Universal Exceeds Expectation with HD DVD

HD DVD is having a rough time of it in the media, but a problem some consumers have run into is discs that just won't play. It seems to be mostly HD DVD/DVD combo discs, and appears to be a slight film that doesn't come off the disc in manufacturing.

A copy of Smokin' Aces that I bought recently had this problem, so I contacted Universal to get a replacement. They offered to send me a postage-paid envelope to send back the disc ... just the disc ... and they'd mail a replacement.

In six to eight weeks. How annoying.

In a couple of days, I had my envelope and mailed off the bad disc. In just two weeks, I had a replacement in a brand new case! Now I have an extra case should I ever need it, and they beat their shipping estimates.

This is how you delight your customers ... by handling problems promptly and by exceeding expectations. It would have been great to have the disc work right the first time, but this was the next best thing. Universal is clearly embracing the format.

As for the movie ... Buy It.

Comcast Can Bite Me ... If They Ever Show Up

I just moved into a new apartment over the weekend. I made sure to call well in advance (last Tuesday) to make sure they'd be able to install on the Saturday that I moved in. After getting a confirmation number, pricing, and a time and date, I showed up Saturday ready to get the new service up and running.

And I waited. And waited. Finally, I called Comcast to find out what was up. They scheduled me for Saturday the 11th, not the 4th. No where in the call record did it show that I needed it on the 4th, and the support rep was completely unsympathetic with the fact that I would be both TV and Internet-less for an entire week.

I'm super-pissed about it, which probably led to my getting a cold, which only made it worse when I'm stuck home Tuesday. Luckily, I have a fairly sizable DVD library, although I mostly ignored them while I slept off the cold.

Fortunately, it looks like Verizon is tearing the roads apart in Kenmore to roll out their FIOS fiber-optic service. I'm not sure when it'll be available, but it'll be nice to be able to play the two companies off of each other. Competition is almost always great for the consumer.

Official Xbox Magazine going to Xbox Live

I must be psychic or something, or at least, know a good idea when I come up with it. According to Kotaku (by way of the Xbox.com forums), the Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) is going to be made available through Xbox Live.

Of course, I was just lamenting what a great distribution medium Xbox Live would be for the mag after playing Eternal Sonata, and less than a week later, there you go.

Kotaku seems to think that this somehow equates to charging for demos, since it'll cost $2.50 to get the mag this way. They wouldn't be charging any more for demos than they are now, they'll actually be charging less than you'd pay buying at the newsstand. How do I figure? It cost me $6.00 to get the Eternal Sonata demo ... yes, like many others, I paid for the demo, not the magazine. If there is a demo exclusive to the magazine, this is a far more economical and convenient way to get it.

That said, what publisher in their right mind would bother with an exclusive demo now, unless there's some payoff from OXM?

GameFly Free Trial for One Month

GameFly normally only gives you a 10-day trial of their service before you have to start paying, but they just sent me a link that will give you an entire month for free. If you've been on the fence, you owe it to yourself to give GameFly a try. It's a better value than Netflix when you consider how expensive it can be to buy new games.

The offer expires on 7/31/2007, so get in while the getting is good!

Hallows of a Deathly Variety

I bought two copies of the final Harry Potter book early Saturday morning. I had waited in line for the previous two books, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it this time. I wasn't in a hurry to end my adventures with Harry. The second copy of the book went to my friend Sarah as a birthday present. She texted me Sunday to brag that she was over 400 pages into the book.

I'm on page 2. Seriously, a Harry Potter book hasn't started this excruciatingly slow since the first one. I hear the second chapter really takes off. Still, I haven't been able to start down the road to the end of the series. I'm probably projecting ... well, there's really no probably about it. I know exactly why I'm putting it off. Once I finish that book, a new chapter in my own life is starting in a lot of ways, and I'm not eager to head down that path either.

Yes, that's incredibly vague, but that's also how I'm feeling, so somehow, it's fitting.

Further Adventures in High Definition

Life with the new HDTV is going swimmingly, but not without a few hiccups along the way. I've got the old PC hooked up to the TV through the DVI connection, but found out the hard way that Creative still hasn't got their act together when it comes to drivers on Windows Vista. As such, the digital out port still doesn't work, and I'm limited to stereo sound on the PC side. It's really quite annoying.

