Doug Aamoth…

I’ve been using the MSI Wind and for a little while now and have checked out a handful of things that our readers have asked about. I’ll have a full review of the notebook itself coming up soon but in the meantime, I’ve tested the following:

Skype video recording and playback, HD video playback (WMVHD and AVCHD), Photoshop, Google Earth, StarCraft, Ubuntu 8.04, DVD playback with a mounted .iso image using DAEMON Tools, and more. Thanks for all the great questions, everyone…

Here’s the first in a series of tests that I’ll be running on the Wind, based on your comments. This is Skype Video, which I’m happy to report works quite well.

HD Video Playback

High-definition Windows Media Video files play back without any problems. Files in the AVCHD format, however, are nah-gah, nah-gah, not gonna work here.

Photoshop CS2

Unfortunately, Adobe’s taken the Photoshop CS3 trial down until July 1st so I had to make do with CS2. I used a 6-megapixel JPEG file, which opened in 27 seconds.

Google Earth OpenGL versus DirectX

Google Earth works okay on the Wind. It’s certainly useable but if you’re looking to use it a lot, you might need something more powerful. OpenGL mode works better than DirectX mode, especially when zooming in.

StarCraft

I’m happy to report that StarCraft runs just fine. No problems there. It’s very smooth.

Ubuntu 8.04

Bad news on this front. I wasn’t able to get a standard installation of Ubuntu 8.04 to load up. That’s not to say that someone with more time and Linux know-how wouldn’t be able to get it going, though. It took a looooong time to load before throwing me to a prompt, although one time it got all the way to loading up the Common Unix Printing System (cupsd) but it ended up just hanging there until I eventually shut down the computer. The Ubuntu Netbook Remix should work, though, as it’s designed for this type of device. I’m not savvy enough to figure it all out quickly enough, unfortunately.

DVD Playback Test

I made an .iso file out of an old DVD and mounted it using DAEMON Tools. Everything worked perfectly. The Wind was running on battery power for this test, too, so it’d definitely make a good airplane companion.

Stress Test

The Atom processor is surprisingly tough. It shot up to around 95% with all of the following stuff happening at once:

- Firefox 3 with five tabs open, one playing a YouTube video

- Windows Media Player playing a WMA file

- Skype loaded but idle

- Webcam utility capturing video

- Large ZIP file being unzipped

- Opening Photoshop CS2

When everything was idle but the above programs were all still open, CPU usage hovered around 60% or so.

Geekbench 2

The Wind scored an 837 using Primate Labs’ Geekbench 2 benchmarking software. Here are some other systems with similar scores.

EVDOinfo.com is reporting that Verizon has halved its per-megabyte overage fees for EVDO data and will set a cap of $250 per month in maximum fees for any three of a customer’s billing cycles. After that, subscribers will be subject to unlimited, non-capped overage charges. So if you go over your 5GB limit by one extra gigabyte, it could cost you $256. However, Verizon’s been nice enough to offer those poor saps who blast through all three of their capped-at-$250 months a 10GB per month plan for $199. Come on. Might as well just sign up for three separate 5GB per month plans as long as you’re getting yanked around. This new policy took effect on June 22nd.

Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint all offer the same laptop data plans for the same prices with the same 5GB limit. All it would take would be for one of these major providers to (once again) offer truly unlimited high-speed data and hordes of customers would switch. Funny how all three are towing the same 5GB-per-month line now, huh? Not one of them even dares to offer, say, 6GB per month or, God forbid, 10GB per month for the same price as the other two. I smell collusion. There, I said it.

Alltel comes closest to bucking the trend with its truly unlimited high-speed data plan at $60 per month, but guess who just got purchased by Verizon?

“Top Spin 3” from 2K Sports was released a few days ago for the Wii and, although I’m not a huge tennis buff, I’m a fan of games that lend themselves to a semi-realistic experience with the Wii remote. The Sun took Top Spin 3 for a whirl and gave the game a 92% rating. The game features players like Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, and Andy Roddick, each with their signature moves and whatnot.

You can also create your own character and play online. Also, unlike Wii Sports Tennis, you’ll actually have to (get to) manually move your player around with the nunchuck.

Just one man’s opinion, but I’ve never had any beef with traditional ping pong. If you, however, find yourself longing to play on, say, a round table with five other people (perhaps all wearing mesh jerseys), then this modular ping pong table is for you.

So what about the “modular” part of the modular ping pong table? Well, it can be reconfigured to suit your fancy. Check out the mind-bending configuration below!

In fact, you can put together multiple tables, allowing “1-12 or more players to play table tennis with exciting new game configurations.” Apparently, even conventional ping pong tables can be retrofitted to accommodate your new paddle-happy lifestyle.

