Printing to a shared XP printer from Vista or Win7

Ran into a situation this morning that probably isn't that uncommon, but I could only solve it by combining information from several places- none of which had the full easy solution.

The problem is we have an old printer (with only a parallel port) hooked up to an old XP-based computer. It's shared on the network, and the firewall is set to allow file and printer sharing, so I thought all was good. But when I go to a Vista or Win7 machine and try to connect to it, I get an "Access Denied" error. Figuring it was a driver issue, I went to the XP machine and tried to add the appropriate drivers, but you can only provide drivers for older OSes, not newer ones.

The answer, I finally figured out, is pretty simple, and doesn't require you to change what computer the printer is hooked up to, even temporarily.

1) Go to your Vista or Win7 machine 2) In your "Printers" folder, click "Add a printer". 3) The wizard asks what type of printer you want to install. Choose "Add a local printer". (Yes, I know it's technically not a local printer, but if you choose "network printer", it'll try to pull the drivers from the XP machine, as before, giving you an error) 4) The wizard asks what port it should use. Choose "Create a new port", and choose "Local Port" as the "Type of port". 5) When it prompts you for the port name, type in the computer name and printer share name, in UNC format: \\computer\printer (replacing "computer" with the computer's network name, and "printer" with the printer's share name). This is what tricks the computer into believing a network printer is actually a local printer. 6) Proceed through the "Install the printer driver" screen as usual, choosing the Windows-provided driver from the list, from Windows update, or from copy of the driver you've downloaded with the "have disk" button. 7) Name the printer anything you want (or keep the default name) 8) Now the drivers will be examined and installed automatically by Windows. If they're not signed drivers, it will pop up the usual warnings. That would happen even if you were installing a true local printer, so do whatever you'd do at those dialogs if it were a local printer. 9) Share the printer if you want...you could then use the share from this machine to keep from having to do this with all your Vista/Win7 machines, but then you're requiring that TWO machines be available if you wanted to print from a third machine...since it would need to talk to your Vista/Win7 machine, which would in turn need to talk to the XP machine. It's probably more reliable to choose to not share the printer from the remote (Vista/Win7) computer. 10) Print a test page to confirm it worked, close the wizard, and you're done!

Hope that helps someone!

Installing Windows 7 on netbooks with no optical drive

This is based on information I found here, but modified slightly to a nicer process, in my opinion :)

The problem is that installing Windows 7 (Beta and RC confirmed, RTM likely to be the same) requires a DVD drive, which many netbooks don't have. The good news is that you can still install it to these computers (assuming they meet the minimum requirements), you just have to make your own bootable media. Here's how: (Note I've done this on an Acer Aspire One netbook, but the steps are similar for other computers).

Step 1 - Download or acquire the Windows 7 iso or DVD. I personally like burning the ISO to DVD, rather than mounting it, but if the only computer you have is your netbook, you'll clearly need to download the iso and mount it without burning it. For burning the ISO on XP and Vista, I recommend the ISO Burner Powertoy. If you're running a flavor of 7 already, it's got native ISO burning capabilities. If you're going to just mount the iso as a drive directly, you'll need something like Daemon Tools (and you need to be somewhat of a geek to follow their instructions).

Step 2 – We need a device the computer can boot from. I've had better luck with SD cards rather than USB drives, personally. The specific one I've used was a 16GB Micro-SD card in an SD adapter, but I've also loaded up an 8GB SD card I got for $25 (see my previous post about the Wii menu upgrade and the card I got for that), and it worked too. Regardless, you need a drive BIGGER than 4GB. Note not all computers can boot from SD cards, though...make sure you confirm your computer's boot options. I used an Acer Aspire One netbook though, and it can boot from SD.

Plug the drive into a computer (I recommend a computer other than your netbook so you can use the Windows 7 DVD physical media, but it's up to you).

