Digital Home Thoughts: Windows Consumer Experience Event in New York City

"Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?" - Jack Nicholson as The Joker in 1989's "Batman"
The next section I moved to was focused on devices either running Vista (laptops and desktops) or devices that are certified for use with Vista (cameras, printers, etc.). I snapped some pictures of the ones I felt were the most interesting.


Figure 6: The Samsung SPF-72V Digital Photo Frame from the front.


Figure 7: A view of the on-screen control system on the Samsung. It was hard to manage it from the controls on the side because you couldn't see the controls and the screen at the same time.


Figure 8: The Samsung SPF-72V Digital Photo Frame from the back.

The most interesting device I saw was the Samsung SPF-72V Digital Photo Frame. The quality of the 7" screen was excellent (800 x 400 pixels), although it was a bit small for my liking. It would fit well on a desk, but it's too small to put on a shelf in your living room - you'd want at least a 10" screen for that. It comes with 64 MB of integrated Flash memory, and can read pictures from Memory Sticks, MultiMediaCards, SD Memory Cards, xD-Picture Cards, and CompactFlash Cards. Resolution is limited to 3200 x 2400 (8 megapixels) though, which would seem to exclude any of us with 10+ megapixel cameras (of which there are more every day). It also supports MP3s, playing them back through a built-in speaker, and MPEG-4 and WMV videos. The killer feature? Built-in WiFi that will pull photos from any RSS feed: I could point this at my Smugmug RSS feed and it would pull down images as I add them. That's just killer, especially if you were to set one up for your tech-challenged family members and your photos would just show up. The down side? I feel the $229 price tag is a big high for only a 7" screen. It's hard to wrap your brain around the fact that for around $229 USD you can pick up a 20" widescreen monitor, but they want to charge you that much for a 7" screen with a WiFi chip and a few other on-board functions. If the price drops to $149 for a 7" version and $249 for a 10" or 12" version, I think we'll see more people wanting to pick these up.


Figure 9: The Dell Inspiron 1520. I hadn't seen one of these in person yet - not bad for the price!


Figure 10: HP's dv9500 Entertainment Notebook PC. Nice, big and bright 17" screen, built-in Webcam, 256 MB dedicated video card - what's not to love?


Figure 11: Sony's VGC-LT is a PC/TV unit that's pretty interesting: 22" wide-screen monitor, a Blu-ray DVD drive (that also burns), 2 GB of RAM, TV tuner...it's got it all. Interesting design as well, with the transparent glass around the screen.


Figure 12: I'm a sucker for a great finish on a laptop, so this red/black design on the back of the Toshiba Satellite X205 really blew me away. It was gorgeous! The rest of this very large desktop replacement laptop is equally impressive: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT in dual SLI mode, a four-speaker Harmon Kardon system with a subwoofer, dual 120 GB or 160 GB hard drives, 17" inch display at 1680 x 1050 pixles, 2 GB of RAM, a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, and a lot more.

Wrapping it Up...
If you'd like to see a bit more, there's a decent 4-minute video overview hosted by Microsoft Windows Senior Product Manager Craig Cincotta that covers off everything I saw - it's sadly quite low resolution, but since I didn't take any video, it will have to do.

The event was, I think, geared more toward press that didn't know much about the Windows ecosystem. If you hadn't ever heard about all the new Live services and how they integrated with Windows Vista, the event might have been quite exciting for you. Since I use Vista every day and try to keep up to speed about what's going on in the Windows World, most of what was presented was a re-hash to me. That being said, I still discovered a few new things (especially about Windows Live Photo Gallery) and I came away from the event with a greater understanding of where Microsoft is with Windows Vista and Windows Live.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. New York is a bit too noisy for his tastes.