Altec Lansing VS4121

First of all, a happy, productive and surprising new year to everybody, readers and non readers alike. It’s been quite a long time that I’ve written anything about technology on my blog. Today, the laughable reply from Altec Lansing made me write this post.

I own an Altec Lansing VS4121 2.1 speaker set for quite some time now. A fine performer for the price, it runs surprisingly well with uncompromising performances in every ranges. The set did not fail to respond for a single time in my first year of usage, perfectly conveying the signal from sound card. But last year, all of a sudden in a sunny afternoon of mid October, the right speaker which houses the power button and control knobs stopped responding. While the left channel sound was not obstructed in any way, right channel was just missing. Frankly speaking, no one likes to hear the half of their music blasting from a single direction. Following the standard procedure, I filed a complaint with Altec Lansing on 25th October, 2011. Had to fill out the fancy forms with necessary information and a computer generated confirmation mail assured that my complaint was just on track. Well, I was wrong about the assurance, it was not one.

Altec Lansing didn’t even bother to check my complaint in the meantime while more than two months are passed. Perhaps that’s how their policy works but a semi aural output is certainly not of my taste. I searched a lot about possible resolutions on the issue, tried a number of things that seemed to work at other conditions but no avail. Quite interestingly, the issue automatically got resolved on November end without any of my interventions. I just switched the speaker set on and both of them were responding without a hitch, just like the old times. Undoubtedly I was happy and didn’t bother to ask Altec Lansing back about my query. Happy ending, right? Wrong. Today, Altec Lansing contacted me on the same issue and in their own words,

We are working dilligently to clean-up what appears to be all unresolved inquiries. Yours is very outdated and we are assuming it has been resolved to your satisfaction.

So according to their customer service, a prospective problem with their devices is considered to be capable of being automagically solved if a sufficient amount of time is passed. That is one of the lamest conclusion from one of the most famous audio equipment makers in the world.

August 2011 is the second year anniversary for my PC. The quad core piece of machinery served me amazingly well for the last two years, spanning heavy usage of Windows and Linux. Unfortunately for the last one month, after being in storage for about two months earlier without any usage, it started to act a bit weird. A number of kernel panics in Linux and BSODs in Windows 7 x64 with low level errors are almost usual these days. For my part, I did remove all the components from my cabinet, cleaned it and reinstalled all of them with care. Sadly, that didn’t seem to stop the errors and the PC gets screwed up while doing system intensive tasks like high-end gaming. Memtest86 threw a few errors once while the RAM sticks were on dual channel but couldn’t reproduce the error afterwards.

In the meantime, I also discovered that there are some pretty serious grounding issues with my machine. So I decided to remove all the components again to check which part is behind the fault. In the process, I removed my power supply from the cabinet and put it just outside without any cables coming out of it touching my CPU box. Out of curiosity, I plugged in my power cord to wall socket without switching it on to check if any grounding issues were there. As I expected there were some residual charges on the SMPS metallic body not covered with paint. And then I checked the cabinet with tester, only to be amazed by the fact that it also contained some charges! It sounds quite crazy if one understands the situation – there were no cords or anything that carries current were connected to cabinet and SMPS was completely removed from it. Also the PSU was almost one foot away from my cabinet but still the body of cab was charged! Being inquisitive, I slowly increased the distance between two and the charge intensity started to decrease and finally there was no charge when I put the PSU one meter apart.

Too much for the conduction of electrical charge part of Physics, I never thought it would happen in such a way. How can charges transmit between two places when there are not direct connections between them and they are pretty much surrounded by insulators like air and bed-sheet?! I may have an explanation for the situation as there might be a electromagnetic field generated by my PSU which caused a small current in the case, acting as a inductor. That also explains why the the current faded while PSU was moved away. I am doubtful about it though, but couldn’t find any other cause that makes sense. I would love to hear from my readers if they have something to share.

Back when I got my first PC at 2004, there were practically no use of it for my school educations and lack of internet meant I couldn’t do something more than playing games, listening to songs, watching movies and creating documents/spreadsheets for dad and occasionally printing them. Being immensely attracted to PCs at that time, I spent a lot of time customizing Windows at first. Subsequently, I had my first hands-on with Linux and at some point of 2005/06, switched to Linux as my primary OS. But the important point here is that switching to Linux wasn’t catalyzed by open source philosophy, rather by my own inquisitiveness of trying new things out. Along came Windows Vista, in 2007, and I switched back to it. Well, people can still raise their eyebrows and criticize Vista and my ass for changing to it but I don’t give a damn. It worked for me for one and half years, and again it was time for swapping OS. January 2009 gave us Windows 7 Beta, officially (not talking about guys who got it a month ago via torrent sites) and it started my tryst with Windows 7 which is still going strong. Also in the meantime I tinkered with OS X on my PC, namely Hackintosh.

