Over at Neowin (http://www.neowin.net) we had a live chat with users regarding the latest in Longhorn (the next version of Windows due out in 2006) that included people from Microsoft.

Missed it? No problem, check out the chat log.

Log of Microsoft/Neowin/Stardock chat regarding PDC and Longhorn..

On the last day of the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference, Stardock's Brad Wardell, Jed and Jana from Microsoft and Creamhackered from Neowin hosted a Neowin.net live chat to answer questions and provide information on Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out in 2006.

Introduction:

[Brad Wardell] This week is PDC. This is a show where Microsoft is showing off the big technologies in Longhorn.
[Brad Wardell] Longhorn is the code-name of the next version of Windows which is due either in late 2005 or early 2006 prsently.
[Brad Wardell] At PDC, Microsoft introduced a set of core pricniples about longhorn that NEowin users will probably find particularly interesting.
[Brad Wardell] They are:
[Brad Wardell] 1) Avalon and Aero
[Brad Wardell] This is the one most Neowin users will find particularly spectacular.
[Brad Wardell] Avalon is built around a new video compositer. TO make a long story short, there is no more 2D/3D.
[Brad Wardell] It's ALLLL 3D!
[Xeo> cool
[Brad Wardell] Anyway, now you have Direct3D to power your desktop.
[mh508> i guess it would make things faster...
[Brad Wardell] Which means much much faster performance and a whole range of new abilities that can be used to create a more impressive experience.
[Brad Wardell] The new UI is called Aero. And Aero is the biggest GUI departure since Windows 95.
[Brad Wardell] The big thing about using Direct3D is that it's all handled by the video card.
[Brad Wardell] Right now, eye candy on the dekstop can use a lot of CPU.
[DELTA75329> [Brad Wardell] We've all seen complaints about how software (including ours) can slow down the systme in some cases.
[Brad Wardell] That's because of GDI.
[DELTA75329> [Brad Wardell] But with Longhorn , it'll all be handled by the video card. So in essence, you get all these cool effects for free.
[Brad Wardell] So what kind of effects? Shadows, window morphing, and various transitions. You can do some of this now IF you have a good video card (nivida/ATI) with progrmas like WindowFX (plug: https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx)
[Brad Wardell] But that is just scratching the surface of what Avalon will allow.
[Brad Wardell] What this means for users and developers is a great deal mroe flexibility in creating user interfaces that match the information being presented.
[Trunten> 2006?
[Dalius> Longhorn is doing what Apple did with OSX way back when
[Dalius> Windows should have done this alooong time ago
[Brad Wardell] This leads us to a technology Microsoft introduced on Monday: XAML.
[Brad Wardell] Think of XAML as XML but for application design. Because AValon allows such flexibility for ifnormation display, it makes sense to make it muche asier for software developers to be able to present their information.
[Brad Wardell] Example: In XAML, the TRANSPARENCY of a given thing is right apart of the RGB vfalue. It's like ORPG (Opacity, RPG).
[Brad Wardell] Now, what's cool about XAML is that it blends the web and programs together.
[Brad Wardell] Thinka bout what that means, developers will be able to blur the line between programs and web sites.
[Brad Wardell] Right now, you try to make a program with an HTML interface and it kind of sucks.
[Brad Wardell] But with XAML based user intefaces, it's totally seamless. It'll feel like a "native" program.
[Brad Wardell] Which then gets to Indigo. Indigo is a technology that Microsoft is introducing that handles all kinds of communication services. What Microsoft seems interstesd in doing is providinig a way for users and develoeprs to *seamlessly* interact with remote devices as ifthey were local.
[Brad Wardell] All of this is part of a new API that is being called WinFX.
[Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] I wonder if some people will write websites in XAML instead of HTML, just for the fun of it. I will.
[mh508> gotta love stardockers
[Brad Wardell] WinFX in Longhorn so far is kind of a managed API layer. Managed APIs have a lot of advantages along with potential disadantages. From STardocks' opoint of view, there are still some things to be worked out in how to handle managed APIS.
[Dessimat0r> the blokes at W3C will keel over if you write sites in XAML
[Brad Wardell] So, what does that mean?
[Brad Wardell] Well, in Windows 3.1 you had "Win16". Windows NT 3.1 in 1993 introduced Win32.
[Brad Wardell] That's what we use today, Win32 for most things.
[Brad Wardell] Now, some parts of Microsoft are approaching WinFX in different ways (notable the DirectX team But in the end, the idea is to make the system much mroe secure, stable and backward compatible going forward.
[Brad Wardell] For third party developers like Stardock, it means being able to write software that can do incredibly cool things.
[Xeo> well, it's a great news
[DELTA75329> So longhorn is going to be like XP? A must-have upgrade??
[Xeo> I suppose
[Brad Wardell] What we are still hpoing to do is convince Microsoft of the need to allow extensibility to managed APIs. To allow developers to add base OS features.
[Brad Wardell] Well, by 2006, I would say that Longhorn will be pretty killer.
[Brad Wardell] Consider this: Right now you're all almost certianly running at 96 dots per inch on yur screen.
[Brad Wardell] By 2006, your displays will be like 4000x3200 or something.
[Brad Wardell] That means that either everythign will be tiny.
[Brad Wardell] OR things must be a lot bigger.
[Brad Wardell] To do that, Avalon is ** VECTOR BASED** instead of bitmap bassed.
[Brad Wardell] So you'll be able to hav eincredibly cool screens.
[Brad Wardell] IN fact, the longhorn demos at PDC are nothign compared to what's coming. Because those demos have to be done at 1024x768 .
[Brad Wardell] But imagine a vector drawn desktop at 4000x3200.
[Brad Wardell] How slick will that be?
[Brad Wardell] It'll be so smooth.

End of first 15 minutes of the chat. Now we enter into the Q & A more.