After getting a new amplified antenna, I tried to give some HDTV action a go through Windows Media Center. Unfortunately, the system couldn't seem to give me anything but stuttering and pixelation, no matter how strong the signal was. I'd just about given up after reading all the problems other people were having when someone mentioned that for some reason, they had no stuttering problems when using the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. Sure enough, HDTV is a wonderful experience and stutter-free through the Xbox 360. At this point, I'd call the Xbox 360 a perfect device if it weren't for the fact that it's so freakin' loud, particularly when trying to watch an HD DVD with it.

I'm moving to a new place in a couple weeks, and I'll probably be back with Comcast since I don't think I can get a DirecTV satellite dish installed where I'll be going. But, that'll give me a chance to see how Comcast's HDTV DVR works compared to my trusty TiVo. I have very low expectations at this point, but I'm hoping that what I've heard about a TiVo software for Comcast's hardware is true and that they'll roll out soon. Either that, or I have a friend at Moxi that might be able to hook me up.

Next up ... Intec has sent me an HDMI/Component switch that I'll hook up and run through it's paces. Fair Disclosure: I didn't pay for this switch, but I'll do my best not to let that color my perceptions.

Etnernal Sonata, and Xbox Live

When I first heard of the story behind the forthcoming Xbox 360 RPG Eternal Sonata, I figured it was going to be one of those strange, childish RPGs that would hold absolutely no interest from me. As it is, while I enjoy some of the RPG heavy hitters like a Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, they just take up too much time for me these days.

A little while ago, I downloaded a video of Eternal Sonata through Xbox Live, and I was blown away by the graphic fidelity and art style. The game looks like an anime comic brought to life, but it's even more detailed than that. I really can't explain it except to say that it seems like they got the cel-shaded style and lighting exactly right. Still, the story seemed a bit silly ... an imaginary world dreamt of by Frederick Chopin while he lay sick on on the verge of death. Silly, and a bit dreary. And yet, the world he dreams of is vibrant and full of life.

When I heard that there was a demo in the new issue of the Official Xbox Magazine, I grabbed it (while out getting the final installment in the Harry Potter series). Before delving into The Deathly Hallows, I fired up the 360 and popped in the demo disc, and was absolutely blown away. Eternal Sonota is an incredibly accessible RPG, adds a few new gameplay twists (different special attacks depending on whether you're in the light or the dark), and some absolutely beautiful music. In fact, I think the music (which had to be good, if the game is about Chopin) is what really puts the game over the top.

Hard to say until a final copy is in my hands in September, but I think it's going to be easy to give the game a Buy It review. Until then, go grab the magazine and play it!

On a side note, Microsoft is really onto something with Xbox Live. Being able to download demos, trailers, movies and other content helps open gamers' horizons to new experiences. For example, I really disliked the Blue Dragon demo for some reason (probably the aforementioned dislike of overly childish RPGs), but quite unexpectedly played the demo of EA's The BIGS repeatedly.

I'd really like to see OXM delivered electronically through Xbox Live, but I don't know that the publishing industry is ready to make a jump like that. Given that the content in OXM was dreadfully old by the time I read it, electronic delivery seems like it would make a lot more sense in terms of timeliness and convenience.

Creating a Community is Hard

AMD is really tying to reach out to the enthusiast community with their news AMD Unprocessed website and forum, but so far, the going is pretty slow. It's always that way, because building a community takes time. The conversations are kind of forced at first, and no one knows quite what they can get away with, and when the community is somewhat exclusive (Unprocessed is primarily for tech bloggers) it takes even longer.

That said, the joint appears to be run by AMD and notable Windows blogger Robert McLaws. It looks like the idea is similar to what Microsoft is doing with The Hive (of which I am also a member), but focused on AMD products primarily.

I've got a bit of advice for AMD, and we'll see where it goes from here. First, they need to get more involved. Right now, a few of us are trying to get the ball rolling, but there has been very little involvement from AMD directly in the conversations. While it might not be Scott Carroll (who took over for Chris Aarons), some AMD people need to be there talking and assuring us the place is open for business. The only way bloggers will make a point to come there is if they have a direct conduit to information ... it's all about access. Otherwise, they can probably get better information from other third-party sources.

Second, with all due respect to Scott, get your welcome message off the home page. The idea of AMD "Unprocessed" flies against the idea of a PR guy providing us with information, so you may want to consider hiring an experienced Community Manager. Either that, or you've got to "open the kimono" right away and give bloggers access to information they couldn't get otherwise. Building trust takes time, but if you want to jump start a community, sometimes a grand gesture is required.