People might wonder why I’m giving details of my computer usage? There are a lot of people using numerous kinds of operating systems around the world, so what’s the big deal? Actually, the post is about productivity and customizability and as I understood, it has a lot to do with my usage patterns. At this moment being a student of theoretical physics, I need to do a lot of mathematics and Mathematica is great piece of code to help me in this regard. Apart from that I do read a lot of PDF books, compose some articles, make some presentations for university, and seldom play some games. So the question is what can be a reasonable OS for my usage negating time wastage? A lot of software I use have cross OS compatibility, so operating system isn’t a problem, right? Well, it’s wrong. Even after being enrolled in University, I used all the major OS available in market for my productivity purposes and found out that for some reasons Windows and Mac OS X stand out among the crowd. I can see the Linux evangelists are already pissed off and almost reached their mouse/keyboard to close the tab but at least let me explain myself. The reason I’m going to give isn’t a brilliant invention of my super genius mind, rather a plain old one. It’s that I need a stable, ready to work machine just after the installation of operating system. Too bad, except Ubuntu and its spin-offs, nothing in the Linux category offers that to me. The customizability is quite great, I must say and I enjoyed my time with that before. Windows/OS X comes nowhere near what you can do with Linux in terms of customizing your OS to suit your needs. But there’s a catch as customizability can be unending. And for a person like me who can’t even choose a right theme for his website, the feature can be quite time consuming. What I felt after using OS X Snow Leopard for two weeks is that it’s undeniably the fastest and less troublesome way to be productive. Actually, I finished writing articles a lot faster in OS X than in Windows where even to search for meaning of a word, I need to browse. I know I can install dictionaries in Windows/Linux but still that’s not my point. When I’m doing things seriously, I need other particulars ready to go, just after the start. And in that case, even though Linux is a really good operating system, it’ll remain a hobby for me.

Logitech is undoubtedly a world leader in input devices and they have a good history of providing quality products. Using their MX 518 Gaming mouse left a good impression about their line of input devices and provoked me to go for K340 when I was searching for a good wireless keyboard. What I was looking for is not something funky looking or highly customizable multimedia keyboard, but something streamlined and compact which is portable enough to be used some 5 meters away from my computer. And off course, I had a budget to stay into, between Rs. 1500 and 2500.

Logitech Wireless Keyboard K340

Layout

At first look, the keyboard seems reasonably sleek and palpable enough, quite suitable for an individual who wants no frills for productive purposes. Main keys are laid out in a good way, just like a full desktop keyboard. Although the whole setup looks like common notebook layout with addition of a number pad, it works better than keyboards in most laptops. Inclusion of a Fn (Function) key is noticeable, similar to notebooks which also controls Print Screen, Pause Break and Scroll Lock in addition with hotkeys superimposed on usual function keys (F1 to F12) to deliver easier navigation in media players, opening a default browser and mail client. There are no indicators for Num Lock or Scroll Lock while Caps Lock key itself has a LED for the purpose. While it’s understood that space saving is the primary concern for this model, another indicator on Num Lock would be useful.

Typing experience is particularly good in this board, with no missing keys or difficulties reaching a particular key.  The layout really works well. But people, who are too much used to traditional keyboards, will have little difficulties locating Delete, Home, and End keys while typing. There’s a small learning curve involved here.

Wireless Connectivity

Logitech Unifying Receiver

The main aspect of the keyboard is its wireless performance, after all it’s a tail-less keyboard we are discussing here. Logitech is providing a minuscule receiver with the product called Unifying receiver.

It’s really a small thing, considering the length of USB male connector which is bigger than the receiver itself. However, it works well and even without a driver. It allowed me to pair the keyboard almost instantly after starting my PC and to enter BIOS by pressing Del from it. Although you don’t need any additional software to use the receiver, Logitech SetPoint 4.80 or better is required to activate Fn key and its corresponding functions. Since I already had the software installed (I have Logitech MX 518 Gaming Mouse), the setup was instantaneous.

According to product description, it should work within the range of 10 meters from the receiver. To test this argument, I had to come out of my room with the keyboard on my hand. I tried switching some apps using Alt+Tab and writing a line in Notepad. Adding to my surprise both worked flawlessly, even when the PC was not even on line of sight. I believe this keyboard works in the said 10 meter range even if there’s a barrier like a wall in between. While this range is a good notion, it also raises questions on wireless security. Is a user secure when using this keyboard paired with a computer? Since it uses an Advanced 2.4 GHz connection to increase connectivity and reduce battery usage, it’s also theoretically susceptible to wireless attacks using Wi Fi networks if used without encryption. K340 uses 128bit AES encryption which is good for regular cordless usage, unless you’re inputting some top secret military codes in your PC.