[ 9:16pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]hi everyone. i'm Jed from MS
[ 9:16pm ] [Brad Wardell] I figure 26 inch flat screen sill be normal by then.
[ 9:16pm ] [Yvo> boy 4000x32000... i can't hardly read my 1920xsomething WUXGA screen
[ 9:16pm ] [Dessimat0r> yeah, but surely you will lose vector detail, the more a vector image is enlarged?
[ 9:16pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]wanted to add to Brad's observation that Longhorn will be optimized for widescreen monitors
[ 9:16pm ] [William> ok, thx
[ 9:16pm ] [Brad Wardell] 16x9.
[ 9:17pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]hence the sidebar won't be intrusive at all
[ 9:17pm ] [Pike> vectors like flash uses?
[ 9:17pm ] [mh508> actually 16:9
[ 9:17pm ] [Brad Wardell] Now, for thrird parties like us, let me give you an example what we can do today with Windows XP and then talk about what Longhorn will be able to add.
[ 9:17pm ] [Xeo> Q: Do you know if the side bar will be more usefull than now?
[ 9:17pm ] [Brad Wardell] Check out this video:
[ 9:17pm ] [Brad Wardell] https://www.stardock.com/video/dxneowin2.wmv
[ 9:17pm ] [Brad Wardell] This is a demo of DesktopX 2 creating a Neowin news ticker.
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] Now, right now, programs like DekstopX, Samurize, etc. use things like VBScript and Javascript.
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] But with managed APIs, using C# or XAML, developers will be able to access a LOT more services right from their scripts.
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] Think about what you could do then. All kinds of coolness.
[ 9:18pm ] [DELTA75329> darnit.. what was that URL again?
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] Or imagine being able to tap into all the features of Direct3D right from a script.
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] https://www.stardock.com/video/dxneowin2.wmv
[ 9:18pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]the sidebar i have seen has rss capabilities and contact list capabilities- i imagine you will see more customized options emerge (much like the path activeDesktop was once going down)
[ 9:18pm ] [Brad Wardell] Or imagine being able to use vectors intea dof just .PNG files like we do today.
[ 9:19pm ] [Brad Wardell] Exactly.
[ 9:19pm ] [Brad Wardell] Anyway, it's probably my turn to hand it over to someone else. But I'll be here to answer any questions you mgiht have.
[ 9:19pm ] [Chris123NT> Don't compare active desktop to longhorn, active desktop was slow, and it sucked
[ 9:19pm ] [Chris123NT>
[ 9:19pm ] [Xeo> thanks Frogboy!
[ 9:19pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]
[ 9:19pm ] [Brad Wardell] Yea, there's nothing quite like AValon right now.
[ 9:19pm ] [Voodoo> Thanks Brad, dont forget this will all be transcripted by Cream if anyone has missed anything
[ 9:19pm ] [Yvo> active desktop was developed when we were running 233mhz desktops
[ 9:19pm ] [Brad Wardell] Hopefully Edited too.
[ 9:19pm ] [Redmak> Coll video btw
[ 9:20pm ] [Trunten> so Frogboy, are you actually in possesion of Longhorn right now and using it?
[ 9:20pm ] [Redmak> cool
[ 9:20pm ] [Brad Wardell] 4051 was given out at PDC.
[ 9:20pm ] [Brad Wardell] (buidl 4051).
[ 9:20pm ] [Trunten> how do you know all this stuff?
[ 9:20pm ] [Brad Wardell] What they showed there was a different build on the screen.
[ 9:20pm ] [Ciderx> thanks Brad, some things you mentioned there were explained far better than some of the MS sites explain it.
[ 9:20pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] XAML r0x0rs your b0x0rs. Will be fun to learn it. Too bad there's no standalone renderer to keep me from booting into 4051
[ 9:20pm ] [Brad Wardell] Stardock = Microsoft partner.
[ 9:20pm ] [Demogorgon> thank you brad good info
[ 9:20pm ] [Chris123NT> frogboy 4050 was on the demo screens
[ 9:20pm ] [Brad Wardell] Thanks. Let's turn this over tocreamhackered for the next portion.

Creamhackered on Windows Security:

