Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

See that screenshot above? That's an incredible 10.1 GB worth of file bloat that I had no idea was there. The culprit? Cyberlink PowerDirector 9, a video editing application that I've been using quite a bit over the last month. I've developed a real love/hate relationship with this software; when it works, man, does it ever work well! It leverage's my Core i7 CPU and NVIDIA 460 GTX GPU in ways I've never seen any other app do...it's SHREDS HD video, both exporting and editing it. What's not so good is the stability and corrupt output problems I've been seeing. More on that later though; back on topic... Read more...

"Microsoft is in significant disarray, fettered by its destkop dominance as the world goes mobile. Would this have happened anyway, or is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to blame? Ballmer, after all, knows how to sing to developers, but he doesn't really speak their language. Former Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates did. Now, more than ever, Microsoft needs to get in front of developers but finds itself playing catch-up."

Matt Asay has posted an article on CNET about the future of Microsoft, and whether he thinks Microsoft has lost it's way since Bill Gates left the company and Steve Ballmer took over.  It's an interesting opinion and one that does raise some valid points. I personally feel that Microsoft is stuck in a rut and is not adapting quickly enough to the way technology is changing and in particular, the way we users are using that technology.  Windows Mobile is a good example of how Microsoft have fallen behind, and how developers are now focusing their efforts on iPhone apps and Android apps. What about the desktop, will that go the same way?  Does Steve Ballmer have the same creativity and vision that Bill Gates had? With Microsoft under attack from the likes of Apple and Google, is he the right man to lead the battle? What do you think? Do you think that like Apple, Microsoft should entice their talisman, Bill Gates, back to try and drive Microsoft forward?

Above is a screen shot from Gspot, the popular video codec detection tool. Notice anything? That's right, it won't fit on the screen. This screen shot was taken on a Dell Mini 10, a netbook with a 10.1 inch screen running at 1024 x 576 resolution. I've seen this before with several applications, so this is a general call-out to all developers: with the booming popularity of netbooks, and with many new laptops in general hitting the 1280 x 720 mark for resolution, there's just not a lot of vertical screen resolution on mobile screens. Developers seem to have taken for granted that resolution and screen size would continue to increase, and as such they didn't see the decrease in resolution that netbooks bring to the table. Developers, please "think small" and opt for wider, rather than taller, displays.