Print - WinInfo Short Takes: Week of May 23

An often irreverent look at some of the week's other news, including the Short Takes Blog, a new Bill Gates book, the Google portal, SBS 2003 SP1, Xbox 360, IE 7 tabs, Netscape 8, Internet telephony vs. 911, and so much more!

We Love You, Bill. Just Stop.
I think it's time for an intervention. Microsoft Cofounder and Chairman Bill Gates (I refuse to use the lame title Chief Software Architect) revealed this week that he's working on his third book, which, like the other two, will no doubt be penned by real writers. His earlier titles were notable because the first book forgot the Internet existed (a curious thing to miss in a book titled "The Road Ahead") and the second book was excruciatingly boring. What will Gates discuss this time? Innovation. OK, I'll give you a second to stop laughing. There yet? Now? OK ... a bit more time. There you go. Wipe the tears from your eyes. It's OK. Well, actually it's not OK. Why can't Gates just write a romantic-adventure book in which an intrepid software developer saves the day by rescuing the girl from the evil clutches of the renegade Silicon Valley megalomaniac? Now that's a Bill Gates book I'd like to read.

Gates Waxes Philosophical on ... Work?
And speaking of Gates's writing and why he needs to stop, Gates wrote an email message this week to his customers--I'm talking to you, planet Earth--in which he extolled the "New World of Work." Yep, only Gates could try to make work sound more desirable, and his new software will, get this, let us work even more. Maybe I'm getting jaded, but things like video games, digital media, and, God forbid, leisure time are becoming more and more interesting to me as I get older. I'm tired of working so much. I want technology that lets me hide from people occasionally, not let them find me no matter where I am. Speaking of which, how did Gates get my email address?

Google Moves Into Portal Space
Move over AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!: Search giant Google is moving into the portal space, confirming reports that the company is branching out to embrace nonsearch Internet services. This being Google, its initial portal work, which is really just a slightly customizable version of the Google home page, looks rather Spartan and isn't nearly as feature-complete as the competition. If you use Google as your home page, however, you can find the new Personalized Google Home Page feature on the Google Labs Web site. It's certainly worth checking out.

Microsoft Releases SBS 2003 SP1
This week, Microsoft finally shipped the Service Pack 1 (SP1) update for Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003. What's new in SBS 2003 SP1? First, it includes the latest service packs for Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, SharePoint Services 2.0, SQL Server 2000, and ISA Server 2000 (and an upgrade to ISA Server 2004 if you use the CD-ROM fulfillment option). It also includes several fixes that are specific to SBS 2003. The SP1 version of SBS 2003 will be included on new machine installations going forward, Microsoft tells me. But if you'd like to upgrade now, check out the Microsoft Web site.

Windows Server 2003 SP1: One Million Downloads and Counting
Speaking of Windows 2003, the SP1 release of that product has been downloaded more than 1.1 million times since it became available last month, Microsoft tells me. According to IDC, Windows 2003's installed base numbers 6.73 million machines, so about 15 percent of them have upgraded.

Can't Afford an Xbox 360? Just Dew It!
Although we still don't know how much the new Xbox 360 will cost when it goes on sale in November, the price is sure to be more than the current console. If you're not sure how you're going to afford the next leap toward video game nirvana, Microsoft and Mountain Dew maker PepsiCo have a possible solution: Starting in August, the companies will give away an Xbox 360 every 10 minutes over the course of 9 weeks, for a total of more than 9000 Xbox 360s. Mountain Dew bottle caps will contain codes that you can enter on a contest Web site. If you're not into drinking Mountain Dew, fear not. It makes good antifreeze as well.

Sony Embarrasses Microsoft at E3
This week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2005 in Los Angeles has provided a lot of food for thought. I've complained in the past about how lame Microsoft can be when it tries to "out-cool" the competition in the video game space, and this was never clearer than during this week's E3. But I'm not the only one who noticed it this time. Reports from around the gaming industry cite the same problems. Sony "outclasses" Microsoft. The Microsoft Xbox 360 events were "embarrassing" and full of "hyperbole," whereas Sony's facts-only approach was lauded for its clarity and stunning displays of technology. There's a lesson to be learned here, and it's no more complicated than "you're not as cool as you think you are." That's a shame, because the Xbox 360 is amazing, and I think its PC-integration features are really exciting. Which brings me to ...

