Good ISP!

I was shooting a video (yes, my ugly mug on camera) at the Microsoft Lincoln Square building in downtown Bellevue today, a really amazing money-is-no-object-for-good-working-conditions kind of place. Just for fun, I ran a speed test on their internet connection. The results were so amazing I immediately took a screenshot of it:

Just in case you can’t pick out the numbers, that’s almost 10 Megabits/sec up, and 81 Megabits/sec down. That’s OVER 10 times the bandwidth any of us (non-FIOS) people get. I resumed some FTP downloads I was doing, and man, those little download progress bars were flying! Note the ISP is Microsoft itself, with a ping time of .4 ms J.

The Kindle: A Bookshelf In Your Hand

"I need to read something before I go to sleep. I don't care if it's the newspaper the fish came wrapped in; I have to read a little."  - Robert Heinlein, Glory Road (paraphrased as remembered)

I finally broke down a couple of weeks ago and purchased a Kindle, Amazon's electronic book reader. i'd been thinking about it for a while, then decided that despite the price and potential drawbacks I'd give it a try.

Why a Kindle, rather than simply reading books from my phone or computer like I've done many times in the past? The first reason is that I'm using an AT&T Tilt running Windows Mobile 6. Though the Tilt (aka HTC Kaiser) is arguably the most powerful and flexible phone platform out there, ebook reading requires the Microsoft Reader for pocket PC. This product is terrible, and what's worse has really awful support. I purchased several ebooks, and whenever it tries to open them, the reader on my phone gets a memory leak and eats up all available memory until it hangs or crashes. My attempts at getting this fixed have largely fallen on deaf ears. Plus there's the battery life consideration; phone power on a WM6 is always a concern and this is just another drain.

What drew me to the Kindle is the idea of doing book reading - just book reading - better than anything else electronic on the market. Replicating the book reading experience as closely as possible. Carrying ALL my books, not just the one that fits comfortably in my travel gear, with me.  I loved reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History Of Nearly Everything, but I never want to have to schlep it around with me again.

What do I love about it?

• Its electronic ink display is unlike any electronic reading surface you've ever seen. It's monochrome, which at first feels like a step backward. But compare it to the physical book reading experience: 99% of the books we read are monochrome anyway. The brighter the environment, the easier it is to read.
• It has a long battery life, longer still if you only turn the wireless on when you need it. Under normal circumstances I don't even turn it off, I just put it on standby. And it has a great screensaver with very nice monochrome graphics of famous writers or book illuminations, or tips.
• Its wireless communication with the world's biggest bookstore is an inseparable part of what it is. You don't need a computer. You can order a kindle-ized book (generally $10 or less) from either your device or the Amazon kindle store, and it'll download in the background. Voila! You have a new book! It's increased my book purchases (which Amazon of course loves) because it's so easy. Just like the itunes model, which I'm sure Amazon used to enlist publishers.
• I now carry a selection of books with me, and I can read whatever suits my mood. For example I have, David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed In Flames, David McCullough's John Adams (a massive book to tote around), American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri Levy, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and a Wall Street Journal subscription I'm trying out. (I started with print, moved to print+web, and am now just web edition. I think I still favor the web edition, especially with the wireless problems at my location.)
• It has a dedicated font button which allows me to easily adjust the font size. This is great, because I can easily switch the size depending on whether I have my reading glasses on or not, or how good the light is. Thank you Amazon for the design decision!
• It has essentially unlimited storage. It will hold 200 books, but you can add an SD card to increase local storage. Further, Amazon keeps the record of your purchase, and you can erase and re-download a book any time.
• The actual hand holding experience is okay. it's nice and thin, but had several relatively sharp images. I learned last week that Mark Russinovich has one too (that Bill Bryson experience might have turned him too, as I know he was reading it at the same time), and he complains about how the lower-right corner pokes your hand when you hold it in your right hand. I was using it in its paperback-like cover, but turns out it's most comfortable and natural to hold it in your left hand. Nonetheless, the ergonomics need some work; the Next Page button on the right is huge, and in general it's almost impossible to pick it up while on without accidentally turning the page. If you want to show it to someone, switch to a book you've already read or risk losing your place :-|
• There's the geek experience. This thing turns heads because it's not just a new device, it's a new type of device that's still extremely rare. I just got my luggage inspected and 20 (friendly) questions from the TSA guy searching my luggage! They thought I might have had a notebook computer in there.

What I don't love so much about the Kindle:

• The display flashes completely black briefly when you "turn the page". The manual says this is because the page is refreshing itself with each turn, and it sounds reasonable. But it's disconcerting to be reading a sentence and having a big black flash in the middle of it.
• There's very little in the way of graphics at all beyond the screen saver. It's certainly capable of it, so the lack makes me wonder if it's just because it's new enough that no one has gotten the hang of it yet...or because the screen saver graphics were painstakingly rendered by hand.
• I have almost zero connectivity at my house with the Verizon network it uses. My workaround is to purchase a book on the computer, then carry the Kindle out for an errand or something and the book downloads.
• The ergonomics are still 1.0.
• Though the selection is enormous, I can't find all the books I'd like in Kindle format.