Format the device you want to boot from to get it all nice 'n clean. I recommend a quick format with NTFS file system, but I've heard Fat32 works as well. You can do this by right-clicking the drive in My Computer and choosing "Format", or by following the diskpart instructions at the page I got the original instructions from (linked to at the beginning of this post).

Open a command prompt as administrator. In Vista and 7, click start, type in cmd, then hold ctrl and shift while pressing enter (or right-click the cmd that appears in the search results and choose "Run as Administrator". In XP, you just need to be using an account with administrative privelages.

Navigate to the boot directory on your Windows 7 media:
cd E:\boot
(where E:\ is the mounted ISO or the DVD drive containing the Windows 7 disk)

Using bootsect, we’ll make the USB/SD media a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
bootsect /nt60 G:
If it gives an error about not being able to get a lock on the media, eject the media, maybe reboot the computer, and try again. If it returns "Access Denied", you're not running the command prompt as an administrator.

Step 3 – Copy the installation files from the Windows 7 disk or mounted ISO to the USB drive.
I like using xcopy to make sure I get everything:
xcopy e:\*.* g: /e /h
(again, my DVD or mounted ISO drive is e: and the USB/SD drive is g: in this example)

We're done with the command prompt now, so you can close the window or type Exit.

Step 4 – Begin installation on the Netbook
Plug in the USB/SD drive and turn on (or restart) the netbook
On start up press F12 to select the bootable drive (or if that option doesn't show up, press F2 to enter setup and turn on the option to allow F12 to show boot options).
Select the USB drive and press return
The netbook will boot from the USB drive, and prompt you to press any key to boot from cd or DVD. Press something (I like pressing enter or space) and setup will begin. From this point forward, if you see it prompt you like that again, do NOT press anything...you only want to boot from the DVD media at the beginning of the setup.

Step 5 - Installation
Now, if you want to install to the netbook and overwrite what's currently on your computer, you can proceed with the prompts as normal...it's pretty easy, even for a non-geek. (But I recommend doing a "Custom (advanced)" installation, NOT an upgrade installation). If that's the case, you can skip the rest of this post...congratulations!

However, if you want to dual-boot your computer using the VHD capabilities built into Windows 7, continue below:

When the Welcome to Windows 7 screen comes up with a button to "Install Now", press Shift+F10. A command prompt will open.

Type diskpart and press enter

Wait a minute for it to get to the diskpart> prompt. Now type:
create vdisk type=expandable maximum=80000 file=c:\Win7.vhd
to create a virtual hard disk file in your C:\ that can hold up to 80 GB, but will only be as large as you need (that is, it will start off as kilobytes, then expand the file as you add things to the virtual hard drive, up to a maximum of 80GB).

It should complete that very quickly. Now type:
select vdisk file=c:\Win7.vhd

Again, that should return immediately. Now type:
attach vdisk

When that's done, type exit, press enter, then type exit and press enter once more. The command line should be closed now. Go ahead and click the Install Now button in the Windows 7 installation routine. When it prompts you for what partition to install to, choose the 78GB (or so...it's not exactly 80GB) partition. It will warn you that Windows cannot be installed to this partition, but ignore that warning, it will work just fine, thank you very much.

Continue installation as normal.

Step 6: renaming the dual-boot options (useful if you have multiple Windows 7 VHDs installed, or if you are dual-booting with XP, which will be labeled only, "Previous version of Windows"). Totally optional...requires a higher level of geek.

Once you're in Windows 7 at the desktop, open up the command prompt as an administrator again. Type: bcdedit

It will list all your boot options. If you have XP as one of the boot options, you'll see one with {ntldr} as the identifier. If you want to rename that to something other than "Earlier version of Windows", (say, Windows XP) you can type in:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} description “Windows XP"

Otherwise, look for the identifier string for the option you want to rename. The one you're currently in will usually be {current}, while a different inactive Windows 7 or Vista installation might either be identified by {system} or by a really long string of random letters and numbers between curly brackets. DO NOT rename {bootmgr}...don't even touch this one. Once you've found the one you want to rename, use the same command as above, but replace {ntldr} with the identifier of the option you want to rename (including the curly brackets), and "Windows XP" with whatever you want the option to read (for instance, I've got "Windows 7 beta" and "Windows 7 RC" as two options on my computer).

