I've known Thomas Hawk for about a year or so now, having met only once in person at our co-hosted Geek Dinner. What's impressed me most about Thomas is his fresh perspective that is unfettered by allegiances to any particular technology or brand as a high-end enthusiast.  He's a family man, works in the financial industry and is smart and pointed about his technology feedback. You can see this yourself in his criticisms regarding HD across the DVR space, and admittedly regarding a few products I've worked on :). 

I got a mail from Thomas yesterday:

You guys are really working on great technology.  Can’t wait to blog about it...

Pinged the folks in PR. No embargo on the bloggers - let's start the conversation, get the feedback. Thomas rolls up his sleeves on what he saw here. My favorite excerpt:

One of the most impressive aspects about Longhorn is the speed with which it catalogs, organizes and searches your PC. In addition to great new views (you can see a physical representation of every file on your PC that can be magnified as you move the scroll wheel of your mouse), the speed at which Longhorn renders the views was spectacular. Best of all was Jim’s reaction when I expressed my delight at how quickly views were rendered. Jim reacted strongly and said that the speed that we were seeing was unacceptable and that over the course of the next year the system will get even faster.

Sometimes for those of us close to building the technology, we're so familiar with the product that we start to take things for granted, both big and little- since we're running our products for weeks or months in builds before others get to really see it. It's great that the hard-working teams are getting recognition for their hard work.  Stay tuned... lots more to do.

Dell starts shipping the XPS Gen 5 with a P4 EE Dual-Core processor next week. PC Magazine has a full review and notes under the "Pros", "Too many to list, but here are a couple--dual core processors and dual-TV tuners".  PC Magazine does on to say,

"With the addition of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005, the XPS Gen 5 is more than just a gaming system, it's Dell's top-of-the-line gaming/multimedia machine and our latest Editors' Choice." 5 out of 5- Excellent

At $4G's, you're going to pay for it, but this system definitely sets a new bar in the boutique area. Interesting that PCMag notes that it is available direct with monitor using Dell e-value code 6V411-XPS5PC.  I haven't seen that level of detail before but it's welcomed. 

Looks like a new conversation is about to start... startsomethingpc.com has a video trailer and an RSS feed (with video enclosure) up on it.  More details to come on April 25th.

Today is the day... the first day I can start talking about what I've been working on for the past months. LONGHORN, the next-generation Windows OS.

When I was first asked to join the team, I had read reports that the de-coupling of WinFS, Avalon, and Indigo made this release "XPSP3".  I was skeptical, and I did some digging.  I delved into primary and secondary research. I read the specs, I talked to PM's and Devs. And I came away fired up.

You know why?  Because many got it wrong. WinFS is important, metadata is important, but the overwhelming majority benefits for how end-users actually want to find, view, and organize their documents, media, and assorted files is going to be delivered.

Today, you'll start hearing more details about Longhorn. C|Net, PC Magazine, and CRN are all running stories so you can go there for the mainstream skinny.  I'm not going to re-hash what they're saying, but here's a few points of my own:

1.  There will be a LH build given out at WinHEC.  This will not be Beta 1. This is a driver and hardware developer release to get the industry building hardware solutions for Longhorn.  Beta 1 will be this summer.

2.  I used to get really bummed by the "grouping" feature in Windows XP - r-mouse in My Documents and choose "Arrange Icons By|Show in Groups".  Some thought it was fantastic but for me it wasn't very compelling when I have family members who still can't find the files they've just downloaded.  The ability to visualize and organize your information in Longhorn kicks ass.  It's FAST already and going to get even better.  It goes beyond physical location of files. WinFS wasn't required to deliver this and that's where I think many stumbled in their perceptions.

3. Don't expect to see a lot of updates to or new consumer-focused features right now. Right now it's about fundamentals- getting hardware to work great, tapping into features that are in most PCs lying dormant for 90%+ of your time, addressing how people view and organize their information. They'll be plenty of cool new wizardry to come.

So... I've added a new category on my blog for "Longhorn" and an RSS feed for just that topic.  As I can talk more and provide my own perspective on things that are happening, I will do it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, you can send me questions but understand I won't be able to respond.  I will start keeping tally of the questions and answer as many as I can, when I can without executing a career-limiting maneuver. :)

The most often-asked question I get is, "What TV tuner should I select for my MCE PC?" (ok, by those in the US at least).  Tech Report compares the ATI TV Wonder Elite, eVGA NVTV (based on Nvidia's tuner design), and Hauppauge PVR-150MCE.  This is an article definitely worth reading.  I think the video quality comparisons are a bit too subjective, but it's a good comparision of any number of performance and quality gates in the technical sense.

Thomas Hawk writes:

Dell Inspiron 9300 review by PC Magazine PC Magazine is out with a review of the new Dell Inspiron 9300, their first Media Center laptop. They rate it "Very Good" and as the bottom line write, "The Dell Inspiron 9300 is the company's first Media Center Edition notebook, and it's a fine effort.

