Cool Tech Reviews

Paul Miller at Engadget has a screen shot from the Sony online store demonstrating a new height in chutzpah:

Sony has quite the history of crippling excellent, beautiful hardware with horrible, useless software. The company’s UX UMPC bluescreened on us the first time we turned it on, and crashed the first time we tried to shut it down thanks to all the bloatware on it, while a Laptop Mag review says their Vaio TZ ran “as if it were broken” before they managed to wipe it clean. Lucky for us, it appears Sony is finally seeing the error of its ways, but instead of removing the crapware altogether, Sony has the nerve to offer a $50 “Fresh Start” option, which “scrubs” the machine clean before shipping it your way.

Actually it’s only the Vaio TZ2000 notebook that can be ordered crapware-free right now, but it is likely a sign of things to come.

Unlike many commentators, I sympathize with the OEM PC manufacturers and understand that the money they make by preloading trial software (AKA “crapware” or “bloatware”) applications is key to profitability in the low margin PC business - yes, that $50 is very important to the bottom line. However, there’s no excuse for buggy and incompatible applications infesting a new machine. Thumbs down to Sony until they get their act together.

Update: Responding to a firestorm of criticism, Sony has removed the $50 fee, but will offer the “Fresh Start” option only on some systems:

Fresh Start will now be a no-cost option on Sony’s slick subnotebooks, but only for those who opt for Windows Vista Business Edition, a $100 upgrade.

Ed Bott, who coincidentally had been trying to resuscitate two crapware laden Sony systems, has more including this quote from Mike Abary, Senior Vice President of the VAIO division:

“We heard the message loud and clear,” Abary told me. “VAIO is the poster child for negative experiences people had [with trialware]. We recognize that, and we acknowledge it. We’ve been really beat up by this issue. We’re listening and we’re taking action.”

Good for Sony.

Despite being burned in 2005 by scandal with Sony music CDs installing an exploitable “cloaked” directory on consumers’ PCs, another arm of the company has been hit by a similar problem. In particular, purchasers of Sony MicroVault USM-F flash drives (with built-in fingerprint reader) apparently get a hidden directory that can be used to hide malware.

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The news that Symantec was working on a anti-botnet protection tool was fine and dandy except for the fact that they want an additional $29.95 yearly subscription. If you are beginning to wonder how many different security programs Symantec can think up to separate you from your cash, so is Ryan Naraine:

The anti-botnet tool is being marketed as “complementary solution to existing antivirus or security suites,” adding yet another application to the list of security tools needed by PC users to avoid computer takeover attacks.

Here’s a list of the products sitting on your machine, sucking valuable system resources under the guise of protecting you from hacker attacks: Anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, anti-spam, drive-by browser protection, etc., etc.

It has to be the biggest con job in IT to convince consumers that they should pay a separate subscription for each of the above “protection” products.

$29.95 here and $29.95 there - sooner or later it adds up to real money.

Oliver Ryan at Fortune magazine’s The Browser lets us in on “the next big thing”:

The Browser landed yesterday in artificial Palm Desert, CA for DEMO 2007, one of the few must-visit annual tech conferences. Over the next two days, 68 companies will each be given six minutes to unleash their revolutionary new technology upon the world - or at least upon industry heavies like the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. The parade began early this morning Pacific time, and thusfar we have two words for you: video email.

That’s right, of the first 15 companies, Eyejot, a company which hopes to merge “the best of email with video chat” was the most sexy. Briefly, Eyejot is a web-based video email system. If you have a webcam, you an send a video email to anyone. True, you might be able to do this now by embedding video files in, say, your Outlook email, but it would require some serious cutting and pasting. On first glance, the free Eyejot web-driven app makes the whole process as simple as creating a text email.
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Bottom line: When you see it, you can easily imagine the entire world of email moving from text to video.

Luckily, Eyejot’s system isn’t integrated with any existing email tools so you aren’t likely to have your mailbox filled any time soon with large chunks of video, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. Then comes video spam. I suppose I am standing in the way of progress, but I can’t imagine why I would want to either send or receive video email. Unfortunately, I can think of reasons why other people would like to send it.

Creative has a new software update for some of its Zen personal media players with an interesting property - it disables an advertised feature of the player. Ed Oswald explains at BetaNews:

Creative has apparently bowed to RIAA pressure, issuing a firmware update for two of its players that removes the FM recording feature. In the past, the music industry has argued that recording from radio broadcasts hurt music sales, and has most recently attempted to stop satellite radio services from implementing similar features.