[ 9:20pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] OK I'm gonna take over from brad and talk a little about the future of XP/Server 2003 and how this will effect Longhorn come Summer 2004
[ 9:21pm ] [DELTA75329> And longhorn is supposed to build on this type of experience?
[ 9:22pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Many of you will have heard about "springboard" the logical step towards Longhorn creating a way of securing XP/Server 2003 that little more but might not know exactly how this will change Longhorn
[ 9:22pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Longhorn is due to debut in beta form by christmas and is expected to ship before Beta 1 of Longhorn in Summer 2004.
[ 9:22pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Springboard rather
[ 9:23pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Springboard will be the test for Longhorn and Microsoft's future security plan
[ 9:24pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Some of the upcoming security features in Longhorn will be put into SP2 creating a way for Microsoft to test the security of Longhorn in a working environment
[ 9:24pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] What will this mean for end users?
[ 9:24pm ] [Timan> Frogboy, that icon app you demo'd off in the video when is that due for a release?
[ 9:24pm ] [Brad Wardell] Timan: It's on Object Desktop now. But it's still beta, should be available stand alone next month.
[ 9:25pm ] [Timan> thanks
[ 9:25pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] End users will get a greater firewall with outbound scanning, Windows Update 5, better memory management to prevent more "Blaster" attacks and new remote desktop features
[ 9:25pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] all of the above features will go into Longhorn for Beta 1
[ 9:26pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] almost immediately after enterprises have deployed SP2, Longhorn will be going into Beta stage with most code across the OS complete
[ 9:27pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] the official time frame is "Mid 2004" accroding to Microsoft for Aero
[ 9:27pm ] [William> the origional idea of a GUI was from Xerox wasn't it?
[ 9:28pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]yes
[ 9:28pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]the original idea for GUI was from Xerox Parc
[ 9:28pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]the computer was called the Alto
[ 9:28pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Microsoft are working towards a much more secure OS by using existing Operating Systems such as Server 2003 and XP as a test stage for some of the key securities in Longhorn
[ 9:29pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] The idea of Longhorn is to connect devices, people and data together
[ 9:29pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] But in a secure environment
[ 9:29pm ] [Brad Wardell] For example, managed code is just that - it's designed to be really secure.
[ 9:29pm ] [Brad Wardell] But people here at Neowin.net use dekstop enhancements a lot.
[ 9:29pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] This so far in current operating systems has prooved a tricky and troublesome task in some cases but Longhorn WILL change this
[ 9:29pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] Beta 1 will probably not feature complete. At least WinFS will only be feature complete for beta 2 according to their MSDN site.
[ 9:30pm ] [Brad Wardell] So obviously there will be a lot of question about how will third parties extend the base OS feature set. Will a program, for example, like CursorXP be able to be done on Longhorn without having to write a driver.
[ 9:30pm ] [Webgraph> Yeah, I just gave Longhorn a test drive on my system and good lord, it's slow. Then again, the minimum system requirements is a 600 MHz processor and I only got a 500 MHz OC'd to a 550.
[ 9:30pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]right, so Longhorn is designed for hardware that will be commonplace in 2005/2006
[ 9:30pm ] [Spyntek> Microsoft said that when longhorn does comeout, most computers will be running with much more memory and faster processors
[ 9:31pm ] [Brad Wardell] It'll get a lot better as time goes on.
[ 9:31pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] WinFX is at the core of Longhorn and will help secure data communication
[ 9:31pm ] [Webgraph> Chances are that by the time Longhorn is released, a 2 GHz processor will be necessary. So I'll probably stick with my Windows 2000.
[ 9:31pm ] [Spyntek> WINFS will run atop NTFS or Fat32
[ 9:31pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] No, it wont run on FAT32
[ 9:32pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=111679
[ 9:32pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] More about WinFS there
[ 9:32pm ] [Webgraph> I'll be typing up a review sometime soon, so stay tuned.
[ 9:32pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] Well, I've been told by a dev in the newsgroups that NTFS is a premise.
[ 9:32pm ] [Spyntek> it isn't supposed to replace NTFS
[ 9:33pm ] [Spyntek> just run alongside it
[ 9:33pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Now as for security from now onwards we have to look towards technologies such as WinFS and Indigo
[ 9:33pm ] [Brad Wardell] Okay, WinFS is NOT a file system.
[ 9:33pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]right, its NOT a file system
[ 9:33pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] WinFS needs NTFS and doesnt run on FAT
[ 9:33pm ] [Brad Wardell] Think about it like this:
[ 9:33pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Indigo isn't well documented currently by Microsoft and is largely being revealed @ PDC
[ 9:33pm ] [Brad Wardell] WinFS will treat data -- all data, like a big database.
[ 9:34pm ] [Brad Wardell] So you'll be able to deal with your stuff based on what it's about rather than worry about physical file locations.
[ 9:34pm ] [Spyntek> all these new filing systems will make it easier to find documents and databases stored not only on your computer, but on other networked computers
[ 9:34pm ] [Brad Wardell] Which is really important because think about it -- rightn ow 250 GIG hard drives are common. By 2006 they'll be 5 Terrabytes.
[ 9:34pm ] [William> says disabled
[ 9:34pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]WinFS is very impressive- I'll give you all an example of what it can do
[ 9:34pm ] [Brad Wardell] The day of being able to do a search for neo*.doc on the hard drive is over. We gotta move beyond that.
[ 9:35pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]if you have a digital picture, today you make three copies and store it in different folders for different uses. (Friends folder, My folder, Sports Folder). Now you can link that one file to the three different categories without having to make copies of it
[ 9:35pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]Saves a lot of disk space
[ 9:35pm ] [Brad Wardell] You'll still have file extensions.
[ 9:36pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] File extensions will be required for legacy applications, but file dialogs in Longhorn can decide how the system is supposed to show you the files. File dialogs will be able to construct different names on the fly based on metadata and hide the real filenam
[ 9:37pm ] [Brad Wardell] I'm not sure exactly hwo they're going to store the "metadata" for lack of a better term. It could be part of WinFS or maybe it'll be integrated into the NTFS streams, I'm only speculating right now.
[ 9:38pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] Metadata is going to be stored into tables in the WinFS store. It's derived from Yukon afterall.
[ 9:38pm ] [Brad Wardell] matt: That's a tough question to answer because there are two long hornb uilds.
[ 9:38pm ] [StinkerInker> Q: the aero demo shown at the pdc, thats more the old plex theme style, right?
[ 9:38pm ] [Brad Wardell] 4051 is the build that PDC people are getting. That was a special build that is really from June.
[ 9:38pm ] [Brad Wardell] Where they froze it up so that developers could start playign aroudn ith the new development features.
[ 9:38pm ] [Brad Wardell] What they showed on the screen is different.
[ 9:39pm ] [Brad Wardell] Plex and all that are likely just stand-ins.
[ 9:39pm ] [ultimaweaponff72003> Q: So will there be 2 copies of the metadata? one in the database, and one in the file in case you copy it to someone else? if there is only one copy in the database, what happens if the database dies? 2 copies sounds like a waste of space!
[ 9:39pm ] [Brad Wardell] Remember, in Longhorn, it will be all vector based.
[ 9:40pm ] [Brad Wardell] ultima: I'm ot sure. I think that is still in motion anyway because performance and security and stability will be the 3 variables theyhave to play with.
[ 9:41pm ] [StinkerInker> Q: so 4051 is way dated already?
[ 9:41pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]Yes
[ 9:41pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] DragonSoul: Yes, those folders are called dynamic sets, and you can instruct Longhorn to save those sets for reuse.
[ 9:41pm ] [Brad Wardell] 4051 was designed for developers.
[ 9:41pm ] * Radish™ has joined
[ 9:41pm ] [Jed from Microsoft]I'm running 4052.. And *thats* probably dated too by now
[ 9:41pm ] [Brad Wardell] Stardock hopes to have WindowBlinds 4.2 working on Longhorn by mid November.
[ 9:42pm ] [system32> Q: What's this that I hear is a replacement for Win32? What is it called and what added functionality does it provide? If the answer is WinFS than just ignore my question
[ 9:42pm ] [Brad Wardell] WinFX is the replacement for Win32.
[ 9:42pm ] [Brad Wardell] It is a new set of APIs that replaces Win32 plus handles the other new technologies in Longhorn.
[ 9:42pm ] [Brad Wardell] For one thing, all the APIs in WinFX are managed APIs.
[ 9:42pm ] [DELTA75329> WinFX is different from WinFS? How so?
[ 9:42pm ] [Brad Wardell] Which means they're more secure.
[ 9:43pm ] [Brad Wardell] WinFS deals with storage and information management. It's not an API.
[ 9:43pm ] [DragonSoull> Q: But will Win32 still be there to be used?
[ 9:43pm ] [Brad Wardell] Win32 programs will still work justl ike Win16 programs still worked in Windows 95.
[ 9:43pm ] [duva_Ben> Is Longhorn really better than OS X (Panther) in terms of speed, user interface ?
[ 9:44pm ] [Brad Wardell] duva_Ben: Longhorn is still 3 years off.
[ 9:44pm ] [Brad Wardell] So it's not really fair to compare OS X today with Longhorn.
[ 9:45pm ] [Brad Wardell] I will say this though: OS X does not have a WinFS equivalent that I'm aware of.
[ 9:45pm ] [Brad Wardell] It's wayy too early to evaluate WinFS.
[ 9:45pm ] [Brad Wardell] A lot of the techs are very early still.
[ 9:47pm ] [ikari87> Q: Will there finally be the 3D user interface???
[ 9:47pm ] [Brad Wardell] It won't be 3D in the sense of Halflife.
[ 9:47pm ] [StinkerInker> lol
[ 9:47pm ] [Brad Wardell] But it'll be 3D in the sense that windows will be meshes with textures and such.
[ 9:48pm ] [Brad Wardell] So if they make this sort of thing extensible for third parties, can you imagine the kinds of customization you'll be able to do?
[ 9:48pm ] [x0r4h> who is the microsoft community rep here?
[ 9:48pm ] [Voodoo> Jana_MS is
[ 9:48pm ] [Creamhackered from Neowin] Jana_MS is representing the Microsoft community
[ 9:48pm ] [Brad Wardell] Think of all the cool alternative ways of managing your information, your apps, your screen, espeically on a wide screen display if "skinning" is all handled by Direct3D rather than messing with GDI.
[ 9:49pm ] [Funk_Dok> Q: Does Longhorn include a 64 bit processor support?
[ 9:49pm ] [Brad Wardell] I think that's safe to say.
[ 9:50pm ] [Brad Wardell]When you take WinFS and mix it with Indigo, all kind sof things become possible. Where local files and external resources (PDAs, Media players, etc.) will all be able to be treated just like any other resource and displayed together.
[ 9:51pm ] [Brad Wardell] Like right now, when I make a post here at Neowin, my screenshot I might use might be at home or at the office. With Windows XP, I have to "remember" where I put it. Under Longhorn, it won't MATTER where that file is. It'll display under my screenshots "folder".
[ 9:52pm ] [system32> frogboy - very interesting is there a place to read more on this?
[ 9:52pm ] [Brad Wardell] By 2006, we'll have incredibly fast net connections.
[ 9:52pm ] [JK1150> chacho; i think that eye candy is the next step for windows. accessibility to your documents and a more user friendly based interface on top of the reliability i've seen from XP, you got an amazing product
[ 9:52pm ] [Brad Wardell] system32: I'll try to write up some of this stuff on Neowin or on JoeUser.com (probably both).
[ 9:53pm ] [duva_Ben> =SCREEN SHOTS= http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaero/html/samplerintro.asp#samplerintro_topic1
[ 9:53pm ] [ultimaweaponff72003> Q: But if the winfs uses 'folders', I don't understand what is so different about it?
[ 9:53pm ] [Brad Wardell] In XP, "Folders" are just directories on your hard disk.
[ 9:53pm ] [Jemm> ultima: the physical location of the data won't matter with winfs
[ 9:54pm ] [JK1150> chacho, accessibility and a user friendly interface is basically the only "eye candy" you will see in longhorn
[ 9:54pm ] [Brad Wardell] Whereas in Longhorn, a folder called "Pictures of my kid" might have pictures that come from my PDA, my laptop, my work machine, and anywhere else that I have access to where the image has been classified as a picture of my kids.
[ 9:54pm ] [Jean-Claude_Van_Damme] There will be classic folders in WinFS, which serve as basic organization means. The folders Frogboy meant are static and dynamic sets, kinda like filters over the data.
[ 9:55pm ] [ultimaweaponff72003> Ah, I get that bit
[ 9:55pm ] [Brad Wardell] Indeed, the eye candy isn't so much about showing "gee-wiz" stuff but demonstrating that the *presentation* of information to a user will no longer be limited so much by performance considerations.
[ 9:55pm ] [Brad Wardell] I could make, for exmaple, a user itnerface that is a book metaphor with turning pages when that makes sense.
[ 9:55pm ] [Brad Wardell] Right now, you really couldn't do it, not without it looking crummy and slow.
[ 9:55pm ] [Brad Wardell] It's safe to say that based on what we're seeing at PDC, there's a lot to be excited about with Longhorn. It won't be out for at least a couple of years yet but the cool stuff coming from Microsoft is pretty exciting.