Battery Life

Another aspect of anything wireless is their battery life, since users aren’t sharing the power coming from an outlet. Logitech, while announcing their advanced 2.4GHz wireless input devices, specified that the model will have 3 years of battery life when going through moderate usage regularly. According to them, it means 2 million keystrokes per year in an office environment. Now this is something I really can’t comment on since there are no practical ways to visit the keyboard after 3 years, yet. The model has a battery life indicator LED on the top of number pad, which glows green when battery is fine and red in case of 10% or below battery life. That’s a good feature, considering the price of the product.

Wrap-up

Logitech have created a modest, streamlined approach to keyboard which is surely going to attract a lot of people, especially those in corporate sectors with requirements of high portability, better wireless range and great battery life entwined in a single product. The keyboard, practically looks well, feels well and works well. Apart from the only little shortcoming and a short learning curve, K340 is really worth it.

When designing a website, apart from the usual gradients and other graphical elements, the single most important constituent is the Font. It takes a hell lot of trial and error to get the right font for your website, you need to try different ones, look at them from different angles and decide if they’ll work for you or not. On the other hand, since the browsers will be finally rendering whatever you’ve chosen as your favourite, a designer also has to keep in mind how different browsers are generating the fonts according to the underlying code. That’s why I decided to give the 3 most popular browsers a go on their own capabilities of font rendition. And here’s the result,

As you can see, Google Chrome 4 Dev builds have some problems with Font Anti-Aliasing, while IE shows a bit more blur than anyone else. In my opinion Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 gave the best results with both Serif and Sans-Serif fonts.

Browsers used: Firefox 3.6 Beta 5, Google Chrome Dev Build 4.0.266.0, Internet Explorer 8

OS: Windows 7 (64 bit), Cleartype ON

Fonts used: Arial (Sans-Serif) and Georgia (Serif)

P.S. I don’t have Photoshop installed currently in my PC, that’s why the graphics presented here is rather ‘basic’. Had to do with Paint.NET and don’t know much tricks on it.

It is always hard to initialize an article and when you return to blogging after almost two months’ inactivity, it’s really tough. People have asked me within this period with a complaining mood that why I’m taking too long to write some new posts. There was a main reason and so many sub reasons that I could not answer anyone completely. Here, after settling down with my career, I hope I can explain the things now.

As a student, I always liked Physics. Not only liked, I loved it and have the utmost passion for it. I do believe that I’m destined to learn Physics. After so much unusual and unfortunate roadblocks which cost me some invaluable time of my life, I finally got 5 Years Integrated M. Sc. in Physics at Pondicherry University. As I got selected through an all India based admission test, I needed to take a look at south Indian things sincerely for the first time. After official documents reached my hands, I started preparing for Pondicherry. Eventually, admission procedures were as usual as they can be. People who know my nature, can easily tell how introvert I can be. So the option of hostel was not meant for me, furthermore I always liked and wanted more freedom over my life. I decided to stay as a paying guest on the city (some natives called it a ‘town’) of Pondicherry. Staying in the heart of a city, looking after yourself on your own isn’t some crazy idea, not for a 19+ nerd.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t as much as happy in my life ever before. And unexpected to my parents, there was no expression of joy, not even a gleamy leap or fisting in the air. Even they had to admit that there son, as they have known him for almost two decades, has changed and perhaps grown up. I was always an unpredictable guy, a bloke who’s pretty much imaginative. Even on this day it’s not changed a bit, neither did my beliefs and the way I feel and perceive the universe.

Preparation for journey scaling 2500 Km, settling down on a whole new city alone took their tolls on me. I couldn’t write something, anything on my blogs. Friends told me to hire some writers to post stuffs on the blogs when I’m busy doing things. Once again, it’s time to tell them that my blogs are not like a public places. Not like a park where you can stroll with your pals, and don’t care about someone else in your vicinity. It’s a very, very personal thing, something like a stomach that you can’t share with someone else. This stomach didn’t get feed for quite sometime, so it was hungry to get some new eatables. That’s why I came back writing again.

Human beings often show some ridiculous ways of celebrating a complete non-issue, fuelled by hype and anticipation. And when the events are caused by some big guns, hells break loose beginning a mass hysteria. Looking into the world of tech industry, one can’t deny but accept the fact that Google is readily gobbling up everything on its way to web search supremacy. Every project they have touched, after their genesis on 1997, turned into colossal success for them generating billions of US dollars revenues. Obviously a honcho like Google turns heads with each single announcement, and when that comes with a huge bang like a brand new OS with speculative direct attack on Microsoft, people are bound to go crazy. So everyone is turning into an anticipator here? Ahem, not everyone went gaga and that includes me.