Google Launches Free Phone Service

This is a service I've been excited about since they announced it a little more than a week ago...and one I think many people will actually have a use for. While on one hand, it's just another step toward Google taking over the world, you do have to admit that life in Google world is...pretty good.

Whether it's this service or something similar, I do think they've caught a vision as to what the future of phone usage may be. This service allows you to tie all your phone numbers together under a single new (free) local number...when someone calls your Google number, all your phones ring, and you can pick it up anywhere. Unless you've set up exceptions based on who is calling or what time it is, etc...then anything you specify can happen. Or put your number into "do not disturb" mode and nothing will ring. Have your voicemails texted to you, or delete them online without even listening to them. And the list goes on.

A short synopsis from wininformant.com is below, but check out google.com/voice to learn all about the service. I'll let you know what I think once I get my grubby little hands on it :)

Google Launches Free Phone Service:

- Google Number. You receive a single local phone number from Google and can use it for all of your phone calls and SMS messages. This number can simultaneously ring multiple phones, including landlines, cell phones, and other numbers. Google number includes call screening, 'listen in' (for listening before taking a call), call blocking, SMS, free US phone calling, phone routing, and phone forwarding. - Google Voicemail. Google Voice can optionally make text transcripts of your voice mail and send notifications via SMS or email. You can listen to voicemail online or from your phone, and forward or download voicemail. It also supports personalized greetings. - Voice features. Google Voice also provides conference calling functionality, call recording, on-the-fly phone switching, a mobile inbox that's available from your mobile device, GOOG-411 directory assistance integration, and group management.

OnLive to Take Video Games to the Cloud

Interesting technology brought to my attention here: OnLive to Take Video Games to the Cloud...it allows (or will, when it's released) you to play high-end video games on computers that couldn't otherwise (cross-platform or low-end hardware, for instance), as long as you have a quick internet connection, for a monthly subscription. Verrrry interesting :)

I'd personally love to see out-of-date games that don't run on modern OS's as well as hard-to-find games like RealMyst show up, in addition to just the high-end new stuff. I don't understand how they can stream that kind of quality, but I can't wait to see. It looks like it might be much better than the lackluster GameTap service; even though they appear very similar on the surface, GameTap still required your hardware to do the heavy lifting (after having downloaded the whole game, a glitchy process), rather than centralizing the processing on their servers and simply sending you the video.

Windows or Walls campaign

I was first alerted to the new phase of Microsoft's ad campaign in the SuperSite Blog article "Windows: Life without Walls"

Tonight, Microsoft will debut some new TV ads as part of its $300 million campaign. Print ads will follow as well. I wrote about this topic this morning in WinInfo, but have a bit more info, and more to share later in the day as part of a longer article. First though, here are some stills from the TV ads, which have the theme, “I’m a PC.” Yes, you read that right: Microsoft is going after the derisive Apple ads directly, by showing that the PC world is huge, diverse … and human. It’s nicely done.

I actually saw the first "I'm a PC" ad last night, and I was really impressed. I thought it was well-done, and though I'd been (very) skeptical about the "I'm a PC" theme, I thought it got the point across...Windows is in Desktops, Laptops, Servers, Phones, Windows Mobile PDAs, Ultra low-power PCs, third world country laptops, Tablet PCs, and even the point-of-sale scanners at every Apple store in the country (no, they didn't address that in the commercial). If you want to be connected, what better platform than Windows to do that? It wasn't smug, it was just "out there". Showing you the faces of PC users, being productive. Hopefully, if nothing else, they'll be able to define their product again instead of allowing a competitor to do it.