Lastly, if it's going to be a community, give people more places to talk about off-topic stuff, and maybe even about your competitors. Communities don't always stay on-topic, and sometimes it's the off-topic stuff that keeps people going in that difficult genesis period.

Anyway, it's an interesting experiment, and I hope it works. AMD has an opportunity to grab a little more mindshare from their competitors, and it's critical at a time where AMD is falling behind in the performance area, both in processors and graphics. Hopefully this will be great impetus for them.

Two Word Review: Bomberman LIVE

Buy It.

Game Reviews ... How Do You Review Art?

The Escapist (easily the single best game industry "magazine" on the planet) is running a piece on the seedy underbelly of game reviews. I can't help but agree with a lot of the points in the article. Reviewing games (or movies, or any other sort of art) is always going to be controversial. They never seem to do a product justice, they're totally arbitrary and loaded with bias (or worse, favoritism), and really don't seem to affect how a game sells at all.

There are aspects of game reviewing that the article never quite gets to. Reviewers are unconsciously pressured into not only skewing a review score because of the pressures mentioned in the story, but even the language can be crafted to try to get a review onto the box or into an ad campaign as promotion for the publication.

The "games as art" thing is a oft-debated issue, and despite the fact that every game "journalist" (as if there was such a thing, don't get me started) has broached the topic at one point or another, I decided to wade into it for a research paper at the University of Washington. I took it in what I feel is a different direction, keeping it personal as all artisitc experiences should be. You can download a PDF copy of my "Video Games as Art" paper, or you can e-mail me for a file. One thing that I came across is that some of the games that were most like art (to me) didn't sell very well.

And there's the root of the problem. For as much as games (and movies) are an art form, they're also a consumer product, and anytime someone is exchanging money for something, they want to know what they're going to get in advance and whether or not it will be worth it. The product has to make a value proposition, and the end result needs to meet or exceed that proposition. Valve is a company that gets this on a deep, fundamentatal level. Gamers know that if they buy Half-Life, they'll get a great game. But they'll also get enough free content and other game experiences with it that they could play that game for YEARS. The reviews just don't matter, because the value proposition is blown out of the water.

So I've finally reached a level where I feel I can put my metaphorical foot down and say, I'm not going to review games anymore. Everyone's experience will be different with a game, so all I can really tell you is whether or not you should Buy It, Rent It, or Skip It. Anything else is just background and opinion, but those two words are enough to tell you whether or not a game meets or exceeds its value proposition. I could talk at excruciating length about how gorgeous a game's graphics are, or how the controls work, or how it sounds, but in the end, none of that matters unless you play the game (or don't).

Thus, I'm getting rid of all the fluff, and Two Word Reviews is born. The great part about this is that it simply doesn't matter how long I play a game, or finish it, or anything about me. It becomes all about whether or not a game is worth the price they're charging, or the price to get it into your hands temporarily. (On that note, I should specify that when I say "Rent It", I'm talking about a service like GameFly, so we're talking roughly $20/mo. or just under half the price of the game.) Pretty much all opinion is taken out of the equation, because by and large, the value proposition of most people is the same.

It'll be an interesting experiment. I'll probably never get my review on a box, most game websites wouldn't want to run these reviews (or pay for two words), but I know I'll feel a lot better about it.

iPhone or iFlop?

Today marks the launch of the ridiculously hyped iPhone, and while it's certainly the sexiest consumer electronics product to launch in quite some time, it also marks the triumph of form over function that Apple started with the Mac Cube some years ago.

Apple fans always tout the ease of use as the hallmark of an Apple product, and the multi-touch screen of the iPhone was the ultimate culmination of that philosophy. It certainly looks easy to use in those commercials, and initial reviews seem to be fairly positive. But then there was it's first major failure, televised for all to see, no less. Meridith Viera, pretty much exactly the type of person Apple would like to appeal to with the iPhone, was completely unable to get this easy-to-use phone to work in a live demonstration on TODAY. Worse yet, she couldn't get the single function to work that is most important ... she couldn't answer a call. Intuitive or not, the lack of tactile feedback that you get with a hard button has kept other touch devices from reaching a mass-market. Apple has that, plus a limited partner and high price to contend with. Past that, if the phone just isn't as easy to use as they make it look, there could be a significant problem. I mean, why else would Apple start posting tutorial videos on their website showing people how to perform very basic functions.

