genre: Rock
• Length: 4:02
• DRM-free MP3: No

You'll have to excuse the network-wide broadcast (well, except Apple Thoughts of course), but I thought this was something that everyone would want to know about: Microsoft is offering the forthcoming Windows 7 at a steep discount, but only for a limited time. Until July 11th, you can purchase Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99 USD (that's an Amazon affiliate link, so your purchase helps support Thoughts Media). The normal price of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade is $119.99 USD, so that's a very significant level of savings ($70 to be precise). You can also pick up Windows 7 Business Upgrade for $99 if you want that version. When Windows 7 is released on October 22nd, Amazon will ship you the software.

The Windows 7 upgrade will work on a computer with Windows Vista or Windows XP installed. If you have an older computer, you may want to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to make sure your computer is ready for Windows 7, but in general any computer built in the past four years should be able to run it just fine. Windows 7 is lighter on resources and works well across a broad spectrum of hardware.

Got a netbook? Then you'll want to take advantage of this offer as well - I'm running the Windows 7 Release Candidate on an MSI Wind, and an HP Mini 1000, and it works really well on both of them. I think Windows Vista is a fine operating system, but Windows 7 is even better - it addresses many of the concerns that people had with Windows Vista and adds a degree of polish that means everything is easier to use.

Unfortunately, this offer is only valid in the USA and Canada (Canadians can order from Amazon.ca, Future Shop, and Best Buy). as far as I can tell. Europe is getting a different version of Windows 7 due to the lawsuits Microsoft is undergoing there.

Gizmodo got a tip about the release date of the new Zune HD, including this cool product shot below:

They're saying the device will launch on September 8 and come in 16 and 32 GB varieties, which jibes well with what we've heard so far.

Meanwhile, Engadget's got a video hands-on with the device and photo gallery including shots of the dock. There's no music loaded so we can't see all the cool improvements in that department (check out this older video to see some of them), but if you needed another look at the power of Tegra, it's still as awesome as ever. Also, the last frame in the video shows that Internet is indeed a top-level menu item, not hidden in "more" as previously thought. Personally, I'm interested in the promo pictures behind the album art while playing music (see the picture, above). I think it would be really cool if it had a smaller version of the Now Playing visualizations that the software has featured since v3; it really does feel more engaging with the music you're listening to.

This is off-topic for all the sites except Digital Home Thoughts, but I thought you all might enjoy this article. OK, yeah, I'm looking for some sympathy. ;-) Have a great weekend everyone!

I've been putting this off for at least two years now, but I finally had to bite the bullet and get it done: I had to tear-down my home office and move it in order to get my floor fixed. We moved into this house in 2001, and finished the basement later that year. We put down berber carpet, which at the time seemed like a good idea because basements tend to be cold. Then we got a little puppy named Keiko - and after a few months that berber carpet was covered in stains (house-training a puppy is a messy business). It was also problematic for me to not be able to roll my office chair from computer to computer - for a while I had a custom-cut piece of Plexiglas on the floor, but over time that cracked and broke.

Not wanting to pay another $500 to replace it, and realizing it was a bit demoralizing to be working surrounded by urine stains, it was time for a renovation to my home office. In 2006 I hired a carpenter, and he sub-contracted a flooring company (Underfoot Floors in Calgary), to re-do several key parts of my office. He built a custom set of shelves for me, and the flooring company ripped up the berber carpet and installed a hardwood laminate floor. For a while, everything was great - but then I started to notice that as I rolled my chair across the floor, it would seem to catch on the floor. Over the next year, I'd find little chips of broken hardwood laminate - bit by bit, I was destroying the floor. The entire point of going with the hardwood laminate was to get something tough enough to stand up to a rolling office chair. I brought in the carpenter and the flooring company, and there was a lot of shoulder shrugging and finger-pointing.

Figure 1: This is what the floor looked like after a couple of years worth of my chair rolling over it.

The problem was two-fold: the underlay that Underfoot Flooring used was quite thick. I had asked for a thick underlay in an attempt to plug up some of the awful insulation problems that Bay West Homes inflicted upon us when they built the house - on a cold day, my basement would be a good 15 degrees Celsius colder than the main floor. You could hold your hand along the baseboards and feel freezing cold air blowing in. Knowing nothing about flooring, I didn't realize that by having the thicker underlay would cause the floor to move up and down more. You'd think that the flooring professionals would have pointed this out to me, right? No such luck. The particular flooring that I selected - completely based on colour and design, because hey, what do I know about flooring - turned out to have a bevelled edge, meaning that the pieces didn't lock as tightly together as the indestructible Pergo flooring I had back in my condo. Again, I had no clue - Underfoot Flooring knew this was going in a home office, so I trusted their advice about the flooring options I had. Read more...

"There is a lot of news circulating today about some rumors of the new Zune HD using the NVIDIA Tegra processor. Several websites have been following the rumor, that started at donanimhaber.com, but apparently no one can confirm whether or not Microsoft's latest portable media player does indeed use NVIDIA's system-on-a-chip design. Well PC Perspective can: the Zune HD does in fact use NVIDIA's Tegra processor. I actually learned this fact from some NVIDIA staffers over at Computex in early June but I guess I just didn't realize how "news worthy" the information was. No longer do you have to worry about "rumors" on the subject - Tegra has its first major design win."