Anyway, I liked the Gates/Seinfeld ads, but this new phase is quite nice.

BBspot - Top 11 Ways Sony Plans to Celebrate Their Blu-Ray Victory

Fun at Sony's (or is it Toshiba's) expense from BBspot:

Ways Sony Plans to Celebrate Their Blu-Ray Victory 11. Add rootkit code to all Blu-Ray DVDs. 10. Send solid gold fruit basket to Time Warner. 9. Change name of Blu-Ray to something more meaningful. Like HD-DVD. 8. Get unused 'Victory for Betamax' banners out of storage. Edit them for the party. 7. Call guys at Toshiba, and play Beck's 'Loser' over the phone. 6. Watch Rising Sun on their HD-DVD player. 5. Release next generation of Higher-Definition video. 4. Get T-shirts printed up that say, 'The HD stands for Hopeless Despair' and send them to engineers at Toshiba. 3. Raise price on Playstation 3 by $100. 2. Release Gigli on Blu-Ray. 1. Savor the brief moment of victory, while preparing for the next embarrassing defeat.

Really, I'm disappointed that HD-DVD didn't win the format war, or that the dual-format decks didn't render the war moot, because from all accounts, the user experience on the HD-DVDs was better. Oh well, it's history now. I find it interesting that Sony does seem to have only extremes- horrible publicity on their DRM software on their CDs a few years ago, crushing defeat on the PS3, but victory here and with most of their electronics (is there any better name than Sony in TVs?). Maybe it's because they can't stand not to enter a market - they seem to make competing devices just so they own the alternate. (On that note, see another of BBspot's articles from a few weeks ago).

I can only hope that within a few years, movies that were released only on HD-DVD will be re-released on Blu-Ray. At least next-gen doesn't render our current DVD collection worthless. That's the one thing both sides did right in this.

Google Demos Android Prototype

This sounds just great: Google Demos Android Prototype

Gotta love Google! :-) Hopefully these phones will be accepted by all the major carriers, and the hardware will do everything I'm looking for: primarily syncing with Outlook, and standard Wi-Fi access - combining those features and syncing over wi-fi wouldn't go amiss, either. Yay for hardware keyboards - hopefully they don't expect you to dial a phone number only using the 1-0 row of keys above the qwerty-style keyboard...

From Paul Thurrott's original article:

The hardware, while still in prototype form, somewhat resembles a cross between Apple's iPhone and a Blackberry-type device, with both a large screen and a hardware keyboard. But the big deal, of course, is the software, which is simple, easy to navigate, and offers PC-like Web browsing functionality. And Google has opened up Android as an open design that it feels will spur innovation and competition. Unlike Apple's highly proprietary iPhone, Android will be offered on a multitude of handsets from numerous hardware makers, and will ultimately be available via every wireless carrier. Early reports are very positive, and industry experts seem energized by a platform that should jumpstart PC-like usage scenarios on far more mobile devices. Hardware maker TI, for example, claimed that it was able to get Android running on top of its processor in less than a week because of its open design. And wireless carriers believe that Android will cut the time to market--a longtime weak link in the wireless market--from 18 months to 6 months.

SMS (text messaging) spam

It's finally happened: I'm sure we're not the first people to get this, but in the last week, both Kyla and I received spam text messages on our cell phones. That's obviously even more of a problem than spam e-mail because few people have unlimited text messaging plans, meaning that you have to pay for each text message you receive. So getting an unwanted, unsolicited text message from someone you don't know is as close to stealing as you could get.

I'd never considered the possibility of this becoming a widespread problem, because usually it would be cost- (and time-) prohibitive for someone to type and send out mass text messages (from a handset): they'd get charged for every text sent regardless of if it didn't work, or if the recipients didn't respond, etc. But most companies offer e-mail to text services (like Verizon - ours is just our 10-digit cell phone number @vtext.com), and even forms online where you just type in the phone number(s) you want to send to, type the message, and click send. These methods are, of course, free to the sender. So of course that's how this spam is starting to get out - they can mass e-mail to thousands of phone numbers (all of which are simply numeric - it wouldn't be hard to be guaranteed a fairly high success rate of guessing a working cell phone number), and at no cost to the sender.

