Microsoft have brought out this nifty little mouse, the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. US$100 gets you a re-charging wireless mouse with 1 GB of memory, 10 metre range and a battery life indicator. The memory sits neatly in the transceiver plugged into a USB port on your PC freeing up another USB port. The unit recharges when a magnetic connector from the mouse is attached to the transceiver in your USB port - very handy. The mouse boasts 4 way scrolling with Tilt Wheel Technology and sports five programmable buttons. There’s also an on/off switch to power off the batteries when not in use, a great energy saving feature.

As you can probably tell I’m quite taken with this little sucker. Well, almost, in the MS blurb there is no mention of the 1 GB flash memory being ReadyBoost compatible. So although it sports some excellent features it probably lacks the most obvious feature that a memory mouse should really have, an omission made even more glaring when you realise that the mouse is manufactured by the same company that produce the bloated OS in the first place. Come on MS, prove me wrong, tell me marketing screwed up and it is ReadyBoost compatible.

Source: I4U

Users of the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage feature, just about all XP and Vista users, could have come face to face with a lovely pirate message from MS over the weekend. A major outage on the servers that handle the WGA process meant that users of XP and Vista may have been unable to validate their legal copy of the OS if they attempted an upgrade or installation. The ‘invalidated’ PCs would not have shut down but the OS would have had its functionality reduced, features such as Aero would have been turned off. Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager, selflessly stated on the MS forums that

I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

Fortunately for Phil the issue was fixed on Saturday and according to the WGA blog

We’ve been receiving reports on our forum and through customer service starting last night that Windows Vista validations have been failing on genuine systems. It looks now as though the issue has been resolved and validations are being processed successfully.

If there’s anyone out there who had an issue with validating their Windows OS please share your experience here at Our Picks.

Looks like Bill Gates has jumped aboard the Google-bashing train once more. In an interview with the NY Times Gates stated that Microsoft were not concerned by any attempt by Google to penetrate the mobile phone software market. Microsoft currently has 10% of the market and Google have announced to be preparing to enter this arena. However rather than just say that he wasn’t worried, Gates launched a wee pre-emptive strike about the guys at the plex

They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?”

I’m not sure to which products Bill is referring but even if they have 30 products which suck (financially speaking of course) obviously the big one is providing them with a healthy enough income to report a billion dollar profit in the first quarter this year. I just think this is Bill trying to be bullish about Google so that the MS faithful doesn’t lose, err, faith.

If Google do indeed enter into the mobile software market then I’m sure, even if their products are unprofitable, those products will be of Google’s usual quality and hopefully pricing structure! ;)

Source: Reuters

Last Thursday Microsoft announced a price cut to their HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. The player was cut by US$20 to US$179 and when combined with the price of an Xbox 360, the total cost still undercuts the Sony PS3 which boasts an integrated Blu-ray player. Thus the Xbox plus HD-DVD player add-on is currently the cheapest way to watch hi-def movies.

The price cut on the player takes effect from 1 August and included in the promo are five free HD-DVD movie titles from a selection of 15. Don’t get too excited as I’m not expecting these 15 titles to be blockbusters!

Microsoft also announced that the ‘Boys Own’ movie ‘300′ will be available at the Xbox Live Marketplace on 14 August as well as on HD-DVD. Ladies, sounds like a great combo for a birthday pressie for that special boy guy in your life, Xbox, HD-DVD player and the movie ‘300′. ;)

Source: Boy Genius

The internet browser Firefox from Mozilla seems to be taking off in Europe, leaping from a 21.1% share to a 27.8% slice of all net surfers over a one week period at the begining of July in 2006 and 2007 respectively according to XiTiMonitor, a web analytics company. It claims that Microsoft IE usage has dropped to 66.5% from 73.3% in the same market over the same time frame.

Are European users breaking away from the MS vice like grip on browser users? I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, with Firefox features light years ahead of IE. However Mozilla will have to pull out all the stops with Firefox 3 or Gran Paradiso as the project is called. Software users can be very fickle and development laurels should never be rested on!

Some interesting figures came out in the ‘by country’ breakdown with Firefox usage at over 40% in Slovenia and Finland, yet notably the UK well behind the leading pack at a mere 18%.

Source: XiTiMonitor

As reported by InfoWorld it appears as if someone in the Zune team is having a bit of joke by setting up an amnesty bin for team member’s to deposit their iPods! This image was posted on flickr supposedly taken at Zune HQ. The bin’s probably a bit of a joke as Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, points out

“Most of the people [working on] Zune would want to have an iPod to keep track of the competition,” he said. “On that team, they’re all into digital music, so all of them probably have a bunch of players.”

Nice to see a sense of humour in the workplace!

Source: InfoWorld

It seems that Bungie and Microsoft had a few issues with their limited beta for Halo 3 last week. According to 1up,

5:00 a.m. on that appointed date came and went, though, and the beta didn’t launch for Crackdown owners. It wasn’t until some 14 hours later — 7:00 p.m. PST — that Microsoft issued a patch for Crackdown…yes, Crackdown. There wasn’t an issue with the beta — Halo 3 downloaded and played fine for press and those involved in the Friends and Family program — so how did Microsoft’s biggest promotion of 2007 blow up in its face after months of hype?

After a lot of finger pointing Microsoft fessed up that the issue was with Xbox Live.

“This is the first time that we’ve tried to interface downloading of a beta through Xbox LIVE with a previously-shipped game. It’s a complicated process, made even more significant by the huge interest in this beta,” said the company [Microsoft] in a statement.

Given all the effort (hype?) that has gone into marketing this launch which is after all just a beta release and a limited one at that, you think Microsoft would have thoroughly tested the process. You get the feeling the first user to download the beta was the VERY first person to download it. People had taken time off work and school to be some of the first to play test this beta so the lack of QA by Bungie and Microsoft is pitiful. Hopefully a bit more effort will be put into the final release - the marketing machine has already stepped up a gear with this press release announcing the launch date of September 25th.

For those of us who weren’t involved in the beta screw-up, err, test here’s a great Halo video with a smattering of Alien vs Predator to feed our Halo need.

Source: 1up