After what seems like ages of speculation, we now have what appears to be a somewhat convincing report from PC Perspective that the new Zune HD will be powered by NVIDIA's awesome Tegra processor. Putting the pieces together, it really does make sense. The Tegra chip is supposed to serve as the base chasis in upcoming Windows Mobile 7 hardware and the demos of what is possible with Tegra are astounding. I don't know of another chip on the market which can support amazng transitions and HD video out all while keeping the power consumption to a minimum. Fudzilla notes:

"Nvidia's Tegra is a great platform and it needs only 150mW to decode a video stream and only 20mW to play audio which makes it a perfect candidate for such players like Zune HD. Nvidia already showed some netbook and tablet products based on Tegra at Computex. These were probably all based on Tegra 650, the high end Tegra part as Nvidia likes to call it, while Zune HD will probably based on the mid-range Tegra 600."

Now bear in mind this is all speculation until we get confirmation that doesn't come in the form of "some guy heard it from some anonymous guy at a press event." But until then I'll continue to ooh and ahh at the demos and dream about the prospects of mobile gaming on this thing. I can't wait to see how it'll turn out.

UPDATE: Matt Aikers, via the ZuneInsider Podcast has confirmed that the chip is in fact a Tegra. Guess we don't need those scare quotes anymore! (Thanks Alber1690).

“Aside from the differentiating core technologies and software that the Zune HD and the Samsung Omnia PRO, the real differentiator--at least at first glance--will be the devices' gorgeous AMOLED displays. The displays will have the ability to render truer and darker blacks, vivid colors, and be more useable even under direct sunlight.”

OLEDs are a technology that we’ve been hearing about for quite some time now. It’s taken a while (far too long by my estimation!) but they are finally beginning to show up in more and more consumer devices. Of course, the one we care most about here is the forthcoming Zune HD. The one feature I’ve asked for time and again is a better display than what the current Zunes have had. The AMOLED will certainly deliver on that mark.

A side benefit that you may notice as you read about this technology is how it affects power consumption. Because the screen is not backlit, only the pixels that are active will draw power. While this could mean that if you decide to have an all black background you’ll use less power, the more practical consideration is that much of the time there are large parts of the display that are displaying nothing. Since the backlight is such a drain on the battery, this alone should significantly benefit the battery life.

A little off-topic Friday fun for you all...have a great weekend!

I think it was 2007 when this "high pitched ring tone" craze kicked off - the idea being that older people couldn't hear high-pitched frequencies, so younger people would put these high-pitched tones on their cell phones and they'd hear when their phone was ringing - or when they got a text message - but their teachers couldn't. These same high-pitched tones would also be used by some businesses in an attempt to drive off younger people who were loitering in front of their establishments. I listened to one of these tones that I wasn't supposed to be able to hear at my age, and I heard it just fine. I knew there was a scientific basis for this, but I figured since I could hear the tone my hearing was "perfect" - I've always gotten perfect hearing scores when I've had my hearing tested. I found a Web site today that shows how wrong I was about being able to hear tones I thought I could!

I cranked up my speakers and clicked on the preview buttons for each tone: I can hear the 16khz tone, but I can't hear the 17khz tone or anything higher. I'm 34 years old, so the fact that I can hear the "30 and younger" tone means I have slightly better than normal hearing in terms of high-pitched frequencies (according to this scale at least). What about you? Where does your hearing drop off, and how does that relate to your age - are you better or worse than average? And if your hearing is worse than it should be, what band were you a roadie for in the '80s? ;-)

Funkmaster Flex and Zune are giving away this tricked-out Ford truck loaded with all sorts of goodies:

Win a 2008 Ford Sport Trac truck designed by Flex and loaded with all the latest tech toys from Microsoft! The custom SUV includes:

• 8" and 6.5" Kicker speakers in front doors, with custom fiberglass pod
• 6.5" Kicker components in rear doors
• Four 8" Kicker subs behind rear seats, installed in a custom sub box
• Two Kicker amps
• Car PC powered by Microsoft Windows XP mounted in center console
• Internet on the go with Sprint wireless AirCard
• TV on the go with Slingbox
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
• Two 7" headrest monitors featuring built-in DVD player
• One 10" flip-down monitor with VGA input
• One converted factory screen to display movies, computer, and Xbox 360 in-dash
• Custom Zune display mount connecting to trailer hitch to display Kicker Zune player
• Full Katzkin custom interior
• Suede headliner and interior parts
• Xbox 360
• Custom Zune paint job

Now before you get too excited, keep in mind that it's limited to US-only (and you've got to have a valid drivers license, so no kids either). That said, for those of us licensed, US-based drivers, you can enter daily to increase your odds. The drawing is September 8, which as GotZune points out, is the same day rumored for the launch of Zune HD... coool. Good luck to all!