Discover Xbox 360 on the SuperSite for Windows
If you haven't visited the SuperSite for Windows this week (and, really, shame on you if you haven't), when you do you'll see that I've decided to cover Xbox 360 as I do other Windows-related software releases. There are a few reasons for this. Xbox 360 is a super-powerful computer device that will act like the workhorse of networking technology in your den. Its PC-connectivity features are unsurpassed, including exciting new Media Center Extender technology. Its controllers will be PC compatible. And so on. Folks, Xbox 360 really is exciting. You can find out more about it in my Xbox 360 Activity Center, which will continue to track my Xbox-related articles--wherever they might appear--throughout the year.

Not News: Microsoft "Confirmed" IE 7.0 Tabs in March
For some reason, some news outlets reported that Microsoft has "confirmed" that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 will have tabbed browsing. Folks, Microsoft confirmed that feature in March, more than 2 months ago. End of story.

Internet Phones Must Offer 911
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled this week that Internet telephone providers must offer users access to the 911 emergency service. The ruling is interesting for two reasons: First, this is the first time the FCC has issued a major ruling against Internet-based telephone providers. Second, Internet providers didn't offer 911? Seriously? What were you supposed to do in an emergency, Google it?

Gateway Founder Set to Retire
Gateway Founder Ted Waitt resigned this week from the company's board of directors and will, at the tender age of 42, retire. Waitt served as Gateway's chairman for 20 years. During that time, he turned the upstart into a major PC player, only to run into trouble when the company's slew of retail operations went south. But don't feel bad for Waitt. He's still a billionaire, and that money goes a lot further in his native Iowa than it does in, say, Silicon Valley.

Feeping Creaturism: Netscape 8 Released
I'm not sure why Netscape still bothers, but this week the company released the latest version of its Firefox-based Web browser, imaginatively titled Netscape 8.01. It's a strange beast, offering both IE and Firefox rendering modes, unique (but ugly) themes, and a bevy of buttons and options that are sure to bedevil even the most technical of users. So why even mention it? I just like the phrase "feeping creaturism."

Microsoft to Issue an Eiger Sanction: Separating the Facts from the Myths
   I've seen a lot of reports lately about an upcoming Windows XP release that's code-named Eiger. Most of these reports, which describe the release as a thin client version of XP, are wrong. First revealed by Steve Bink (see the URLs below), Eiger is, in fact, a low-resources version of XP designed for older PC systems. The idea is that XP still gets all the latest security patches, so this version will let you run the OS on systems that might otherwise not be able to handle the full versions of XP. For more information, check out Bink's articles below.
   Exclusive: Microsoft Windows XP Codenames: Eiger and Monch
   More on Windows XP Eiger, the Lean Windows Client

Short Takes Blog
   I've waited almost 30 years for this moment. Friday night at midnight, I attended one of several initial viewings of Star Wars: Episode III. If you're a Star Wars fan--and our Windows IT Pro Industry Survey 2004 shows that you most likely are--you'll be happy to hear that Episode III is the movie you've been waiting to see. Sure, there's one lame and wooden scene between Anakin Skywalker and his wife Padme, but most of the movie is back-to-back action and has a driving plot, leading directly to the moment we've all waited to see: Anakin becoming Darth Vader. The movie is well done, even poignant. Don't miss this one, as it's one of the few movies that deserves to be seen on the big screen. It also deftly wraps up almost every dangling question separating the prequels from the original trilogy.
   Next week is my 15th wedding anniversary. I've had a lot of good luck in this life, but finding my wife was clearly my best moment.
   Yes, I'm still struggling with the Short Takes format. I have to say that, personally, I would prefer a freewheeling, completely conversational Short Takes. The problem with a precisely formatted, professional-looking format is that people tend to take it too seriously, and when I pop up with some barbed bit of sarcasm, people can take it the wrong way. I want you to understand when I'm being serious and when I'm not, but that's hard to convey with the written word. My sense of humor is so dry that it's sometimes difficult in person, too. But you get the idea. I'll keep fiddling.