So over the weekend, I called Verizon to see what they're doing about this problem and what they could offer me to filter spam messages out. I honestly expected the run-around and endless (though doubtless legitimate) explanations about how hard it would be to implement that type of filtering as excuses for why they couldn't do anything for me. However, I was quite pleasantly surprised.

Within about 6 minutes of an airtime-free call, I'd learned that I could block messages from up to 15 specific e-mail addresses (such as spammer@spam.com), e-mail domains as a whole (spam.com), or even block any messages sent from specific methods (all messages sent from e-mail OR all messages sent from the web form OR both). Also, for even better filtering, you can set up a nickname for your phone number and use that in addition to the 10-digit number address. Nicknames started as just a nice feature; you could tell people they could send texts to a more memorable address - myname@vtext.com instead of 5551231234@vtext.com . But since a user-selected nickname of nearly any length is much harder for spammers to guess, they've also allowed you to block all text messages NOT sent to your nickname - a much more user-friendly filtering tool than not allowing people whose messages you may want to use any method (e-mail or web form).

To find these tools, just log into 'My Account' at http://www.vtext.com, click on 'messaging' in the red menu bar at the top, click on 'preferences' in the red navigation bar on the left, then click on 'Text Blocking'.

As an added bonus in our case, they asked for what it displayed in the 'from' field of the text messages (in my case, 6245, whatever that means), and have credited our account for all messages received from that address this month. All in all, a very positive experience with Verizon Customer Service. Props to them.

The Lone Server...

Microsoft's marketing team hit a winner here for geeks (like yours truly). It's the first-person blog/video clip from the perspective of the last Windows Server 2003 server at microsoft.com

The whole point of this blog is to point out that even though Windows Server 2008 hasn't been released yet, Microsoft was so confident in their stability, security and performance that they started using servers for live traffic based on the OS that would become 2008, back in 2005 (when the OS was called Longhorn). Now all of Microsoft.com is run from server 2008 machines, even though they're still in Beta. Thus, the supposed last Server 2003 (of which there are probably, in all actuality, none left) moans about 'what happened to me? What do they have that I don't?'. Naturally, the bartender (who ends up being Windows Server 2000) has a list of exactly what they have that he doesn't.

There's even some inside jokes about old MS slogans, Windows ME and "A guy walks into a bar with a penguin under his arm". Just funny stuff - worth a look.

BBspot - Top 11 Rejected Names for the MacBook Air

Funny spot here about the MacBook Air: BBspot - Top 11 Rejected Names for the MacBook Air:

11. MacBook Anorexic 10. MacBook Cracker 9. MacBook Whitey 8. MacBook Lust Object 2008 7. MacBook That-Gas-That-Makes-Your-Voice-All-Squeaky-What's-It-Called? 6. I Can't Believe It's Not Firewired 5. MacBook uRich? 4. MacBook Brittle 3. MacBook iRection 2. Satan's Goat Paddler 1. MacBook Err

If you don't know, this new MacBook has no ethernet (network) port, no CD- or DVD drive, one USB port, no removeable battery...in short, very little functionality (though it's super-compact if that's the only thing you care about) and like all Mac products, suddenly everyone wants one.

DirecTV's PC tuner (HDPC-20) is real! - Engadget

YES!YES!YES!YES!YES!

DirecTV's PC tuner (HDPC-20) is real! - Engadget

I didn't see this one announced on any of the (10 minutes or so) regular news coverage of CES this week, but apparently DirecTV has finally come up with a TV tuner that will work right with Vista Media Center via USB! We've been looking for something like this, and I'm so glad they realized the demand for something like this.

