Thursday, July 06, 2006

Two Steps forward, Two Steps Back

Several years ago I wanted to purchase a digital music player. I wasn't one to become one of the millions of iPod lemmings, so I looked far and wide for the best digital music solution out there. At that time I purchased a Creative Labs Zen Xtra. It had the size (40 or 60GB), replaceable battery (iPod eat your heart out), and played a file format that I thought was better than MP3 - namely WMA. Read more here to understand this position.

The Zen Xtra has served me well. My 40GB model can hold just about my entire music collection (sampled at a high bitrate), has a decent battery drain time, and ultimately sounds great. It's only drawback was that it is a little large - about the size of an old Sony Walkman (remember those - the tape player, not the CD player). But this was a price I was willing to pay for these feature.

Of course time marches on, and technology improves. There are much better players out there now. While the price point has remained about the same, they have gotten smaller and now have the ability to store/view pictures and movies. As I am currently in the market for a new digital music player, I of course when looking at the latest Creative Labs offerings. I've examine two in particular: the Zen Vision:M and the Zen V.

On the surface these look like solid products, and when held against the current iPods they indeed are. The problem as I see it is that to take on the iPod, you have to not only meet the iPod's specs, but surpass them - and by a significant margin.

The two biggest features I hold in the highest regard are the player's music capacity and if it has a replaceable battery. I travel quite a bit, and I like to take my entire music collection with me. I just never know what I may be in the mood for, so it's good to have my collection with me. And because I travel, I also tend to run the player for a long time - listening to music for hours, or trying to get through a book-on-tape or my language CDs in one sitting. When your cruising at 40,000 feet, the options for recharging your player are limited. Just give me an extra battery and I'm good to go.

So what then happened with both these features? Creative Labs in its wisdom has chosen to reduce the capacities on their players (30GB is the largest Vision:M you can get), and it looks like they have dumped the idea of a replaceable battery all together - none of their new players have them.

Ouch. Time to look for another company's player...

Eric Marlow
aka "Snacko"

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Wow - Never This Easy Again!

I found something today that totally amazed me. We've recently purchased a bunch of LCD monitors for our office. One of the monitors I used was developing some "stuck" pixels. You can tell you have stuck pixels if you see small dots of a particular color remain on your screen. Usually they are apparent when you have a black screen saver.

Anyway, I had a few red and blue stuck pixels crop up. I did a quick search on the 'net and came up with this fix. I was totally amazed. It worked! Try it yourself...

Eric Marlow
aka "Snacko"

Shocking - Technology in PH

As I am responsible for setting up the office here in Manila, I was shocked as to the state of technology here. It's not that decent technology can't be found - eventually it can be. It's just more difficult to find. Gone are the days of just running into the local Best Buy and finding exactly what you need for a good price. Gone are the days of Internet shopping from New Egg or other online retailer - fast delivery, cheap prices. hehe - a thing of the past for me.

Now I'm relegated to not only paying a HUGE incremental for both hardware and software, but there is a tremendous lead time to receive the goods you wish to get. Sure, you can buy technology same-day, but it may be a lesser brand or not the specification you want. If you are looking for a specific model of HP printer, or a high-end Nvidia graphic card - good luck. You may have to wait 30-45 days until it can arrive from overseas distribution points.

The problem as I see it is that foreign tech companies are not serving the Philippines directly. I guess there isn't a big enough market here. I know that Dell doesn't go direct here, and neither does HP. It all comes from Singapore.

Of course this is a big problem for running a business here. The costs, lead times, and availability of technology are a huge disincentives for productivity. And the large incremental on pricing only contributed to piracy. In the US I could get a copy of Autodesk 3D Studio Max for $2800 USD, but here it' s more like $5000. Same holds true for Microsoft software, Adobe, and other software makers. What incentive do they have here to get the legitimate stuff? Very little. I imagine this is a similar issue in other emerging markets as well.

Eric Marlow
aka "Snacko"

First Post

Hello - my name is Eric Marlow. I'm the General Manager and Head of Studio for Matahari Studios in Manila, Philippines. This site contains some thoughts, idea, conversations, and miscellaneous ramblings of my life and work - computer games, technology, and life abroad - all are topics of interest to me.

I have never written a blog before, but I have contributed to magazines and online websites, so I think I have something to say. Please visit often and contribute your own thoughts and ideas. I'd love to hear from you.

Eric Marlow
aka "Snacko"