Hey xbox fan-girlz, take a look at the picture here: gizmodo.com /gadgets/home-entertainment/xbox/e3-xbox-360-live-demos-running-on-powermac-g5-104295.php Yup, those are xbox demo computers being cooled off by a DESKTOP FAN!!! HAHAHAHA, yes girlz, M$ doesn't have an ounce of class!!! "Microsoft is "outclassed" by Sony. The Microsoft Xbox 360 events were "embarrassing" and full of "hyperbole," while Sony's facts-only approach was lauded for its clarity and stunning displays of technology."-I agree with pauly 100 percent!!!

Why would Microsoft use the crappy G5 CPU for the Xbox? @pple can't even play games.

I am very glad that you decided to go back to the old format, for the most part. Bring back the old format in its entirety and don't fiddle any further--Please.

Naturally most people don't want to know that Sony's facts were actually not that. See here: http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t321672.html "Here are the facts: Nvidia uses separate Vertex and Pixel Shaders, ATI uses a Unified Shader which does both Vertex and Pixel Shading using the same Shader. When Nvidia calculates performance, it totals both Vertex and Pixel Shaders running at peak efficiency. When ATI calculates performance, it totals the performance of the single unified shader (composed of both Pixel and Vertex shaders) at peak efficiency. So this means that in order to compare ATI's performance to Nvidia's, you would double the rated performance. PS3: CPU=0.25 TFlops GPU=1.80 TFlops for both Pixel and Vertex Shaders XBOX360: CPU=0.18 TFlops GPU=0.88 TFlops for Unified Shaders=1.75 TFlops for combined Pixel and Vertex Shaders So the PS3 has a total theoretical of about 2 TFlops and XBox 360 has about 1.9 TFlops (counting Pixel and Vertex shaders separately, as thr PS3 does)." Also, nVidia claims 100 billion shaders ops / sec for RSX. XBox 360 features 48 shaders, and each can do 4 ops -> 196 * 500 MHz = 98 bil / sec. PS3 has Blu-Ray support. Which is great, in 5-6 years from now. Maybe, if BR is the format chosen by fil studios. If not, it's completely useless. PS3 has support for 1080p and 2 outputs. Which is great, if you're a millionaire. For example Sony's own Wega line HDTVs for 1080p cost >7000$. How many of you are gonna buy 2 of those...? 360's support for WMA/MP3 cd playback is much more useful. So, summa summarum, the machines have basicly the same raw power, and comapring the GPUs is like comapring Ati X800 vs GeForce 6800. Any difference between those really depends on the game. But for some reason a lot of so called "experts" and "reporters" feel they know everything after seeing a few _pre-rendered_ CG demos on PS3. I saw those videos on my PC. It must be as powerful as PS3!

I poop in the mouth of the guy that posts "Yawn" on every story. How does my sh1t taste?

"PS3 has support for 1080p and 2 outputs. Which is great, if you're a millionaire. For example Sony's own Wega line HDTVs for 1080p cost >7000$. How many of you are gonna buy 2 of those...?" I was able to afford to buy my Sony 50" Grand Wega HDTV for $2500 this year, but it's native rez is 1388x768. It'll support down-converted 1080i or native 720p, but like you say, TV's running 1080p, are a long way off. Especially in the realm of affordability for consumers. Add this fact... there is no current TV set under $15,000 that will take 1080p input. Those Sony 1080p sets you were talking about? They will take 1080i input and convert to 1080p. Get over it folks. Sony's 1080p claim for the PS3 is a non-starter. It will not be relevant in the PS3's lifetime for the average consumer.