Now if Linksys would only hurry up and get their Media Center Extender DVD player to market, I'd have birthday wish-list items - these two devices would allow us to use our Vista computer (upstairs) as a DVR in our living room (downstairs) via our wireless network. So on our TV in our living room, we could rewind, pause and record live TV, as well as play all the pictures, movies and music we have stored on our computer.

So sweet.

...now, when are they going to hit the market?

D-Link switch failure

Well, I didn't mean for this type of entry to mark my return to this blog (it's been very busy this week because of the bad computer week of last week), but this is too weird.

Last week (when all the network storage was blowing up), I came into work and a few devices were not talking to the network (namely, a plotter and a computer, both of which share an ethernet wall jack to our network through a wireless access point/router). I tinkered with the router a bit and finally they came back online. I figured the router was going bad and made a note of it and disregarded our secretary telling me that one of our printers seemed 'slow', since it was on the other side of the office.

Well, two days ago I came in, and same problem! I reset the wireless router again like I had the last time, but this time to no avail. But when I realized that the printer that was reported 'slow' the week before was also totally out this time, I took a trip to our server room and looked at our network map. Turns out, the two jacks that the wifi router and printer use both ran through the same D-Link DSS-5+ 10/100 Fast Ethernet Switch. Taking a look at the switch, I noticed that all the connected ports' indicator lights were flashing very rapidly and constantly. I pulled those cables and ran them through another switch and *presto* everything started working again. I figured, "switch went bad"...it's pretty basic-no IP address of its own, no configuration, not even a reset button. I tried just power-cycling it a few times (waiting varying times before powering it on again), but it stayed in the same behavior. Since it's a pretty cheap switch, I just ordered a replacement (upgrading to a nice gigabit switch...yay).

End of story, usually.

Here's the weird part - I went home last night and my computer was offline. I power-cycled the DSL modem, no change. Since my DSL modem had all the appropriate lights, I went downstairs and checked our Wii...it was online! I went back up to my computer and checked the signal path - turns out I use the exact same D-Link switch to branch out to the ethernet connections after the DSL modem/wifi router. Explains why the Wii was still online - it goes right to my DSL modem wirelessly. Looking at the D-Link switch, I noticed all the active ports' lights were flashing just like the one at work had. So I bypassed that switch and plugged right into my DSL modem, and came right back online. Another weird thing was that I remembered that sometime last week it had been offline for about 10 minutes, but I tinkered with the DSL modem until it started working again - quite possibly the same kind of 'warning' outage that I'd had at work and thought I'd resolved with another device as well.

So here's the question: how do two identical devices which are otherwise not related or linked at all (and that have no timekeeping mechanism in them, upgradeable firmware or even reset buttons) fail within 24 hours of each other!!?

Anyone else have a D-Link DSS-5+ switch go out this week?

Xbox Family Timer

Microsoft announced this week the addition of a new feature to their gaming console; the Xbox 360 Family Timer. It allows you to use the parental controls to regulate when and for how long the console can be used (for instance, only between the hours of 2-6pm, and for no more than 90 minutes per day). I didn't realize that they didn't have this feature before...I guess I'd assumed since their operating system has that ability, they'd already ported it to the 360. But, since it wasn't included at first, then all I've got to say is...finally!

Now if only the Wii would do that, too...it's the one parental control feature that I've always felt was missing.

Tales from the Microsoft Surface team

There's a new blog coming out of Microsoft now called Tales from the Microsoft Surface team. Microsoft Surface, if you haven't heard of it, is new technology that can best be described as a really, really big iPhone. But with tons more functionality. It looks like it's about the dimensions of those old pac-man tables you used to see in pizza joints, but the whole surface is touch-sensitive...in fact, multi-touch sensitive; meaning that several people can be working on the same screen at once. The obvious uses are in displays, of course...I've heard speculation of map displays in airports and malls, casino applications, and informational displays in cell phone stores (place the phone you're interested in on the surface and it will detect it and tell you all about it).

