The ads for Sins of a Solar Empire of are starting to arrive in the magazines in a big way.  2-page spreads in PC Gamer and Games for Windows (CGW) are here.

Moreover, the initial orders from retail have started to arrive. WalMart, Best Buy, EB, and GameStop are all on board. 

Most gamers have no idea just how difficult it is to get a PC game onto store shelves (or any product for that matter). Next time you're at the store, look at the makers of most PC games.  They're mega corporations.  Here, we have an Indie developer and Indie publisher working together. 

Retailers look very closely at how much preview coverage a game has gotten. They look at the rankings on sites like Gamespot and GameStats.com to judge the interest in a given game.  What really makes the difference between a mega hit and a "sleeper" is the initial sell-in. 

Hopefully most Sins beta testers agree that we have something special here.  Sins of a Solar Empire is a fantastic game that may really change the way RTS's are made (I must say, the ability to save multiplayer games and return to them later is really nice -- besides for the obvious reasons, have you ever had a game going with friends for 45 minutes only to have someone drop due to computer problems? Now you could keep going where you left off).

Here are the issues we're in:

The ads for Sins of a Solar Empire of are starting to arrive in the magazines in a big way.  2-page spreads in PC Gamer and Games for Windows (CGW) are here.

Moreover, the initial orders from retail have started to arrive. WalMart, Best Buy, EB, and GameStop are all on board. 

Most gamers have no idea just how difficult it is to get a PC game onto store shelves (or any product for that matter). Next time you're at the store, look at the makers of most PC games.  They're mega corporations.  Here, we have an Indie developer and Indie publisher working together. 

Retailers look very closely at how much preview coverage a game has gotten. They look at the rankings on sites like Gamespot and GameStats.com to judge the interest in a given game.  What really makes the difference between a mega hit and a "sleeper" is the initial sell-in. 

Hopefully most Sins beta testers agree that we have something special here.  Sins of a Solar Empire is a fantastic game that may really change the way RTS's are made (I must say, the ability to save multiplayer games and return to them later is really nice -- besides for the obvious reasons, have you ever had a game going with friends for 45 minutes only to have someone drop due to computer problems? Now you could keep going where you left off).

Here are the issues we're in:

Voltaic has announced at CES a new laptop bag that is solar powered and is able to actually charge the laptop.  Of course, the bag has to be in the sun to do this which I'm not sure how keen I am about that.

But imagine a scenario where you're outside for a long period of time. This would be quite helpful then. At $599, it isn't cheap so you would have to really need this capability to justify the cost.

I'd be more inclined to just bring an extra battery with me. My laptop gets 5 hours on a battery. But at the cost comes down, I could see this becoming increasingly popular.

I'm not going to cover specific media player gadgets. I'll leave that to others, I just can't get that excited over music players. Just not my bag.

But one trend I noticed with MP3 players is the addition of new features such as iRiver's W7 incorporating GPS into their player. 

My ideal portable device would let me play music and videos, use GPS, have 802.11 support, optional 3G support, a fantastic web browser and be relatively small with maximum screen size.  Or put another way, an iPhone with 3G and navigation.  Microsoft needs to hurry up and get Windows Mobile 7 out there.  Microsoft's excessive NDAs really come back to haunt it because contrary to what its detractors say, Microsoft has been a real innovator in the last few years. There's really nothing in the iPhone that wasn't in Windows Mobile 7 much sooner but because of NDAs, nobody can really talk about it so when it comes out, people will claim it is a copy of what Apple is doing even though it had the functionality first.

Walter Williams has a great column demonstrating some of the myths regarding greed, need, and money.

http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/01/02/greed,_need_and_money

One of the cooler things I saw at CES this year was the arrival of mini laptops that didn't suck.

Over the past couple of years, I've seen more and more people (including myself) starting to use full-sized laptops as their main machines.

I think there's a reasonable chance that these mini laptops (laptops weighing less than 2 pounds) might be the next step. 

Two in particular stood out.

OQO Model 2

First there is the OQO Model 2. Running Windows Vista, it seemed reasonably peppy. It doesn't support running the DWM so don't think to use this for video game playing. But with a 1.6Ghz CPU, 64GB SSD and a gig of RAM, it's quite impressive.

If you have Verizon, you can even have it connect to the Internet with mobile Broadband.  It also supports 802.11a/b/g out of the box, Bluetooth 2.0 and even has an Ethernet port. 

It's not perfect.  The resolution is only 800x480 which means it can't natively view many modern websites without scrolling around. 

It is also a little clunky in terms of navigating, no touch screen, and I didn't like the keyboard.

But these are minor nits compared with the utility of the device. It has an HDMI port, track stick (instead of a mouse), USB, and more.  If it had a built in camera, I'd pick one up in a second.  It's only 16 ounces.

One other nice feature, it has an awesome docking station which supports external output up to 1920x1200.

It will set you back over $1,300 so it's not a toy to be sure.

Fujitsu  Life book U810 / U910

The Fujitsu mini laptop is a bit bigger. They only had the U810 on the show floor but a new model (I think the U910) is in the works. 

It's about a pound and a half so it's heavier than the OQO. But it has a much better keyboard, has a web cam.  But it is quite a bit slower than the OQO. It uses an Intel A110 (800mhz based). But it has a faster graphics card built in.

Like the OQO, it has WiFi built in and Bluetooth support. It doesn't include Mobile Broadband.

On the other hand, its display is 1024x600 which is key because most websites will fit fine at 1024 pixels wide. 

It has a decent touch screen and an optional integrated webcam.

It sells for $1,100.

So which one is better? Hard to say. I haven't gotten to play with either one for any length of time.  I wish I could take features from both and put them together.   The lower resolution display of the OQO is a near show stopper as is its weak keyboard. But on the other hand, it's only a pound, has good performance, and high utility. 

The Fujitsu is cheaper, has a better keyboard and much better display. But that 800mhz CPU worries me and it's heavy enough that I could start thinking about lugging a ThinkPad X60 around.

Fujitsu

OQO

In the next couple weeks Stardock will begin officially rolling out MyColors 2008.  This may be the single most significant event in skinning in the past few years.

Check out the tour below.

To prove I'm not narrow minded about Microsoft Sync, I would be willing to take this Sync-equipped car off their hands because that's just the kind of guy I am this week.

Okay, that's pretty cool.

Almost everything I saw from Microsoft at the show was pretty impressive. But Sync was underwhelming.

Sync is Microsoft's technology for integrating technology into cars. It's a great idea. But the execution is the problem. 

The Sync issues are similar to the issues I have with Windows Mobile. Over-engineering, design by committee and inelegant.

Their demo of voice recognition really highlights the klunkiness of the system. (paraphrased)

Person: Phone

Car: Phone ready

Person: Dial Mom

Car: You said Mom, correct?

Person: Yes.

Car: Did you want to dial Mom on cell phone or home phone?

Person: cell phone

Car: You said cell phone, correct?

Person: Correct

Car: Dialing mom cell phone.

...

In between each of those transactions is a beep the user must wait for to begin speaking.

It's just tedious.  I much prefer to just use the on-screen display to dial whomever. But almost everything in Sync struck me as being needlessly catered to very possible user.  One can almost imagine someone in a meeting in Redmond saying "Oh, we really should also include support for X" resulting in everything being more complicated.