As usual, Thurott is quite a bit off base.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=1fe7ea0f-3ad6-4137-8397-d412a3792c33

That's beta 1 of the "Windows Phone 7 Connector" for OS X. Digging around in the package, it definitely came from the Microsoft Mac team, with signs of the Mac BU code all over the place. Since I don't have a Windows Phone, the program doesn't do much for me when it runs, but it does indicate it syncs from the iTunes and iPhoto libraries. I also found Zune device logos inside the program, so I may try and borrow a coworkers Zune to see what it does.

Definitely impressed Microsoft is putting in the effort to let OS X folks use their new phone. For media syncing, this puts the iPhone and WP7 devices in the first party supported category, while Android and Palm owners on OS X still need to look to third party solutions.

Yeah, the ads were one of the dozen things Palm did wrong. MS seems to take a little while to get their campaign rolling, and definitely don't have the impact and effectiveness of Apple's ads. They do an average job, though.

Josh Topolsky actually made a good point about them on TWiT this week. He pointed out that MS basically did the same thing with their Bing ads. They started out with those bizarre "search overload" ads, which presented us with the problem that we face with search. They then followed those ads up with a series of ads showing Bing in action and all the things you could do with it. Josh surmised that they would probably do the exact same thing.

Again, I'm not saying this is the correct way, but it could be a lot worse. It could be Palm, after all...

You talking about the Palm adverts where you no idea what on earth it was selling until the text came up at the end?

Yeah, the ones with the creepy pale-white woman.

Or the ones that were sexist. Take your pick.

Yeah, and Bing definitely doesn't have that problem. Since it never seems to return much that's relevant to your search at all.

I remember I recently tried to use Bing to find something on Microsoft's site; some piece of Windows documentation that I knew existed but couldn't seem to find. (Probably due to their restructuring of the kb site without fixing any of the links inside it.) Anyway, Google wasn't returning what I wanted, so I tried Bing, and it was far, far, worse. It didn't even come close to finding anything relevant at all.

I figure that if Bing can't even find content on Microsoft's own site, there's not much chance that it will work well with anything else, either.

Also, I wish Google hadn't changed their image search in response to Bing. The new version is awful. I might start trying Bing for image search, since Google seems to think they've done something right there.

All that said, WP7S actually looks pretty good. I'm not going to use it, but it's not the goatse.cx that WinCE was.

I use Bing for image searches a lot when I'm looking for DVD artwork- only because the image search on Google is so hard to use atm. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but search for images on Google tends to go away and not come back for a while, while image searching on Bing is pretty quick.

Before the Google change I think I preferred Bing even then for image searches, but only slightly and not enough to change my habits to default to it instead of Google.

Google image search used to suck, not because of performance but because of execution and design. It presented the images in such a way that they were never aligned which caused the page format to change from page to page. That make it impossible to manipulate the controls from one page to the next (with a mouse) without hunting around for the small "next" or "previous" button.

It's cemented, cast in stone or whatever other cliché you want to use. Google sucks at design and UI. Just look at Analytics. What a mess.

Bing's image search is still much better than Google's in presentation since everything is on a nice grid. I'd like to see a few more options, but in terms of speed, it's also performing quite well. I'll probably use it more in the future. Text search however sucks with Bing as you guys have all pointed out already.

WInPhone isn't even out yet and I'm already wanting one of its features as a Jailbroken mod for the iPhone... The ability to hide the title/status bar at the top of the screen at all times, and swipe with your finger to either display it temporarily or to show a more detailed/larger device status report. IMO, that bar is one thing Apple did very very wrong. It's just too 1980's and a throwback to desktop computing.

I'm personally very glad Apple stuck with a fixed status bar, I wouldn't want to pull down a bar every time I needed to check signal strength, whether a GPS add is in the background, the time, whether wifi is connected, battery level remaining (and also keeping an eye on how fast I'm draining it) etc

If they ever make it hideable, I hope the make it optional (they probably won't make it optional knowing Steve).

I have that on my Nexus One.

I agree. Infact, a couple of versions ago TomTom went more fullscreen than it had previously, so now I have absolutely no idea whether or not I'm getting a voice or data service, I find that particularly irritating.

Yep, TomTom being fullscreen is very annoying. Not being able to see the battery indicator if you are using it without it plugged in is a pain in the arse.

Dell Venue Pro does come with a memory expansion slot.
So, it seems not to be true that WP7 will not support mem expansions.

If so, this is really good because then Venue Pro is, in fact, a real, good, audio player (=Zune), and actually more versatile than Zune because potentially expandable.

We'll see what the first real tests and review will say.

It isn't expandable in the way we normally use that word, if you add or change the memory card in WP7 you have to hard reset the phone and blow away all the data on the phone.

Does WP7 have the full backup/restore that iOS devices have ? Also can you backup one WP7 device and restore to another ?

It's essentially a way to upgrade your phone's storage, but like Andy says, it's completely interleaved with the memory that's already in the phone.

I'm sure MS's hardware must support making a backup. What will it do if it doesn't support syncing and by extension backup?

... mmmh. Interesting.

Well, that can ben annoying. But, on the other hand, if you have your contacts, music, photos, stored/synched on your PC, it's not too bad, theoretically, assuming hard-reset is a smooth enough - not even necessarily quick - operation.

Do you guys know what a hard reset practically means with WP7? Is there official software (Zune?) available to do so, or would it have to be provided by hardware manufacturer? Or even be unofficial?

Maybe Apps restore could potentially be a more annoying part of the process if licensing issue arised...


Back to Dell Venue Pro, it comes with microSDHC port. As of today, it means a max capacity of 32GB + 8 GB internal = 40 GB. Not yet comparable to a hdd-based music player, but promising.

A 64 GB microSD, which I believe will eventually hit the market, would bring total capacity to 72 GB; that may keep my entire collection without audiobooks and some podcasts; personally, it is a sacrifice I could accept to make as long as I can carry around one device only rather than two. It would be painful to go back and select what music not to sync in the device, for example, an approach I had hoped to give up once for good years ago when I first expanded my Empeg :), but still...

Also, I hope it sounds as good as the Zune.