Add to the problem that even the tech savvy are going to notice pretty quick that this $500-600 phone is a full generation behind other phones in basic phone functionality. Walt Mossberg and others complained of slow internet speeds (admittedly before AT&T turned on their "Fine Edge" speed upgrade), and that's before thousands of people with the new device are flooding the network with Google Maps data. People don't like to hear that they cutting-edge gadget they just bought was obsolete the minute they bought it, and for the iPhone, it's a no-brainer that a more advanced version that uses 3G and possibly has GPS will be coming in a year or two.

Once that reality sinks in, people will realize that they've paid six bills (and all those service charges) for smoke and mirrors. iPhone is NOT revolutionary. It is lipstick on a pig, and sure, that's some gorgeous shade of lipstick. But all the iPhone does is make incredibly basic functions of a phone a lot prettier to look at. Even the more advanced stuff, like how you can earch in Google Maps and make a call from from that result, is sure to come to other devices like Windows Mobile sooner than later, and for no other reason than that Windows Mobile is an open platform. And that's the real rub ... unless you're going to make a basic web application, you can't write programs for the iPhone. The ability to get Java and other sorts of apps on just about any other phone platform means that people may start wondering why they're getting nickeled and dimed for things after having already missed a mortgage payment to buy their phone.

Yes, today the iBacklash is sure to begin.

37" Westinghouse LCD 1080p - First Impressions

Well, my graduation present (the Westinghouse LVM-37w3se) arrived yesterday morning, and I only got a chance to unpack it and make sure it worked before heading out to work, but once I got home, it was time to experience the HD revolution.

The first thing I did was hook up the TiVo, since it's one of those things I just can't live without. Sadly, being on the cutting edge means making a few sacrifices, and the TiVo's low-res display looked terrible once it was deinterlaced and upscaled to the 1080p of the screen. Of course, I knew this going in, but was a bit surprised at just how bad it really looked. It didn't help that I was literally kneeling in front of the screen while I set everything up, either. Of course, the PS2 and Wii fared about as well. Only capable of 480p, both consoles looked just terrible blown up, even over component connections.

Next was the Xbox 360. I just couldn't take another disappointment, so I hooked it up to the VGA port of the TV, went into the system settings and set it to 1080p widescreen. It was absolutely gorgeous. No more "dot crawl" like I had on my old Sony, fonts were smooth and clear in the Dashboard, and the whole thing just looked, for lack of a better word, spacious. Seriously, it felt like you had room to move around in that thing.


I couldn't let it rest there. I hooked up the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and threw in a copy of Mission: Impossible III to see if there was really that much of a difference. I remember being blown away by the quality of DVD when it first came out, and HD-DVD is a similar leap forward. It was really impressive just how good it looked. The "In-Movie Experience", or IME, was nifty too, adding video overlays of commentary or other features while you're watching.

Was it really that much better than DVD, though? I'm not sure yet. My next test will be to run my DVD and HD-DVD copies of Mission: Impossible (the original) at the same time and flip between them to see how different they look, controlling for the fact that the DVD would likely be upscaled by the TV rather poorly.


Speaking of which, I heard that the last Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 added the ability to upscale DVDs to 1080p over the VGA connection. So I tossed in the first Harry Potter movie to see how it worked, prepared to be disappointed after M:I III looked so great. Despite the very dark opening scene lacking detail, it actually looked pretty amazing, and didn't look like it was upscaled. It certainly wasn't as razor-sharp as M:I III (you could see every pore in Lawrence Fishburn's face), but it was more than adequate.

I pulled out Star Wars: Episode I and ran the THX Optimizer, a special video tuning program on the DVD. After adjusting the settings in a dark room, I flipped back over to the TiVo and noticed two things. One, properly adjusted, the standard definition upscaling doesn't look too bad. Don't get me wrong, it's still awful, but it's at least watchable now. Second, viewing distance matters a lot. From right in front, it was all a mess, but 8-ft. back was a slightly different story. Macroblocking (giant pixels) was less evident, and it just felt a bit smoother.

For my last hurrah for the night, I turned the Xbox 360 back on and threw in Gears of War. I'd played this on a 1024x768 projector on a giant screen at MindCamp, but WOW. I was absolutely blown away by the graphical fidelity. I don't know if it's rendering a 1080p frame buffer, or just 720p upscaled, but it just looked amazing. The best way to describe it is like playing a war movie set in the future. I expect to really impress some of my friends when they see just how good it looks at 1080p.

