This was far from a big thing at today’s Microsoft E3 event, but it’s certainly a good thing to have.

I foresee a future where there won’t be any optical media needed to watch movies, listen to music and play games; well, the first two are already becoming true at a rapid rate, and with things like the 360′s forthcoming new ability to stream 1080p movies, the second can’t be that far off (provided we all get better internet connections!).

As for games, well, sure there are services like Steam on the PC and you can download classic titles on the 360 already, but the ability to download full 360 titles (which you’ll be able to do in August) will be appreciated.

Something I definitely want to see is the ability to pre-order games from the marketplace and have them download before the launch of the game and become playable at 00:00 on the day of release.

Just imagine pre-ordering Halo 3: ODST on the Xbox Live marketplace, having it downloaded progressively before its release, and on the first second of the 22nd of September, having it unlock and be instantly playable.
It’s a lovely thought.

Sure, I like my physical mediums mostly because there’s some nice feeling about actually having something you can see – especially when they have cool boxes like the Halo Wars limited edition or the Halo 3 Limited edition SPARTAN Head!
But, there’s no denying that the convenience of the digital download method is a great one. I really hope that something like what I described will be implemented.

I look forward to the day.

So far it’s just the ability to download 360 games on the marketplace that’s been mentioned. No more details than that really but unfortunately it sounded as though they were planning it to be the same as the classic Xbox game marketplace where a title-a week or so is released after they’re already out physically.

/

As for the other Microsoft stuff at E3, it was impressive. I very much look forward to playing Halo 3: ODST in September, the beta for Halo: Reach in 2010 and the game itself later next year.

The motion camera looked amazing; I was impressed by what they’ve got it doing — it looks amazingly responsive and well, it surprised me – I expected something gimmicky; not that I’m saying some of the stuff won’t be, it’s almost certain that there will be silly stuff, but some of it looks cool.
Twitter & last.fm being integrated with the dashboard is cool, especially considering the amount I use them both.

• Holy shit! I could possibly live with UAC in Windows 7! [*see rant on UAC at the end]

• Most of the applications I’ve tried so far work okay. iTunes for instance, works fine for playing music and the bonjour service works as well. If I plug my iPhone in though, I’m asked to reinstall iTunes. Still; it’s very early for Windows 7 and I believe this is more than early Vista testers could have said with iTunes.

• Under 7, plugging in my printer is easy! It automatically downloads and installs the driver (and quickly, too). In Vista I have to go to the HP website and install it myself.

• The Windows Experience Index has been uncapped from 5.9 (see picture below).
  

As I spend more time with it, I’m sure I’ll think of more things to write about. But, as some will know, this early build doesn’t even have the features that Microsoft showed off last week (like the new taskbar). That’ll probably come along with Beta 1. EDIT: If you follow the instructions on this page, you can enable the new taskbar in build 6801.

/

My rant at UAC: Pretty much the first thing I do in Vista is disable UAC; (don’t tell me that this is a bad idea; I haven’t gotton any viruses or other shiz because of my decision.) Frankly, I don’t see the point in UAC as it is in Vista – who is it for? people like myself are annoyed by it and many others just click yes because they don’t understand what it’s asking!

At least Microsoft understood that UAC is too annoying in Vista and they’ve toned it down in 7. Finally I can have UAC enabled and see all user’s processes in task manager without being prompted by UAC!

The only times that I’ve seen UAC in Windows 7 is when I’ve tried to install an application. Synergy, something which I use often, has to be run as Administrator and still, two years after Vista, there is no way to stop the prompt from appearing each and every time I run it.

So, even though UAC is better in Windows 7, if I were to be using it as a primary machine, I think I’d eventually turn UAC off.

Will we be graced by the reveal of what ‘Halo 3 Prepare To Drop’ is? Click here to see what we know so far (it’s just a trailer, an awesome trailer.)

Well, there have been a couple hints that we might do:

• “Tokyo Rules” mentioned in one of the Super Intendant’s news posts on Bungie.net
• “Prepare to J-Pop” Sound familiar? No? Could be a reference to Prepare to Drop from the trailer. And, from the same source: “Brian and Luke are, as you read this, witnessing the marvel that is the beautiful city of Tokyo.” From last week’s Bungie update.

Also, generally speaking, a keynote at a gaming show implies that there is stuff to show off; hopefully this ‘new Halo 3 campaign experience’ is one of those things.

The keynote starts at 12:00PM Tokyo time. If you want to find out when that is in your time zone, click here.

/

Edit: I was right; Look here

It can be seen in the picture below or by going to Bungie.net at this very moment; don’t know how long that’s gonna last.

Is it real?

Is Microsoft preventing Bungie from announcing whatever they were going to announce?

Will anything happen at 07:07:07 AM?

I hope so

/

EDIT: 07:12:00 AM – Nothing…. I’m just gonna go be depressed somewhere now….

EDIT: September 20th ’08 – he’s back! – click me

EDIT: September 25th ’08 – he’s back in full – click

For instance, just now I was signed into MSN in Adium and I wanted to send a link to a friend, but he wasn’t online; fine, I thought – I’ll just send the message now and he’ll get it when he comes online.

But no! Adium informed me that the contact wasn’t online and gave me two choices – to send the message now and that it would only go through if the contact was appearing offline or send it later.

I tried the first option – but he wasn’t online… So, thinking that it would work the other way, I chose the second option – to send the message later. Little did I know that this doesn’t work in the same way as on Windows; In order for the message to get through later, both the contact and I have to be online (and I would have to be using Adium; rare for me, the person who bought an MBP for Windows :p).

So, frustrated with the offering from Adium, I downloaded Microsoft’s offering – Messenger for Mac and I was immediately disappointed – just clicking on an offline contact presented me with a dialog saying they were offline and “Would you like to mail this contact?” NO, I JUST WANT TO SEND AN OFFLINE MESSAGE!

So, are there any MSN clients for Mac that can offer this feature and preferably others i.e. Shared Folders (which is absent from Messenger for Mac)?

Is the fact that Adium (which seems to be a fairly well featured IM client) isn’t able to send offline messages through MSN Microsoft’s doing? If so, they should at least implement it in their own client!

/

He is Microsoft!

Will there be any noticable differences? Probably not; perhaps just a little more of Ballmer everywhere *sigh*

So, will Windows 7 be delivered on schedule in around January 2010? Will it be as badly accepted as Vista seems to have been? All is to be seen in the coming years….

/

As far as I can see it’s just Microsoft’s version of flash that isn’t better in any clear way.

It doesn’t work with Opera properly at the moment; I guess that’s my main problem with it. Correction, it doesn’t work in Opera without some hassle.

The way they go about ‘deploying’ it annoys me… they just make certain sites of theirs require it so that you end up installing it (lots of them seem game related from my experience (bungie and parts of xbox.com) but I’m sure there are others)

It certainly isn’t as bad as Apple with Safari for Windows…. but at least I can see the value of an alternative browser….. not an alternative flash

Anywho, rant over…..

/

That in itself makes Vista Ultimate worth the extra moneyz.

/