Related articles

• How To: Windows XP Mode In...Ubuntu Linux?

  With Windows 7 due out later this month, many of you are no doubt counting the days until release. I've played with both the beta and RC of Microsoft's latest OS, and quite honestly, I liked what I saw. If this had come out in 2006 when 'Longhorn' was promised, I have no doubt that I would not have switched to Linux (at least not yet). However, that's not how events played out. What really happened was 'Longhorn' became Vista, and it didn't make it out the door until 2007. It arrived late, buggy, irritating (UAC), overpriced, underwhelming, confusing (licensing), and in some cases, incompatible. Now, almost three years later, and almost five since Longhorn's initially-planned release, Microsoft is releasing the OS they should have launched several years ago. Unfortunately, Windows 7 is also overpriced (slightly less so than Vista), and even more confusing. But first, let's go over what Microsoft did right. Windows 7 is going to launch when the company said it will launch. Because of a long beta and RC testing phase, 7 is not going to be as buggy as Vista was when it debuted. Microsoft has taken the UAC down a notch. It has also come down on the price a little. The highest edition of 7 (Ultimate) is fifty percent more expensive than the highest edition of XP (Pro). This is opposed to 100% more expensive (Vista Ultimate versus XP Pro). But fair enough, the price did drop somewhat. Underwhelming, 7 is not. In terms of its user interface, Vista was pretty much XP with a reorganized Start Menu and a black taskbar. Flip 3D was basically nothing more than a choppy gimmick (though the thumbnail previews of windows within the taskbar are pretty sweet; Windows 7 kept them, and I use them in Linux). Windows 7 actually succeeds in terms of a being a unified vision that pays tribute to the brand. Everything is made of glass in 7. Vista began this trend with the transparent glass window borders and the overlaid faux-reflection texture. But 7 really takes the use of transparent glass and reflections to the extreme. The window borders, menus, some applications, and even the taskbar and start menu are all made of glass. New tricks include being able to make all windows transparent to see the desktop. As a total package, Windows 7 has what I consider to be the first true Windows theme. Finally, we're left with how Microsoft figured out how to solve its backward-compatibility issues. With the introduction of XP Mode (XPM), Windows 7 will not fall victim to the nightmare of incompatibilities suffered by early-adopters of Vista. XPM is a fully-licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 3 running in a VirtualPC Virtual Machine (VM). In many cases XPM is the clincher that holdouts needed in order to finally upgrade. Unfortunately, the confusion created by the Windows 7 licensing scheme has all but ruined their compatibility fix. XPM is only included in Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. If you want a full retail boxed copy of Windows 7 with XPM, you're going to have to fork over $300 for Professional, or $320 for Ultimate. If you already own a copy of Windows XP or Vista, you can pay $200 for the upgrade to Professional, or $220 for Ultimate. Let that sink in for a minute. That's right, Windows 7 Home Premium (and below) does not have XPM. Most systems sold by retailers come with a version of Windows completely lacking XPM. Wait, it gets better. Thanks to Microsoft's ingenious Windows Anytime Upgrade, consumers who bought a new PC with Windows 7 Home Premium can upgrade to Professional for $90 or Ultimate for $140. If you were sold Home Basic or Starter edition, you'll have to first upgrade to Home Premium for $80. Like I said, 'ingenious.' One way or another, you are probably going to have to pay Microsoft some amount of money if you want XPM... ...or not. If you're open to using Linux , you too can have a fast and secure next-gen OS with full XP compatibility, all for free!