So that's it for now. I have more stuff to try, but it'll take a few more days to get everything together and whatnot. Next up: Windows Vista Media Center and HDTV!

Keeping up with the High-Definition Joneses

I graduated from the University of Washington yesterday, and it was a bit of a melancholy affair. The four-year grind has culminated in my Bachelor's degree, but it's also come at a fairly high price (not just tuition-wise, but relationship-wise as well). People keep telling me that they couldn't have done it, but at the same time I wonder if knowing what I know now if I'd have made the choice. I guess I'll never know.

Regardless, it's done now, and to celebrate, I ordered myself the 37" Westinghouse 1080p LCD TV (LVM-37w3) that I've been lusting after for a few years. Costco has the TV (monitor, really, since there is no tuner in the set) on sale for $799, and I just couldn't turn that down. Even after tax and shipping, it was $100 cheaper than I could find it anywhere else, and Costco's return policy is fantastic.

Of course, that means I'll be rewiring my entertainment center (one of my favorite hobbies), and probably moving my computer into a smaller media center-like case to take advantage of my HD card. I might upgrade my DirecTV receivers to HD, but since I may be moving shortly as well, I'm probably going to hold off, especially since Verizon has FIOS rolled out on Washington's "Eastside".

I'm also pretty excited to see how the Xbox 360 looks after the 1080p upgrade, since they rolled out a software release turning on 1080p upscaling a while back. The PS3 is still way out of my price range, but maybe after a year or two I'd be able to afford it.

New TV should be here in a couple of weeks!

Crazy Business Idea ...

Game shops like EB Games and GameStop largely traffic in used game. Even new releases tend to come back within a week as a used copy, which the company then resells, making close to a 100% margin or more on some games. They have massive inventories of these games and easily a national distribution network already in place by virtue of their retail locations.

So why hasn't one of these players (pun somewhat intended) gotten into renting games. They're used already, right? Copy the GameFly/Netflix model right down to a T, but build your inventory from games that people turn in, rather than buying new copies.

Seems like a no-brainer. What am I missing?

What's 42 Up To Now?

I've wondered what sort of project 42 Entertainment might come up with after Vanishing Point to capture my attention as firmly as they have in the past. As it turns out, I had stumbled upon some of their work without even realizing it.

As it turns out, they've been commissioned by Warner Bros. to do some of the viral marketing work for the upcoming Batman sequel The Dark Knight. The recent reveal of the new look for The Joker, as well as a recent hint at news in December has been tied back to 42. It doesn't appear that a real game will be incorporated, but who knows, since the next website was only registered a day or two ago.

It also appears that they collaborated with Trent Reznor for the Year Zero alternate reality game promoting the new Nine Inch Nails album. They're pretty busy over there.

ATI Starts an Interesting Conversation ... Unintentionally

The technology blogs have been buzzing for the past two days about what is perceived as a weak launch of ATI's new flagship graphics card, the HD 2900 XT. Less emphasis is being paid to the extremely cost-competitive offering (ATI's top of the line, while underperforming Nvidia's, is $200 less) than the fact that they expected ATI to beat Nvidia on performance. Part of this is due to a late launch, and the remainder is simply fanboy wishing. It's more fun to argue about who has the better card when the answer isn't so clear.

What's interesting to me is what the price difference offers in terms of value-added opportunities. Already, vendors are coming forth with ways to make these uninspiring cards more appealing. Namely, Sapphire has launched a custom liquid cooling package, offering overclocking for two cards in Crossfire mode, as well as cooling CPU and RAM as well. There's really no room in the market for this kind of option at Nvidia's high-end.

I haven't bought a high-end card in years, simply because the need for them quickly eroded as I transitioned away from PC gaming (all I was playing was WOW, and I quit that cold turkey) and moved back into the living toom for console gaming. What's very interesting to me is video processing and offloading of the UI onto the video card in Vista, and it looks like even ATI's low-end cards should do this very well (they even have one passively cooled).

One of my favorite ATI products is my HDTV Wonder. Without an HDTV, it's the only way I can catch some of my shows in HD. Surprisingly, ATI has no mention of the card on their website any more, and there doesn't appear to be an HD tuner option on any of the new cards. I wonder if they're holding back, or if they've written off the HD market. Doesn't seem like there's much reason to be able to process high-end video without the one way to get video into your machine that makes the most sense; not everyone has an HD camcorder yet.