For Mr. 'Yawners' If this is all old news to you, then why the heck are you even at this page? Maybe you should start your own page and tell us everything you know? Didn't think so.

Yup, those are xbox demo computers being cooled off by a DESKTOP FAN!!! HAHAHAHA, yes girlz, M$ doesn't have an ounce of class!!! http://tinyurl.com/7kwol

The barbed bit of sarcasm is what we love best about short-takes. And for those who take it the wrong way....well....let 'em eat nacho-cheesier! Now stop fiddling....your dry humor comes across just fine!

I poop in the mouth of the guy that posts "Yawn" on every story. How does my sh1t taste?

Writing about XBox 360 on the Win Supersite will have at least the benefit of generating more site updates. So little is happening with Windows, especially with Longhorn, that another focus of interest is needed to keep the action going.

"Speaking of which, how the heck did Gates get my email address?" He has the address of all his PR-lackeys.

Happy Anniversary! 15 years is a HUGE deal. Buy your wife something nice and non-tech related, get a sitter for the kids, and have a great Anniversary. You've both earned it.

Face it, guys. X-Box 360 is a disaster. It's out-specced by Sony, and with the revelation that Microsoft was running off of Apple Powermac G5s, everyone is waiting for the monster from Sony.

maybe I'm just getting jaded, but things like video games, digital media, and, God forbid, leisure time are becoming more and more interesting to me as I get older. --- MS doesn't give a **** about you, you're the end user, they care about the one paying the bills.. for MS that's the IT guy, probably the boss man who WANTS you to do more work.. how else are they going to sell Office 12 to a world still happy with Office97?

OMG!!! IE has tabs.. !?!? SWEEET.. more incentive to .. keep using Safari/Firefox!!

"Face it, guys. X-Box 360 is a disaster. It's out-specced by Sony, and with the revelation that Microsoft was running off of Apple Powermac G5s, everyone is waiting for the monster from Sony." PS2 was outpowered by xbox and gamecube yet that didn't stop it now did it? It's no point for having a car capable of going 120 miles an hour when the speed limit is only 60.

XBOX 360 CLOBBERS PS3!! "The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games. The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit. The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming. Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one. Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs. Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions. Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically. Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time."

XBOX 360 CLOBBERS PS3 (PART II) "Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to. Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point—probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else. "

XBOX 360 CLOBBERS THE PS3 (CONCLUSION) Add in Microsoft launching the XBOX 360 over 6 months Sony, the great XBOX 360 games line up (the biggest and the best games line up at the luanch of any console in history), the great XBOX 360 exclusive games, the kick butt industry leading XBOX Live from Microsoft etc etc and the Betamax (Blue Ray) PS3 is history. So long Sony.

XBOX 360 CLOBBERS THE PS3 (PART III) Bandwidth The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s. The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth. Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches. The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes. HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices. CONCLUSION When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment. game over sony!! However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games—by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services—will outperform the Playstation 3.

To the yutz that just can't get over some demo machines being cooled by a desktop fan. I could explain it in small words to help you understand but instead let me harken back to when the xbox was first released and we had all the stories about xbox's locking up from overheating in the plexiglass demo cases at various stores "The XBox has a heat issue, MS is dead, etc etc" - here we are and the reality is; there is no heat issue with the xbox. What? are you so displaced from reality that you'd think MS would miss something like gee, our xbox 360 needs a fan blowing on it 24/7 to keep it running during the 100s of test boxes running 1000s of man-years of development?

Mac user sez: "half-life 2 and doom 3 look as good on an xbox box as they do on a pc. so xbox = p4 3.2 ghz system" Then backs it up with: "half-life 2 and doom 3 look as good on an xbox box as they do on a pc." See the brilliance of Mac users here: http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=46494&cpage=5

The only inprovement I could see is removing anonymous posting. Anybody that yawns so much is probably too damn lazy to actually sign up.

i thought the color rendering would save alot of bandwidth hehe such pretty colors :)