We have a wrap up of day 4 of PDC over at JoeUser.com.

Today's discussion: Avalon. Avalon is probably the single most exciting part of Longhorn other than possibly WinFS and yet, most people don't realize why Avalon isn't just cool but necessary.

Check out the article and join the discussion over at JoeUser.com.

More images via WinSuperSite.

Today was the 4th and final day of the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference in LA. If you were there, things were a lot quieter than previously. Most sessions had to do with creating software with all the new goodies.

There's a myriad of new techs to make it both easier for the developer and more convenient for the user with regards to software. There's what I believe was called "One-Click" which, all hype around it is really about trying to make it much cleaner to use software on your system that you can get rid of.  I'm not referring to my notes so it may not even be called One Click for you nit-pickers.

So today I wanted to talk more about Avalon and XAML because those are two technologies that are going to really change the way people use computers. In English, what I mean is these two technologies are what will mark the obvious difference between say running Windows XP or previous version of Windows and Longhorn.

Now, before I go into that, I want to say a couple things about desktop customization. Writing about technology is always difficult because many people who are "into it" suffer from "smart person syndrome". Because they are reasonably bright, they think they know everything. I suffer from it myself. But knowing about it is the first step right? From reading email and reading some comments on my blogs, I've concluded one thing: People who aren't into customizing their computer really don't seem to have a clue just how popular desktop customizing is.

So let me enlighten those people who think customizing Windows is some "ultra small" niche. WinCustomize, a leading Windows customization site has its stats available on Hitbox.com. Bear in mind, this is just one site. There are others (Customize.org, XPThemes, Deskmod, Skinbase, LotsOfSkins, etc.) whose sole reason for existing is to make it easy for people to "tweak" Windows their way.