Maybe I could talk one of my friends at AMD/ATI into sending one of the new cards my way. I've got a hankering to build that Media Center PC that I've been putting off for a while.

Back From Orlando ... Final HP TX1000 Impressions

I came home from Orlando Wednesday night, but with Thursday loaded up with a work back-log and classes, I'm just now starting to get back into the swing of things. I think I'll need the weekend to get off of East Coast time, though.

First thing's first, my partner and I managed to take Second Place in our International Marketing Case Study for Delta Epsilon Chi. We were a bit disappointed that we didn't get first, but from what I've heard in the rumor mill, the field was incredibly competitive. We'll have scores probably end of next month, so I'll just have to live in suspense for a while. Either way, second is better than third, so we'll take it. Another of our Huskies came home with both a second place plaque and a job offer from ESPN, and a fourth placed in the top ten in her subject, so it was a good trip. Sadly, that's pretty much the end of my DEC run, and I think I'm really going to miss it.

Walt Disney World was pretty much as I remember it, albeit with a few additions. Honestly, I didn't have as much fun as I would have liked; it was really difficult to try to enjoy myself without my wife to share it with. By the end of the trip, I was getting really lonely and just wanted to come home.

The HP TX1000 continued to both delight and disappoint in equal measure during the trip, however. On one hand, the small size and swiveling screen made it perfect for enjoying on the long plane ride, and the machine was great for our presentations. One small issue came up in that while the remote control could run our PowerPoint presentation, the angle of the machine made it impossible to get line-of-sight to the infrared receiver. HP should really consider a radio for future iterations of the remote, or just make it Bluetooth.

Sadly, while I loved watching movies on the machine while flying, the batteries, even the extended battery, just weren't up to the task. I was lucky if I could squeeze just about two hours out of either of them, and then only by lowering the brightness to the point where I could hardly watch the screen. (Having to switch the batteries out was a pain as well.) It's worth noting that running the movies as files off the hard drive might have been a factor, but I'd think it would be better than having a second spindle (the DVD drive) running. The touchscreen did make controlling the movies a breeze, and the machine definitely attracted attention from people who saw it on the plane.

Overall, I like the machine a fair amount. Would I buy it? If HP added an active digitizer, I'd probably buy it in a heartbeat. Other nice-to-haves would be a DVD drive bay battery option for those longer flights, a bluetooth remote, and a better amplifier for the headphone jacks (it was hard to hear the movies, even with noise-cancelling headphones). But I think that for many people, especially those not looking for a perfect ink experience, this is a great alternative to something like a UMPC, and a very attractive and capable machine.

Chris Aarons Leaves AMD

I'm a little late to the going-away party, but suffice it to say that I was thrilled when I heard that Chris Aarons was leaving AMD. Chris and I haven't worked together much (the HP TX1000 I currently have on loan was orchestrated by Chris), but the few conversations I've had with him proved to me that Chris is a man that "gets it" (to borrow Andru's wording).

Chris is starting his own "word of mouth" marketing company called "Buzz Corps". It sounds like a very exciting time for Chris, and he's going to be amazingly successful. I can't see how he won't. Companies need to understand that marketing changed into a collaborative process while they weren't looking, and no one can communicate that better than Chris. What's really funny is that it was one of Chris' "mistakes" (the free laptop debacle that was part of Vanishing Point) that proved both his own value and the message he was trying to send.

Congratulations, Chris, on the new adventure you're headed out on, and next time you're in Seattle, give me a ring!

WASL Woes

There is a lot of discussion today about ways to fix the WASL, a standardized test that students in Washington State have to take in order to be promoted to new grades or even graduate high school. The test is being taken today, so the discussion today is even more intense than usual. For those of you unfamiliar with the discussion, here's a quick recap ...

• It's "discovered" that students in Washington schools are graduating without basic skills.
• The blame is put on the teachers for "failing" these students.
• To provide accountability, a "high-stakes" test is devised that will give a quantifiable way to determine if kids are learning what they need to learn.
• In its first few years, more and more students are failing the WASL exam, despite teachers spending an inordinate amount of time teaching to the exam.
• The proposed solution? Waive the more difficult parts of the exam for a few years.