• A look at the NPD games sales charts for the month of March 2006 tells you everything you need to know about how consoles and PCs are dividing like drifting continents, with game genres split between them like separate species. The weird hybrid of anime and Disneyland, Kingdom Hearts II, took the lead spot again in the console sales charts, with mainly action combat games - among them, mostly first-person shooters - and sports titles following. Meanwhile, the PC games chart - whose titles now sell with one-third the quantity - is dominated by simulated worlds and gothic role-playing, with the add-on Sims 2: Open for Business leading the top spot, and Sims 2 itself at #7. Interspersed among them are all the major genre franchises we've come to know, with the powerhouse World of Warcraft clinching tightly to #5, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion at #2, and Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, D&D, Age of Empires, and Civilization IV all well represented. Are PC games becoming a minor player? Not really, believes Parks Associates' Michael Cai. While that continent may continue to drift, he believes it's in a state of transformation, and may yet have its just revenge. The secret is in the online component. Consoles and console games dominate the retail market today, he explained, and because of that, they command the spotlight. But as the online business models for PC games change, away from the "per-box" retail model and more toward subscriptions, gaming-on-demand, and ad-subsidized services (more on that later), the big franchise games and role-playing simulations that are already well established on the PC side, are perhaps best suited to these models. They fit like a glove. A "blood elf" - a kind of well-endowed Darryl Hannah/Christopher Walken hybrid, due to inhabit the long-awaited Continent of the Upgrades in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Welcoming the new business models to E3 this year could be an absolute blitz of PC games franchises, all of which are battling with each other for the biggest splash. I would say there's a "blizzard" ahead, but that name's been taken already. Blizzard's The Burning Crusade expansion to WoW, expected at E3, actually will create an entirely new continent, called "Outland," where one might find a new race of so-called "blood elves." (Oh, you never will believe where those Keebler cookies come from.) Meanwhile, Namco - yes, the company that introduced the world to Galaxian and Pac-Man - will actually try to knock WoW off its throne, with its much-anticipated Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. The company describes it as dealing particularly with "WAR, focusing on the armies and battles while de-emphasizing the tedious aspects of base and resource management." Which should already win this title some followers at the Defense Dept. Sticking a finger in the notion that first-person shooters are entirely migrating to console-based platforms, CryTek is likely to demonstrate its even-more-perfected rendering engine, in a demo of its upcoming sequel to Far Cry, entitled Crysis. This is the game that should prove the viability of Microsoft's DirectX 10 rendering library, due to become one of the foundation components of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The difference between DirectX 10 worlds and DirectX 9 worlds (for Windows XP), gamers are led to believe, will be clearly visible. But if the first-person shooter crowd is all gathering together around consoles, and if shooter games are more adapted to the retail model than the online sales model (How long can a gamer go on subscribing to the right to keep shooting down the same thing?), then could Crysis be less well received among publishers and retailers than it's likely to be among fans? This could be a bright comet of a game that burns out fairly quickly, as franchise role-playing and strategy titles such as Midway's Unreal Tournament 2007 appear well positioned to command and conquer - to borrow a phrase - the resurrected realm of PC gaming. And there's one more little thing: While fans of the Star Trek movies will happily remind you that it's generally the even-numbered films that are the best, and the odd-numbered ones that are as cursed as a red-shirted security officer in a dark cave, they'll also tell you that there has never really been a completely perfect Star Trek game, for any genre, in the last quarter-century. So the question on at least some people's minds at E3 (they'll be the ones in Starfleet uniforms) is whether Perpetual's Star Trek Online - which is likely to be previewed on Tuesday - will break this curse. Set 20 years after the last "Next Generation" movie, with slightly updated ships, set decoration, and uniforms designed under the direction of no less than Trek veteran artist Andrew Probert, the screen shots of this MMORPG look perhaps even more stunning than some of the odd-numbered films (Trek V comes to mind). But with the promise of away-team exploration of multiple worlds, and true 3D combat among fleets of starships, manned by multiple live players simultaneously, the question transcends whether this game will feel like a Trek movie, and becomes whether it places the gamer in anything resembling his understanding of the Trek universe.

• Boy, Don MacDonald, former general manager of consumer electronics efforts and recently promoted to vice president of sales and market and general manager of corporate brands and marketing, will not be happy seeing Viiv appearing on this list (MacDonald gave us an in-depth interview on Viiv in July.) Let's take a step back from all the advertising and marketing blurbs and have a real world look at the entertainment PC platforms of the two processor manufacturers. Intel and AMD promised a whole new approach (two different approaches, actually) to digital TV. Viiv and Live are technologies that are designed to make the computer more useful for entertainment and provide the functionality of what is often described as a digital entertainment hub in our home. About a year ago, we were told Viiv would be key to participate in a movie premiere (at home, on your sofa, whether you like the movie theater or not) and bring a wealth of content to our home. The fact is that this promise has not become a reality yet. Viiv and the competing Live! are marketing names for a combination of hardware components. Both names indicate very little added use for the PC buyer today, but allowed both processor manufacturers to stick yet another label on your new PC. An early Viiv PC In preparation for Vista, I recently bought a new PC for our office and it appears that these days you really don't have much choice in PC operating systems, at least when you want to buy from your local retail store. Windows Media Center Edition is standard in the price range above $500 and more than half of these PCs carry either a Viiv or a Live! logo. So I ended up with a Viiv PC and I was surprised how little Viiv actually offers. Viiv Content, which is often criticized by AMD as closed feature, is virtually non-existent and Intel's ClickStar joint venture with Morgan Freeman currently tells me that I have to wait another week for a movie to be available. I admit that I have very little experience with AMD Live! and I'd have to speculate on available Live! content. But I don't think that it is content why Viiv and Live! are disappointing. The problem really is that both concepts are not transparent enough to make sense for consumers who consider spicing up their living room experience with a PC. Intel wants to be right under the TV and AMD, which launched Live! as sort of an anti-Intel answer, wants the PC to be a PC but stream entertainment content throughout the house (read this article for some more detail on Live!). There has to be an obvious added value of these technologies to make sense. But both, Intel and AMD, are currently not providing a value that goes beyond the Media Center software. Plus, keep in mind, AMD and Intel are high-tech brands that never succeeded in consumer electronics. Viiv and Live! do not have the genes to change that track record. Viiv and Live! are marketing terms that fell well short of expectations this year. An improvement for 2007 is rather unlikely, but we know that Apple is prepping an entertainment device, which means that Intel will be equipping a much more conclusive entertainment platform in the near future - even if it won't carry the "Viiv" label.