Specifically, the firmware change affects the company’s Zen MicroPhoto and Zen Vision:M players. In the release notes, Creative gives no reasoning for the change other than saying “this firmware removes your player’s FM recording feature.”

The change overshadows other enhancements, including support for Audible Type 4 tracks, the addition of a volume restriction feature, and enhancements to the user interface and usability. But many customers may be less apt to apply the update in order to save the FM recording functionality.

I’m sure the customers can hardly wait to apply the update. Worse yet is the speculation that:

As far as I know, this is something that many companies will have to remove from their players due to RIAA regulations.

I thought it was settled a long time ago in law (in the USA, at least) that end users were permitted to record broadcast music for personal use, but I guess that doesn’t prevent the recording industry from leaning on the hardware manufacturers. Frankly, nothing the recording industry does can surprise me anymore - if they had their way consumers wouldn’t be able to own any device capable of audio or video recording.

Last week Amazon launched a video download service called Unbox:

Amazon.com unveiled the Unbox Video Store on Thursday, a direct rival to Apple’s iTunes 24-7 video store, which allows U.S. users to buy or rent TV shows, movies and other video content from the Internet.

Amazon Unbox is offering thousands of DVD-quality videos from over 30 movie and TV studios, which can be stored on up to two PCs and two portable video players at once, the company said. When a user downloads a movie or show, Unbox automatically sends a second download file optimized for Windows Media-compatible portable devices. It also keeps track of media purchases on a personal page at Amazon’s Your Media Library, and acts as a backup, allowing users to download video purchases onto an additional PC.
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Users interested in trying Unbox can go to http://www.amazon.com/unbox. Amazon Unbox is offering a $1.99 rebate on a user’s first purchase, enough for one free TV show. But new users will have to enter their credit card information into the system first as part of the registration process, and then download the Amazon Unbox Video Player software.

Unbox is charging between $7.99 and $14.99 for most movies, and rentals of the latest movies for $3.99.

Since it’s for Windows Media devices only, Mac and iPod users need not apply, and some of the PC requirements are fairly hefty, but before you get out your credit card, you should be aware that widespread problems have been reported with Unbox. Here’s a sample:

Tim Thorpe at DailyTech:

DailyTech tried the service with less than pleasant results. First we tried to rent a video from the store, but the software insisted that our hard drive was full even though it also indicated that we had over 40GB free. The client refused to download the content while still charging us for the rental - twice. We then tried purchasing a movie through the service, but the media refused to play in the Unbox client or through Windows Media Player, again charging our credit card. We then contacted Amazon.com about our issues via e-mail and requested the company call us using the call back feature. It has been 36 hours and we have yet to hear from the company or receive a refund.

Tom Merritt at CNET:

So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can’t burn to DVD and can’t watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again.

Michael Gartenberg:

I figured I’d try to download a video or two for my flight to SF next week. First step, finding some content. Excellent, an old Star Trek episode. Click, purchase, download and install player (which first installed some new version of .NET without asking). Load player, it connects and then nothing. No download. No nothing. It shows but nothing happens. Fifteen minutes of nothing. I click troubleshoot. It tells me it’s checking stuff like DRM. Everything checks out. Message pops up. You have used all licenses for this file. If you want to watch it on this PC, you need to purchase it again. OK. We’re done.

Time to un-install this thing and hope it didn’t screw up my PC in the process.

Gartenberg also notes that not all PlaysForSure Windows Media devices will necessarily work.

Not everyone is reporting problems, but everybody seems to be saying that it has a glitchy feel and it’s clear that you have a nonzero probability of complete failure. Amazon can do better than that and should have. For now, it gets a Thumbs Down.

Update 9/19: Two thumbs down for Unbox:

Amazon.com’s Unbox is a horror show. The Unbox service appears not so much to have been introduced as to have escaped from the laboratory.

Of all the smart and talented people at Amazon, did no one dare say, “Wait, our new service bites! It’s slower than a trip to Blockbuster, more expensive than a DVD, absurdly restrictive on how the consumer uses the movie, delivers lower resolution than a DVD, and requires running a cable from the PC to the TV if you want to watch the movie on something larger than a PC monitor”?

And that’s when it works.