Now, if you got lost in the logic there towards the end of that recap, so did I. It's absolutely asinine that this is way they've decided to solve the problem in the short term.

Look, the problem isn't the exam. Having an exam that can quantifiably determine if a kid is prepared for real life is a good thing, so long as you control for kids that suffer from test anxiety. (A fair amount of that anxiety comes from knowing that you won't do well, which is a whole separate issue.) The problem is that the burden is put on the teachers, and relatively little on the students and/or parents, and that they feel that burden too late to really do anything. It's a cumulative exam, and you can't catch a student up on five years of learning in just a month or two.

By waiving parts of the exam, it suggests that the problem is with the exam. It isn't. The problem is that the WASL comes all at once, and not at the end of every year. Teachers should never have been given the authority to promote a student past a grade without the skills they were supposed to have learned, dodging responsibility for those failing students. Break the WASL up into individual exams, and administer them at the end of every school year, and if a student fails, you can see what they failed on and put them in a summer school class to reinforce those particular skills. If they can't pass the WASL by the end of the summer, the student is held back. I'm sure that my solution would be a fairly expensive one, but that could probably be mitigated with logistics and technology. The important thing is to put the focus back where it should be, which really isn't teacher accountability but on whether or not our kids are learning anything.

More TX1000 Feedback Coming ...

I've written a fair amount about the TX1000 that I have on loan from HP (through AMD), and there's even more on the way. I'm heading out to Orlando next week on my first ever flight on Southwest, and I'm curious to see how the batteries (they provided two) hold up to a non-stop, cross-country flight in the cramped Southwest confines. I've loaded up some music and movies, and with two headphone jacks, I'll even be able to share it with one of my travelling companions.

Reading back over some of my impressions, it strikes me that I might have been a bit harsh on the Tablet features of this particular unit. Let me just say that the Tablet features all work, and for someone who's never used a Tablet PC before, they would likely not have the same issues that I've had with it. That said, if you have experience with an active digitizer in a Tablet PC, or if you're primarily looking at the machine as a way to add ink to documents or to take ink based notes, the experience is sub-par.

Most of my Tableteering comes by way of Microsoft OneNote, which is an absolutely fantastic note taking application. The big advantage for me is the ability to have all of my documents, notes, research, web links, etc ... all catalogued in one location, and be able to search through it all. In order for OneNote to be truly useful, however, you really need to be able to write into it as effortlessly as you would a regular notepad, and that just isn't happening for me on this machine.

It's only my opinion, but I still believe that the Tablet functionality is a by-product of having a screen that turns around (bringing the screen closer to you for watching video) and a touchscreen (for easy media accessibility with the screen turned around), and that it was never really intended to be a selling feature. That's fine, and if you treat the added features as a bonus, you won't be disappointed.

That aside, my trip next week won't have me needing to take a bunch of notes. I'll be using it primarily for web research and for giving a short presentation in close quarters, and it'll be interesting to see how it does in that capacity. I expect that being able to turn the screen towards the evaluators will be very helpful. I don't know yet if the included remote control will be able to run Powerpoint, but I'm hoping it will ... it'll be one less thing to bring with me. I might even try Vongo a bit and see how it fares. Edit: Maybe I won't try Vongo after all ...

Nearly forgot, I promised some feedback from my wife, and here it is ...

It's a nice machine, but the screen is too small.

I finally got her to elaborate (sometimes you have to drag opinions out of her), and she said that while she really liked the overall size and weight of it, some of the web games that she likes to play had elements that were too small to see clearly. She likes the layout of the keyboard far more than my current tablet, but like me, didn't like how difficult it was to get an ink stroke out of the tablet. She likes the funny sculpted trackpad, but found the mouse buttons to hard to hit by feel. She thinks that the texture of the trackpad desensitizes you to being able to easily find the buttons by feel (and she doesn't like to just tap the trackpad). All in all, she'd have probabaly bought the machine after her experience, but not for the features HP was trying to sell it on.

Yeah, once you get her talking a bit, she does OK. :)

I don't have a problem with the screen size/resolution like she does, but then again, I have perfect eyesight and she doesn't. I hate the trackpad intensely, and really miss my like track stick nubbin thing. I do think that her insight about buying the machine for purposes other than HPs intent are pretty interesting though. As a marketing guy, I had felt that the machine was sort of at odds with its positioning, and that statement from Annie made me realize that it was true ... there's a market for this machine but it's not the one HP might think it is.