In just the month of October, about 2 million unique visitors came to WinCustomize.com.  The installed base of just WindowBlinds, a program that "skins" the Windows GUI is somewhere between 4 to 8 million users. That rivals the installed base of MacOS X (which counts me as a user). WindowBlinds is also one of the top 25 most popular software programs in downloads on Download.com in history. That doesn't even count the popularity of DesktopX, CursorXP, ObjectDock, and IconPackager which regularly show up in the top 50 most popular downloads worldwide. In addition, sites like Neowin.net have gained immense popularity and have a thriving community of people who like to enhance their desktops to match their own styles.

In other words, those who are content with Windows just the way it is shouldn't assume that everyone is that way. They certainly do represent the majority but not only do millions of people like being able to mold Windows, but a lot of innovation comes from those seeking to add new features to the OS (instant messaging, additional icon views, different UI concepts, etc.).

Here below is "TreeView", one of the features of Object Desktop. It adds a new "view" to Explorer. Ever wonder why developers haven't added more "view" options? Because it's a pain. But with Avalon and WinFS, the need combined with the potential of more ways of displaying data and information become apparent.

(click to zoom)

Now, where this really comes home in Longhorn is in the form of Avalon (and WinFS).

Here's the deal: In Windows XP, developers are severely limited in what they can do visually because GDI is slow. It's slow because unlike Direct3D, it isn't able to easily take advantage of the latest and greatest in video card features.

But Avalon will. In Longhorn, the entire desktop will be running via the equivalent of Direct3D. The kinds of effects currently reserved for games will become doable in Longhorn. With windows as meshes and bitmaps reserved to being textures and vectors leading the way, all kinds of cool things are possible.  But whether those cool things become probable has a lot to do with what Microsoft ends up doing.

There is no doubt that individual programs will be able to do remarkable things visually. One can almost imagine the cool media programs that will become possible with Longhorn.  With XAML, creating a cool user interface on your program will be independent of the underlying code logic. It'll be testable without having to jump through the kinds of hoops we have to do today.  And it'll be similar in ease to creating a nice web page.  Now, I've already stated that I'm not sure that's a good thing. Take a fresh look at websites on the net and consider whether you want programs to behave like that.

What excites me about Longhorn is the idea of being able to make use of all that cool technology to do things that no one has thought of yet across the entire system.

For example:

This is WindowFX, today. On a good video card you can make all your windows sway around as you move them.  Microsoft has shown similar things being able to be done in Avalon. But will effects that Microsoft hasn't thought of be possible? And I'm not talking about where they have a UI for plugging in exported meshes or some proprietary msstyles type content.  I mean will developers be able to imagine new things and be able to use Avalon to implement it to every window on the system.

Think about it, with Avalon, we could, in theory, develop software that allows schools to view the entire UI as an open book with pages and all content fitting inside.  Or maybe add a widget to windows that allows us to resize them so that they actually rescale rather than resize.

Avalon is, as a software developer who is into this stuff, the most exciting thing on Windows -- ever with WinFS being the only thing that rivals it and both take place in Longhorn.

Why Avalon is important

But gee-wiz factor aside, there are some important reasons why Avalon is not only going to be cool but absolutely necessary: Resolution.

Today we think of resolutions in terms of pixels.  I'm running at 1440x1050 right now (laptop).  Others may run at 1024x768.  Why do we know these things? It should be irrelevant.  Instead, we should be thinking in terms of inches or at least in terms of what is comfortable on our eyes.

But right now, that's not really an option.  Run at say 1600x1200 and things get pretty small. Turn on  "Large Fonts" and some programs get a bit wacky. And all large fonts does is change the desktop DPI from 96 (default) to 120.  What's wrong with that? Well, a decent laser printer does 1200dpi.  Kind of pathetic if you think about it. Our "state of the art screens" are not even doing 1/10th the clarity of a $300 laser printer on paper.

But by 2006, things change.  The age of standard 24 inch flat panel displays running at what we would today call 3072 x 1728 (that's a 16 x 9 format btw) will be common.  But don't count on being able to make much use of such a nice setup if you're running Windows XP. Because at that resolution, your icons will be tiny, text will be tiny, things will be hard to read. Because you'll be stuck at 96dpi.  And if you change it, get ready for all kinds of apps to have problems.

But on Longhorn, you'll be able to instantly adjust your display to be any level of clarity you want and your apps will "scale" smoothly. Anyone who's played Warcraft III and changed resolutions is actually getting a taste of that. In the game, Warcraft III, changing resolution doesn't make the map bigger, instead, it makes the units and other parts sharper, more defined.

That's why there's a lot of talk about vectors. A bitmap gets jaggies when you resize it. Vectors, on the other hand, don't really care. The system will be rendering in real time, like Quake or Unreal does today but instead of it being a game, it'll be your user interface looking similar to what it does today but slicker, more polished, more detailed.

Avalon is one part of Longhorn that is a necessity.  You'll probably be reading a lot about how Windows XP is going to dominate the decade. It will. But Longhorn is going to become a must-have not because of Microsoft marketing but because of hardware. You will need longhorn to use the next generation displays. 

That is why Microsoft can be assured that Longhorn is inevitable. Anyone buying a monitor in 2006 is going to need it if they want to run that monitor at its fullest. Which is ironic because this fact is likely to be the least discussed because right now, in 2003, we can't really imagine screen resolutions of 3000x2000.  We still live in a world where 1600x1200 is a pretty high resolution and the typical resolution is 1024x768. Someday we'll all sound like geeks talking about screen resolution in terms of "pixels". Which means a lot to me, because well, I won't be so lonely then.

SkinStudio version 4 beta 2 available

SkinStudio is a program that allows users to design their own visual styles for use with Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP.  It supports a host of different “skinning” formats including WindowBlinds UIS1, UIS2, ObjectBar, and the importation of MSStyles visual styles.

SkinStudio 4 Professional is also the first and only program that enables skinners to visually create Windows Media Player skins.

 Beta 2 of SkinStudio 4 is now available as a free download. New in Beta 2: 

• Advanced Coloring support. It is now very easy to select a part of a visual style and change its color

• Support for creating toolbar icons

• Support for creating Windows progress animation AVIs (copying, downloading, moving, deleting, etc.).

• Advanced MSStyle importation. Any visual style created in .msstyles format can be imported into the new Universal Skin Format which can then be exported to Windows Media Player skin format or WindowBlinds visual style format.