Hop on over to  Thomas' site for more details

According to Slashdot:

In a major hiring coup, the MSN Search blog announced that Yahoo's head of Research and Development, Dr.Gary William Flake has now joined MSN. According to Oshoma Momoh, General Manager, MSN Search, Dr.Flake will be 'responsible for bridging the innovation happening between Microsoft Research and MSN and for setting the technology vision and future direction of the MSN portal, web search, desktop search and monetization engine.' Dr.Flake is also the first person to be directly hired as a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, an elite group that has Dave Cutler and Anders Hejlsberg among other luminaries"

I'm getting that old feeling again.  Like that first early morning when you can smell Spring in the air. Talk to Dean over on IE and you'll see how fired up he is. He loves new ideas - I gave him one and the team is investigating if they can make it happen (more on that later).  MSN Messenger 7 has cool new features.  MS Office Communicator is set to change the way I work and make me more productive. I went to multimon a few months ago, haven't had a single glitch and I can never go back too.

And the more I talk to folks on the Longhorn team, the old excitement about shipping great software is back.  I can't talk about that...yet. :)

Barb Bowman details what you need to do to get your MCE Recorded TV onto an Playstation Portable (PSP) in 4 steps. 

Part of the challenge with mainstream adoption of WMA Pro is the cabling required to install. 3 cables from your sound card into 6+ RCA jacks on your receiver if you support it.

Why can't you just plug in a single optical cable like you can for Dolby Digital? Now you can starting at ~$179.00US. Pioneer has started shipping their new line of receivers with WMA Pro support and all sorts of goodies. And you get a whole bunch of formats to boot.

What is WMA Pro? WMA Pro offers full 5.1-7.1 audio that's was the world's first for the Web, and is also distributed with HD movies on WMV HD discs, movies, trailers etc at a fraction the size of other surround sound audio formats.

If anyone gets one, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Anyone who remembers ABC's School House Rock will appreciate Hitachi's new "Get Perpendicular" video. Hitachi has a great new HD disk storage that has the promise of increasing HD capacity 10x. This video explains how in terms that even my mother would understand.  Kudos to Hitachi for trying something old, and adding a little bit new ;)

Courtesy of News.com:

Gateway, which on Monday will deliver a new line of desktops and notebooks, wants to lure multimedia enthusiasts with its $999 832GM desktop. The computer comes with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system. I don't have detailed specs yet but they should be in soon.

I'm loving the new MSN Messenger 7. Now officially out of beta, you can show what music you're listening to, set a personal message, get better integration with MSN Spaces and more.

My family is encouraging me to do more personal blogging of our young son's life. There are so many little things he does that we are amazed or humored by on a daily basis and then promptly forget in the bustle of being adults. My wife set up an MSN Space for family and she's started blogging.  It's official- blogging is mainstream in the Alexander household.

The Windows Media Center freight train just keeps on rolling. Earlier this week, MTV announced plans to launch a Web-based video channel called, MTV Overdrive by April 25th. Content will include News, Music, On TV and Movies.  New movie trailers will be made available and broadcasts will be done in Windows Media Video. And here's the surprise announcement...

They will soon release a version of Overdrive optimized for Windows XP Media Center Edition!

I'll post more details as soon as I get them.  This is a big deal, even if you don't fall into the MTV demographic.

More proof that there is a market for music subscriptions-according to an article appearing in the Mac Observer, "Napster's subscriber service soared 53% during the company's fourth fiscal quarter. Napster announced Tuesday that its subscriber base grew to 410,000, up some 143,000 users. The company also raised its fourth quarter revenue estimate to between US$16.5 million and $17.5 million, though it did not release earnings estimates.

Maybe those ads are working after all :)

Ian Dixon's excellent "The Media Center Show" has been picked up by The Podcast Network. Congratulations Ian!  This is great to see. During last week's 'cast, he interviews Charlie Owen and the folks from ZeTools, an Emmy-award-winning firm that offers work-for-hire in creating robust Media Center applications and services for customers such as AOL and the ABC Television Network. Neat stuff- I'm even learning more.

I have a few presentations coming up in Europe next month and I'd like to showcase some of our smaller MCE PC Makers, ISVs and service providers doing amazing things in Europe, a decidedly non-US-centric presentation by-design on my part.  There's some great work coming out of Europe for MCE - here's

Of course I'm chatting with folks internally to get the latest lists but I wanted to continue the conversation more transparently because I know I don't have all the answers. If you have MCE application & service providers in Europe that you like, or PC makers creating some bold designs (OEM, ODM, or System Builder), please drop me a line and I'll add them to my list to consider for demos. If you are a European ISV, IHV, OEM, ODM, SB or another acronym, also feel free to touch base about current or upcoming product to consider for my presentation. 

Thanks in advance

A bunch of Windows Media Center Geek Dinners are coming up hosted by CharlieO and even myself:

Charlie Owen from the Media Center development blogs,

I'm in Los Angeles, Washington, DC this coming week and Charlotte, NC the following. Anybody want to get together and have a geek dinner (or its lighter weight cousin, after geek dinner drinks)?

Here are the evenings I will *probably* be available...

Los Angeles: Tuesday, April 5

Washington, DC: Thursday, April 7 or Friday April 8

Charlotte, NC: Monday, April 11

Charlie's got the Geek Dinner bug which is a good thing. 

We're now also getting closer to our May 5th Geek Dinner in London- more details coming soon.