And finally - I still have to bring a magazine along for when I'm not allowed to have electronics running at takeoff and landing!

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Amazon Kindle,Kindle review,Robert Heinlein,Mark Russinovich,Bill Bryson,David Sedaris

Speaking At TechEd 2008

It's been a very busy week here down in Orlando at TechEd 2008 IT Pro, Microsoft's conference for IT professionals.

I gave one session on the new, deeply-disliked Volume Licensing methodology everyone has to use to deploy volume versions of Vista and Windows 2008. Despite the dryness of the material, the DISLIKE of the material, and the lateness of the hour (5 PM), the session was well received! 223 people (about an 85% full room) with an overall rating of 7.75 of a possible 9. (The top rated sessions are getting 8.4's and 8.5's.) From the comments, demos would have pulled it higher...but there's just about nothing to see in volume licensing. I'll have to work on that.

I spent much of the rest of the time running around doing odds and ends and occasionally hitting sessions in between. A few interesting (to me, anyway) anecdotes:

• Picked up lunch for Mark Minasi as the poor guy had been blowing and going all day; he had no time at all between his sessions. By the time I'd hiked out to his breakout room, the session - a roundtable on security with him, Mark Russinovich, Steve Riley, and a couple of other folks - was so full it was locked out. (They're the conference stars and get very high ratings on their talks.) So, I sat outside, did some work, until the session was nearly over. When it finished, Minasi bolted out for his next session before I could give it to him. Before I could chase him down, I said hi to Russinovich, and HE ate it!
• On MarkR's advice, I found and introduced myself to Michael Leworthy, the Windows Server Infrastructure session chair, to express my interest at speaking at IT Forum (Tech Ed in Europe), and it was a productive discussion. Who knows, maybe I'll make it over there...
• Got a Vista question answered. (The only way to turn hibernation back on after you've deleted the hibernation file is to run powercfg /hibernate on - works like a charm)
• Helped connect some people together, always a feel-good kind of activity
• Got to hang out with my friend Guido Grillenmeier a little bit, always looked forward to as he's based in Frankfurt.
• And of course, got to spend time with my MVP buddies Gil, Joe, Brian, Laura, and catch up with my Intel friends Derek, Alix, and Roy. Gee, this makes me sound like more of a social butterfly than I really am! You see, 95% of my time is spent working out of a home office where my audience is usually just two dogs :).
• Received a cache of uber-schwag for MVPs only, told by secret MVP word-of-mouth-net. I knew there was a reason I was an MVP!

Tonight is the conference party at Universal Studios; Microsoft rents out a large chunk of the place, and there's food, drinks, and beer & wine right out on the sidewalks (at least there was the last time I was at one of these shindigs). Plus the magazine is throwing something too. Decisions, decisions...

Technorati Tags: TechEd 2008,volume licensing,VA 2.0

Voices Inside My Head

It's been a while since I've posted anything, mainly because nothing too drastically interesting has been going on. Lots of work, but how interesting is it to hear about someone else go on about their job? Plus, I've been writing quite a bit and I'm not quite the dedicated author that will sit down to write after a day full of writing.

Because of all my travel I broke down and finally bought a pair of Bose noise-reducing headphones. I'd stayed away from them because of their price, their size, and relative lack of usability. (Where I'd walk through an airport connection with earbuds in, I won't do it with clunky headphones) I'd been using very nice Shure E4D earphones, which get a lot of fidelity in a tiny ear-fitting package, and since they fill the ear canal do a decent job of cutting down outside noise.

For my wife's work (she's a professional clarinetist) we'd done a listening test with several good-quality headphone manufacturers - AKG, Audio-Technica, my Shure earbuds, and the Bose. Somewhat to my surprise and chagrin, we discovered we preferred the Bose above all the others. (I'd considered Grado too, but never quite went down that road.) I say chagrin, because I didn't expect the Bose to perform as well and of course they're very pricey. But I think the noise reduction helps in almost all circumstances to help you hear fine details.

So, we got the Bose for her. Some time later, I borrowed them for an overseas trip to Geneva. They turned out to be a lifesaver because I ended up in the noisy tail of a 747, and they did a remarkable job. After I changed jobs I bought myself a pair of the QuietComfort 3s, the on-the-ear (supra-aural) kind with the rechargeable battery.

I haven't regretted it, and finally come to the main point for this post: it's been fun rediscovering the details of the music in my music library. I, we, all of us, don't listen to music sitting down in our living rooms any more. I haven't upgraded my main speakers for probably 15 years. I should, but nowadays you have to purchase a matched set of home theater speakers and, as I said, I just don't sit in front of them for music any more. We have our house wired for audio, with good speakers in every room, so It's just kind of everywhere.

I find my detailed listening now happens when I'm traveling and have the luxury / necessity of sitting still in one place. One thing that's different with real headphones is that I've discovered deep bass again. And not the ridiculous overemphasized bass of some popular music, simply the true bass of whatever I'm listening to. Of course there's greater detail in all ranges - Joni Mitchell's voice, Jaco Pastorius' lyrical bass, Freddy Hubbard's rich trumpet, the pizzicato of the Tokyo String Quartet playing the Ravel Quartet. I recommend the experience!