• Fixes to the template image feature. It is now easier to bring in an existing drawn “mockup” and select the parts you want to turn into a skin.

• Much faster browsing of skins and visual styles that are on the system

• New opening dialog to help guide new users into skinning

• Multiple document interface – can now edit multiple skins at once. Each skin appears as a tab.

• A full list of changes made from beta 1 to beta 2 can be found here: http://www.skinstudio.net/beta2changes.doc

Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/sks1.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/sks3.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/screen2.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/screen3.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/screen4.jpg

There are 3 versions of SkinStudio:

1.  SkinStudio Freeware

2.  SkinStudio Standard which is $19.95 and adds the ability to import pieces from other visual styles as well as import    pre-created widgets 

3. SkinStudio Professional which is $29.95 and adds the ability to create Windows Media Player Skins

SkinStudio Professional also comes with Stardock’s Object Desktop (www.objectdesktop.com) suite of desktop enhancements which includes WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX, IconDeveloper, ObjectBar, and much more.

Download SkinStudio at at: http://www.skinstudio.net

Over as OSNews.com they linked to my article on the PDC.  OSNews.com is one of my favorite sites but it tends to have more than its fair share of "Wannabes". That is, developers who are probably pretty good but exceed their reach by making software development judges beyond their experience.

Linux users in particular fall prey to this. But it's not that specific to a platform. What amazes me is how Linux/Apple advocates try to put down what Microsoft is trying to do with Longhorn because other concepts have been tried or implemented on other platforms. Who the hell cares? I got my start on OS/2. OS/2 introduced all kinds of cool stuff that later appeared in BeOS, Linux, MacOS, etc.  But so what? The point is that Longhorn is going to have cool stuff. 

I mean, heck, a lot of the visual stuff seen in Avalon's demos we do today with WindowFX. Right now. Shadows, morphing windows, transitions, you name it. If you have an ATI or nVidia card you can do that right now with WindowFX.  Does that make Avalon any less cool in my opinion? No.  Will it make WindowFX less useful in 2006? Absolutely if we sit on our asses for 3 years not doing anything. Each new version of Windows provides no opportunities. Developers who sit on their laurels get creamed in the long term -- which is how it should be.

On particular troll writes:

It appears that the author is disgruntled by the fact that he will find it harder to push his hype-ware/snake-oil to the clueless end users. It would be like Symantec complaining that because Windows XP SP2 will include an enhanced firewall, the can no longer justify charging the exorbinant amount they do now.

Stop complaining and look for a new market. That is the ONE problem with alot of Windows developers, instead of looking at developing applications that benefit they user, they're more concerned with creating tweakers and so-called "optimisers" to work around Windows deficiencies that they know will be fixed in the next release.

When this next release rolls around the corner we have whiners like Draginol complain that his snake-oil can now no longer "hook" into an API. Cry me a river Draginol and look for a new market

There are so many things wrong with this statement that it's hard to begin. First, his analogy is completely wrong. It would not be like Symantec complaining because SP2 includes a firewall.  Instead, it would be like Microsoft making SP2 not only NOT include a firewall but making it impossible for anyone to create a firewall. I think people would definitely object to that, don't you think?

The second paragraph is a self-contradiction. "Instead of developing things that benefit the user they make things that work around Windows deficiencies."  Well how does that not help the user? Yes, that's what Object Desktop does -- it extends Windows so that it has new features that enable users to do a lot more with it and do it their own way. How is that not benfitting the users?

One might argue that the entire reason Linux has any significant following at all is because "snake oil" people like myself charging an "exorbinant" amount ($20 is apparently a lot of money if you're a semi-literate college student) haven't been able to write software that gets around Windows deficiencies fast enough.

That's one of the advantages of Open Source. On Windows, it's closed source but historically developers have been able to add their own features to the base OS using API hooks. We're not talking sub-classing an existing thing on a per program basis here, we're talking about being able to do wholesale change.

The only ones who will suffer will be users. Developers can always write drivers that reintroduce a missing feature but the average freeware or shareware developer won't know how to do that.

And people LIKE being able to control how Windows functions for them. WinCustomize.com gets over 2 million unique visitors per month. And there are other sites of similar popularity.

Not everyone is comfortable with the idea that one big company, be it Apple or IBM or Microsoft should decide exactly how you should use your computer.
 

Today was the third day of Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC). The day was mostly broken up into sessions where developers could learn more about specific technologies.

Today I'll talk about two of those technologies into more detail. Now, my understanding about the advantages of some of this is sketchy and incomplete since we are, after all, talking about an OS that won't ship for 3 years.  Anyway, those two technologies are: WinFS and managed code in the form of the API called WinFX.

WinFS is not a file system. In fact, there is some debate about whether it is called Win File System or Win Future Storage. Regardless of what the acronymn stands for, WinFS will (not might, will) completely revolutionize the way we deal with our information.

Think about your hard disk for a moment. How large is it? 30 gigabytes? 50?  150?  There are 300 gigabyte hard drives either out or about to come out.  Imagine what they'll be in 2006. 3 gigabytes? And how do you store this data? In DOS-like directory structures like c:\documents and settings\myusernames\my documents\my music. My god that sucks.  Why are we doing that?  Apparently, someone at Microsoft had the same view and the solution comes in the form of WinFS.

So WinFS isn't a file system. Instead, it's more like a...layer on top of NTFS. One that provides database capabilities.  How advanced those capabilities will become will depend on three factors: (1) Security (2) Performance (3) Reliability.  They are often competing demands and so how powerful and neat WinFS will initially be depends a lot on how well the mesh with those 3 issues.

So what does that mean for real world use? Well, there is some talk about replacing folders with "stacks". Folders would remain but they would be tied to physical directory structures. Stacks would, in effect, be what users would slowly migrate to. Hopefully they'll come up with a better name.

So what kinds of things can we hope for in stacks? Well, one thing I would hope to see is that physical location becomes irrelevant. For example, tonight I have to update royalty reports, I messed up on the Stellar Frontier royalty report and need to make a correction. Okay. Great. Where did I put the royalty report?  If you're like me, the answer is, I'll do a search for 2Q2003.xls and it'll scan through my hard drive. If it's not here, then it's at work.

Idiocy.

