Technical Thoughts of Jorriss

PS3 or Xbox 360? I think this question is for the sages. My official response is idunno. In the end it’s all about the games. In the beginning it’s all about the hardware. Major Nelson, who works on the XBox team breaks down the PS3 and Xbox 360 specs and compares them in four parts (part one, part two, part three, part four). Great read but we still won’t really know until the hardware has been released. Via Scoble

Microsoft has announced the next version of Windows Mobile and it’s not called “Windows Mobile 2005”. The official name will be “Windows Mobile 5.0”. I’ll never understand why MS marketing has to continually change the names of their products. How can you present a stable brand when the name changes with each version? Anyways, here is the feature list courtesy of Engadget. This sounds like a great release for developers.

·         New mobile versions of Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile Viewer, and Excel Mobile.

·         Improved one-handed navigation so you don’t have to use a stylus.

·         A new camera API that’ll make it easier for developers to write apps that use a device’s built-in camera.

·         ActiveSync 4.0.

·         Better WiFi support for Smartphones.

·         Support for push-to-talk and video calling.

·         Improved Bluetooth (e.g. ability to use ActiveSync over Bluetooth with multiple PCs).

·         Support for “persistent memory,” which means that you won’t lose all your data when your battery dies (a feature the Treo 650 and several other Palms already have).

·         Support for USB 2.0 so you can connect up to external hard drives. The press release was poorly worded, MSFT meant support for USB 2.0 AND support for internal hard drives. Not support for USB 2.0 for connecting external hard drives

Update: 5/12/05 1:20 PM - You can also view Bill Gates introducing the new Windows Mobile 5.0.

Microsoft has just released the latest and greatest service pack for SQL Server 2000. SP 4 will contain a new version of MSXML and enhancements for 64-bit hardware. But here is the big reason to install the service pack, 230 bugs have been fixed in this release. For a full description of SP4 read this article on Tech Target.

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Engadget scored an interview with Bill Gates. The interview focused on Windows Mobile, Windows Media Center, the Xbox and the TabletPC. Part one and part two can both be found on Engadget. They will have a podcast version of the interview available next week.

Update - 5/5/05 5:37 PM - The podcast can be retrieved here.