The “Table Tennis Triples and Modular Table Tennis System” is currently up for a 2008 Next Big Thing Award. The system was designed by Guenter Arndt and apparently there’s a book in the works with various game configurations and rules (see the website here). There’s a video of some three on three action, found here.

via The Guardian

Owners of super-light laptops can appreciate the miracle of carbon fiber, a strong but light material being used more and more in high-end notebooks.

Airbus is now using the same carbon fiber material in the wings of its new A400M military aircraft. The reduced weight of the wings “cuts the fuel consumption by at least 20%,” said Dave Phipps, head of the Airbus carbon fiber research department.

“It’s a revolutionary technology. It is so much lighter, and yet just as strong and just as safe,” Phipps told BBC News. The A400M planes will replace current C-130 planes currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first A400M will be shown in Seville, Spain today but the planes won’t take flight until later this summer.

Skip ahead to about the two minute mark in the above video to see an example of what the Image Fulgurator actually does. It’s basically a device that projects your favorite messages onto various surfaces when it detects flashes from nearby cameras. No tourist would be safe from your hilarious “Down with Pants!” message splashed across all their photos from the Basilica di Santa Maria.

It was designed by Julius von Bismarck and there’s a patent pending on the device. One possible downside is that it almost looks like a submachine gun, which might make it harder for merry pranksters to move about stealthily. Photos after the jump.

Core 77 via Engadget

Something about this deal just sounds kind of “off” to me. Today, for one day only, you can get two free tacos at Jack in the Box if you bring in a gas receipt.

So go pump some gas and get that petroleum stink all over your hands before you dig into two hot, beefy summertime tacos from the same restaurant where I gained thirty pounds in one month during college.

via dealnews

Hey, look – gas prices keep going up! How about that? We can’t save you any money on gas but we can give you three free months of TeleNav GPS service on your cell phone. There’s a feature that finds cheap gas in your nearby vicinity, too. Hey, I guess we CAN save you money on gas in a roundabout way. Here’s more info…

TeleNav GPS Navigator includes access to updated gas prices for thousands of local gas stations around the country. You can quickly search for the cheapest gas in your area and get GPS turn-by-turn directions there. Gas prices are listed in the Business Finder directory under “Gas by Price.”

Sounds easy enough, right? Here’s how the contest will work…

Leave a comment with a guess at what the June 30th national average price for regular-grade gasoline will be (it’s currently $4.082 as of Monday, see the chart above). Make sure to use your actual e-mail address in the comment form so we can contact you if you win. The three geniuses with the closest guesses will each win three months of TeleNav GPS service for use on their cell phones. If you comment more than once, we’ll use your most recent comment for the contest.

Guessing ends at 11:59 PM EDT one week from today, Wednesday, June 25th. Winners will be contacted soon after the new national averages are released on the Energy Information Administration’s web site on Monday, June 30th. Make sure to add that extra decimal place to your guess to ensure you get as close as possible.

So to reiterate: Get your guess in by 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 25th. Then check back on Monday, June 30th to see if you’ve won.

No purchase necessary! Many will enter, few will win! Good luck and have fun!

Check phone compatibility here [TeleNav.com]

The Seattle P-I has tracked down an old e-mail from 2003 that Bill Gates sent out to members of the Windows Usability team. The pages-long e-mail message chronicles Gates’ attempt to download Windows Movie Maker. Here are some especially tantalizing tidbits, with the full e-mail message to be found after the jump.

“I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated…

…I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?…

…Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state…”

Here’s the entire message…

“—- Original Message —-

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.”

Yee-ouch. I, for one, think it’s admirable for certain heads of companies to have to eat their own dog food. When asked about this e-mail in a recent interview, Gates responded, “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”

via Seattle P-I

Jacob Whitehill of UC San Diego’s computer science Ph. D program has developed software that recognizes common facial expressions and then translates those expressions into commands that either speed up or slow down the playback of certain video lectures. 

According to Science Daily, “The proof-of-concept demonstration is part of a larger project to use automated facial expression recognition to make robots more effective teachers.” The software can detect when a person is smiling or when their brow is furrowed, for instance. Whitehill also found that people have a tendency to blink less frequently when they’re trying to grasp difficult subject material.

“If I am a student dealing with a robot teacher and I am completely puzzled and yet the robot keeps presenting new material, that’s not going to be very useful to me. If, instead, the robot stops and says, ‘Oh, maybe you’re confused,’ and I say, ‘Yes, thank you for stopping,’ that’s really good,” said Whitehill.

The software currently appears to work with off-the shelf webcams, which could be used to control the speed of remote lectures. There’s a video located here (sorry, WMV/ASX only) with more information and some demonstrations.