With WinFS, that file would be located in a stack. I would have a bunch of default stacks and more would automatically be created as a generated content. The stack would automatically contain files from any device I have access to. That means my PDAs, my MP3 players, my work machine's main server, my work machine drives, etc. They would all appear in the stack without any concern for whether they were local or not. By 2006, I'll be pretty irritated if my net connection isn't at least 10 megabit (it's 3 right now).

Moreover, these stacks will be intelligent. That is, I would have a stack called "Royalty Reports". One would assume that the Longhorn save dialog will make it very easy to provide some basic classification at the same time so that they will automatically be added to existing stacks.  Now, for you database people, think of stacks as saved queries that dynamically update when a change is detected.

Combine this kind of organization ability with Avalon's compositing engine and you'll be able to display you data in all kinds of useful ways.

Note to Microsoft: Make sure you open it up so that third parties can add their own ways of displaying information and organizing it that appears equally "native". That means both visually and content-wise. So if I want to display family photos in a "Photo album view" and Microsoft hasn't provide a Photo Album view for displaying stacks, a third party should be able to create one and have it as an option at all times.

The second technology for the evening is WinFX. As I've talked to more and more developers, it's increasingly clear that few people are excited about WinFX. It's not that we don't want a cleaned up API for dealing with all this. The problem is that it's managed code. Managed code can mean many things. In this case, in Longhorn, you're really not talking to the part of Windows that does the work. You're talking to its front man.  A managed API is just a layer.  As a developer, I want to talk to the boss directly, I don't want to call its secretary and make an appointment and hope it's willing to do what I want.

Let me give you an example: API hooking. If everything moves to managed code, how do you hook an API? First, I better explain what the heck API hooking is. Or better yet, give you a LINK to someone much smarter than I am who can explain it more clearly. But in a nut shell, API hooking allows developers to replace parts of the OS with their own stuff.  Don't like the way scrollbars are handled in Windows? No problem, API hook them and take control of them yourself.  Microsoft forget to add some feature to the file dialog? No problem, API hook the file dialog and put in your own.  API hooking is the foundation of all good desktop enhancements. Without it, it's very difficult for a developer to extend the Windows base feature set in a way that's seamless.

But how do you hook a managed API? It's not even doing the job. You gotta talk to its boss which is underneath.  Now, managed APIs have a lot of good things going for them.  For one thing, a managed API is safe which means since Microsoft knows exactly what they can and can't do, they can make them available to scripting languages. This is a big deal to Microsoft because part of the goal of Longhorn is to merge the web and applications together via a super HTML type language called XAML. And using C# or whatever, you would then have access to any managed API right from a website. If you're at PDC, check out the Amazon.com booth.

The problem is, if Microsoft hasn't already thought of a feature or function in the OS, tough luck. There's no easy solution for this. Microsoft wants to eventually move to a 100% managed API architecture for support and future backward compatibility.  In Longhorn, at present, WinFX is a front end to Win32 and the new technologies.  Eventually though they want to be able to drop Win32 and the rest and be free to put whatever they want behind WinFX. That wouldn't happen for a long time.

Note to Microsoft: Please make sure there are ways for developers to be able to hook APIs in Longhorn in some clean non-hack way. Extensibility matters.

For companies like Stardock, we can always just write drivers that do this. There's always going to be a way around it. But looking back at the last 10 years, a great deal of innovation in software has come from individual programmers who have found some way to extend the OS to do something cool and new. 

WinFX may have a hard road as an API. For one thing, code written to WinFX isn't going to work under Windows XP or Windows 2000. Consider that -- by 2006, Windows XP will have been the shipping OS for 5 years. Windows 2000 even longer.  Point being, Windows XP is going to be the main OS people probably for the rest of the decade and that means Win32. So any barrier to WinFX could spell its doom. Developers are going to be forced to write to Win32 for years to come because of market realities.  So anything that makes WinFX less powerful than existing APIs is going to be a big negative.

So on the plus side, managed code lets you access a lot more power from more places. On the down side is it may make it much harder for developers to inherit and replace existing APIs.

So there you have it, 2 of the major new techs in Longhorn.  Tomorrow I'll talk a bit more about the importance of Avalon, XAML. In a nutshell: Vectors are cool and arbitrarily sized desktops are cool. Oh and one other thing: 16x9 is the future my friends. Wide screen! That's why the sidebar in Longhorn is such a big deal.

Today was the third day of Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC). The day was mostly broken up into sessions where developers could learn more about specific technologies.

Today I'll talk about two of those technologies into more detail. Now, my understanding about the advantages of some of this is sketchy and incomplete since we are, after all, talking about an OS that won't ship for 3 years.  Anyway, those two technologies are: WinFS and managed code in the form of the API called WinFX.

WinFS is not a file system. In fact, there is some debate about whether it is called Win File System or Win Future Storage. Regardless of what the acronymn stands for, WinFS will (not might, will) completely revolutionize the way we deal with our information.

Think about your hard disk for a moment. How large is it? 30 gigabytes? 50?  150?  There are 300 gigabyte hard drives either out or about to come out.  Imagine what they'll be in 2006. 3 gigabytes? And how do you store this data? In DOS-like directory structures like c:\documents and settings\myusernames\my documents\my music. My god that sucks.  Why are we doing that?  Apparently, someone at Microsoft had the same view and the solution comes in the form of WinFS.

So WinFS isn't a file system. Instead, it's more like a...layer on top of NTFS. One that provides database capabilities.  How advanced those capabilities will become will depend on three factors: (1) Security (2) Performance (3) Reliability.  They are often competing demands and so how powerful and neat WinFS will initially be depends a lot on how well the mesh with those 3 issues.

So what does that mean for real world use? Well, there is some talk about replacing folders with "stacks". Folders would remain but they would be tied to physical directory structures. Stacks would, in effect, be what users would slowly migrate to. Hopefully they'll come up with a better name.

So what kinds of things can we hope for in stacks? Well, one thing I would hope to see is that physical location becomes irrelevant. For example, tonight I have to update royalty reports, I messed up on the Stellar Frontier royalty report and need to make a correction. Okay. Great. Where did I put the royalty report?  If you're like me, the answer is, I'll do a search for 2Q2003.xls and it'll scan through my hard drive. If it's not here, then it's at work.

Idiocy.