Sounds interesting, but there's a lot of work they've yet to do before getting them really wide-spread. Eventually though, it might be interesting to hang one of these on your wall like a new TV and have Media Center and other Windows applications available, in a really big format, at the touch of the screen.

There's a great demo at http://www.surface.com: skip the intro movie, then click on "The Magic". It really shows you what I'm talking about.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Zune 2 Preview

There's an excellent preview on the new Zune releases at Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows :

Looking back over the past year, I fault Microsoft for two things. First, the company completely blew its chance for a big entry into the market, and there's no way to undo that now. Second, after promising to move quickly on new features (podcasting support anyone?), Microsoft instead let the Zune sit and simmer all year. Sure, we got new colors over time, augmenting the white, black, and weird brown Zune 30s that debuted back in November 2006. But the software never really improved, and thus the Zune owner's experience never really improved either. Now, a year later, I can tell you that this happened so Microsoft could focus on the announcements discussed here. But it was a tough time to be a Zune owner. Hopefully, news of what's coming this year will perk things up a bit. That's because Microsoft is getting ready to launch its second generation Zunes. There are new devices, new capabilities (all of which, yes, will be ported back to the original device), new PC software, a completely redesigned Zune Marketplace, a completely new Zune community service, and even new accessories (that, yes, will also work with older Zunes). The one promise that Microsoft made early on, and appears to be making good on now, is that they are not abandoning this market. They are in it for the long haul. And while Zune 2.0, as I think of it, is obviously not good enough to suddenly push Microsoft's device beyond the iPod, it may just be good enough to help it snag some market share and move things forward. You never know.

This new device actually looks really interesting to me - it'll still take a long time to catch up to the iPod (or realistically, it probably never will), but what this device may do best is force Apple to continue to innovate. The iPhone and iPod Touch devices are along the right ideas, but they're both a bit half-baked (forgive me, I know they're a first-gen product, but usually Apple does better, even with first-gen devices. Microsoft, on the other hand, historically does a terrible job on first-gen devices [read: the first generation of Zune]). This new Zune seems to have worked out a lot of the kinks from the first generation however (if it performs as well as the early reviewers say), so hopefully Apple will just start to feel a nagging alligator behind them, pushing them on.

It's not dissimilar to what Apple does to Microsoft in the OS area - Microsoft has a HUGE lead on market share compared to Apple, but Apple does a lot of things very well, forcing Microsoft to keep up and keep innovating. What happens when there's a lack of this motivation from another company? Products stagnate. For proof, look no further than Internet Explorer 6 post-Netscape (for what, 6 years?)

But back to the Zune, I've got to say...pushing the new features to the old generation? Genius. That's the right way to do it. I'll be interested to see how these new devices fare, and hoping that Apple will take a cue from some of the new Zune's features. (And maybe match offering 'pure MP3's? Well, we can dream).

Cellphones: Verizon's LG VX10000 Voyager Revealed and Groped (with Gallery) - Gizmodo

I saw this first on the Wii's news channel last night:
Cellphones: Verizon's LG VX10000 Voyager Revealed and Groped (with Gallery) - Gizmodo

Awww...so close! It looks awesome (though obviously a rip-off 'me-too' device), and I like some of its features better than the iPhone (read: a Qwerty keyboard), but... NO WIFI!!? Seems like they just should have slapped a better GUI on a Windows Mobile OS - like Media Center within XP or Vista. Give me wifi, internet explorer, office apps, etc WITH some of these very cool features.

Sorry to say, I don't think this device will cut it. It's along the right lines however, I'll sure be keeping my eyes peeled for the right phone for me. Maybe it's closer to reality than I was afraid!

(BTW, in the meantime, my XV6700 is still the best alternative out there, hands-down. The new firmware upgrade, along with Vista, took care of all my issues I used to have with it, except I wish it natively synched over wifi...)