With WinFS, that file would be located in a stack. I would have a bunch of default stacks and more would automatically be created as a generated content. The stack would automatically contain files from any device I have access to. That means my PDAs, my MP3 players, my work machine's main server, my work machine drives, etc. They would all appear in the stack without any concern for whether they were local or not. By 2006, I'll be pretty irritated if my net connection isn't at least 10 megabit (it's 3 right now).

Moreover, these stacks will be intelligent. That is, I would have a stack called "Royalty Reports". One would assume that the Longhorn save dialog will make it very easy to provide some basic classification at the same time so that they will automatically be added to existing stacks.  Now, for you database people, think of stacks as saved queries that dynamically update when a change is detected.

Combine this kind of organization ability with Avalon's compositing engine and you'll be able to display you data in all kinds of useful ways.

Note to Microsoft: Make sure you open it up so that third parties can add their own ways of displaying information and organizing it that appears equally "native". That means both visually and content-wise. So if I want to display family photos in a "Photo album view" and Microsoft hasn't provide a Photo Album view for displaying stacks, a third party should be able to create one and have it as an option at all times.

The second technology for the evening is WinFX. As I've talked to more and more developers, it's increasingly clear that few people are excited about WinFX. It's not that we don't want a cleaned up API for dealing with all this. The problem is that it's managed code. Managed code can mean many things. In this case, in Longhorn, you're really not talking to the part of Windows that does the work. You're talking to its front man.  A managed API is just a layer.  As a developer, I want to talk to the boss directly, I don't want to call its secretary and make an appointment and hope it's willing to do what I want.

Let me give you an example: API hooking. If everything moves to managed code, how do you hook an API? First, I better explain what the heck API hooking is. Or better yet, give you a LINK to someone much smarter than I am who can explain it more clearly. But in a nut shell, API hooking allows developers to replace parts of the OS with their own stuff.  Don't like the way scrollbars are handled in Windows? No problem, API hook them and take control of them yourself.  Microsoft forget to add some feature to the file dialog? No problem, API hook the file dialog and put in your own.  API hooking is the foundation of all good desktop enhancements. Without it, it's very difficult for a developer to extend the Windows base feature set in a way that's seamless.

But how do you hook a managed API? It's not even doing the job. You gotta talk to its boss which is underneath.  Now, managed APIs have a lot of good things going for them.  For one thing, a managed API is safe which means since Microsoft knows exactly what they can and can't do, they can make them available to scripting languages. This is a big deal to Microsoft because part of the goal of Longhorn is to merge the web and applications together via a super HTML type language called XAML. And using C# or whatever, you would then have access to any managed API right from a website. If you're at PDC, check out the Amazon.com booth.

The problem is, if Microsoft hasn't already thought of a feature or function in the OS, tough luck. There's no easy solution for this. Microsoft wants to eventually move to a 100% managed API architecture for support and future backward compatibility.  In Longhorn, at present, WinFX is a front end to Win32 and the new technologies.  Eventually though they want to be able to drop Win32 and the rest and be free to put whatever they want behind WinFX. That wouldn't happen for a long time.

Note to Microsoft: Please make sure there are ways for developers to be able to hook APIs in Longhorn in some clean non-hack way. Extensibility matters.

For companies like Stardock, we can always just write drivers that do this. There's always going to be a way around it. But looking back at the last 10 years, a great deal of innovation in software has come from individual programmers who have found some way to extend the OS to do something cool and new. 

WinFX may have a hard road as an API. For one thing, code written to WinFX isn't going to work under Windows XP or Windows 2000. Consider that -- by 2006, Windows XP will have been the shipping OS for 5 years. Windows 2000 even longer.  Point being, Windows XP is going to be the main OS people probably for the rest of the decade and that means Win32. So any barrier to WinFX could spell its doom. Developers are going to be forced to write to Win32 for years to come because of market realities.  So anything that makes WinFX less powerful than existing APIs is going to be a big negative.

So on the plus side, managed code lets you access a lot more power from more places. On the down side is it may make it much harder for developers to inherit and replace existing APIs.

So there you have it, 2 of the major new techs in Longhorn.  Tomorrow I'll talk a bit more about the importance of Avalon, XAML. In a nutshell: Vectors are cool and arbitrarily sized desktops are cool. Oh and one other thing: 16x9 is the future my friends. Wide screen! That's why the sidebar in Longhorn is such a big deal.

And now I'll leave you with a screenshot of my desktop, a link to DesktopX 2, and a video of me doing some cool stuff today and letting you imagine what cool things you'll be able to make With DirectGUI technologies (what API underneath DesktopX) in Avalon:

My Desktop

Download DesktopX then Download my desktop

DesktopX  2 Video Demo!

 See you tomorrow!

I have quite a few portable MP3 players and each one has its pros and cons.  For those of you who like to listen to music when you work out, the Sports MP3 player available at CoolNewGadgets.Com might be exactly what you're looking for.

This portable MP3 player also plays .WMA files as well (though it doesn't seem to play Digital Rights Managed WMA files -- i.e. ones you buy) and holds 128MB of memory.  The main selling point of this is that it is just a headset.  So when I go out bike riding, I can listen to music the entire way without having to deal with any wires. The whole thing is contained in the headset.

I only have two real beefs with it. First, it has its own proprietary driver. This won't affect most people but I generally expect portable MP3 players to be able to be connected via a USB cable and then show up as a drive where I can drag and drop stuff. But with this, it has its own software I have to use. The problem I have with that is that over time, I'll probably lose the CD as well as not be sure it'll work on a future version of Windows.  In addition to that, its cable seems to be unusual. I.e. I have no other USB cables (and I have a lot of them) that have USB connectors quite like this which means I have to keep track of the cable as well.

The other issue is the price. It lists for $200 though CoolGadgets has it for $159.  The problem is, for $299 I can get an iPod.  That said, the premium cost has to do with the advantage of the whole thing being the headset.

Overall though, for anyone who likes to listen to music when they work out this is something I'd recommend. In fact, anyone who does serious bike riding would be well served by this. Having used this, I can't imagine going back to my Muvo when bike riding. Having cables dangling down is a pain in the butt which the Sports MP3 player eliminates.

 DesktopX  2 Video Demo!

Check out the DesktopX 2 video demo with shows how easy it is to create objects and with the upcoming DesktopX 2 Professional, how easy it is to take those objects and turn them into stand alone executables. The video is large but if you have Windows Media Player 9, it'll stream quickly.

Have DesktopX 2 already? Download the theme!