This much discussed recession brought a new trend of customers buying a whole lot of netbooks. These low costs machines, while enabling users to save quite a few bucks also required lightweight, resource friendly and power saving operating systems to bring out the full potential out of them. OS Tycoon Microsoft offered age old Windows XP and customers were obliged to bring it with their machines since they didn’t have much choices either. Feeling the financial prospect surrounding this new trend, several OEMs barged in making numerous models of netbooks for emerging markets. Popular Linux distros like Ubuntu appeared on the ground with their own netbook-optimized versions. Microprocessor giant Intel (which also produces popular ‘Atom’ processor for netbooks) started a project called ‘Moblin’ which is actually a highly customized Linux based distro for specialized hardware. Google was always in the verge of venturing into this market and with debut of ‘Android’, they were supposedly in! As expected, rumour mills didn’t stop making conjectures about a certain ‘Google OS’. Yesterday, with official announcement from Google made everything very clear, indeed they are foraying into OS market.

In their official statement last day, Google did light up the fact that their new OS will be available beyond the scope of netbooks. It will enable people to interact on web more easily than ever without the hassle of usual startup of a computer (indicating very fast bootup) and going through myriad options/tools available on a full-fledged operating system. It’ll also sport a very clean and easy to use interface (a la Google Chrome) that is specifically meant to reduce redundancy. So in a gist, they’re going to make something that pushes most of the user experience towards web instead of their standalone computers, an important step in advancement of cloud computing. Now, concept of running a whole OS off the cloud is nothing new, it’s a popular idea that appeared with advent of Web 2.0. And perhaps Google is the very first significant company that’s taking prominent initial steps on developing this concept. Although Apple MobileMe & Live Mesh from Microsoft have their own ways to deal with cloud based storage and general user experience, a full-blown OS with rich internet and media playing capabilities are not seen before. If Google is really going to deliver as what they saying, it’ll be a different kind of product.

Let’s ask a few questions ourselves to get moving.

Why would you want a cloud based OS?

For Google, the answer is simple. A cloud based operating system will help users, heavily dependent on web, to get their jobs done in faster and simpler ways. They won’t have to wait for the computer to boot a regular OS, open a browser, IM app or some Adobe AIR app to get their daily online venture going on. They’ll simply start a managed environment with selected apps and a direct connection to internet, fast n easy. Web based apps, residing on Google or other servers will then deliver necessary functions to consumers, reducing resource usage.

What should I need to get Google OS running?

According to Google, they are mainly targeting low-end portable computers like netbooks for their upcoming OS. Although they hope to reach a far broader audience than that, their OS will only need bare minimums to get started. I think even older Celeron and Pentium 4 processors will support this. So if you’ve got a 5 year old PC, don’t just throw it away.

Will it be able to supplement computing just using web resources?

Now that is an important question. Since user aspects varies from person to person, even barebone computing has its own classifications. Now, a bloke who just Facebooks and Twitters his day on internet, doesn’t need anything more than a browser and Google OS just fits in. Even professionals sending/receiving a lot of emails and browsing stuffs don’t need anything more than what Google plans to offer. Online office suits are also available from a few vendors including Google which will enable online creation and editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases etc. Browsers can also play local media files like audio and video to get entertainment section rolling. Even hardware wrenching games can be streamed off web servers and played on much lower config hardware. Delicate professional jobs like image/video editing, 3D modelling are also possible on the same way.

Cool! So what’s stopping us from jumping the bandwagon?

So everything seems fine, right? Now here’s a catch. You need a very good broadband connection to achieve all of these at one go. Even if we consider that there’s no need to update the OS, no worrying about security threats on workstations, no hassles of installing and updating several software – it must requires a stable and speedy internet connection. Without which desktop like experience off the cloud is just a dream. Although regular stuffs don’t need anything beyond 2 or 4 Mbps, smooth video streaming and other high end jobs require 8 or 16 Mbps. Having said that, most countries in world don’t offer that kind of internet connection cheap and that might be a problem.

Portability will also be a big concern. Since wireless internet connectivity is still on its infancy to spread, notebook and netbook users will find themselves in a hugely disappointing situation when their machines will be unable to do a thing having lost the wireless signal. And that doesn’t speak well for reliability of this new OS. It’s not a fault from Google’s side but of the current infrastructure that lacks power and stability to move everything online.

Data security holds an important point too. We will never want our private mails to be in malicious hands when sending. Security protocol implementation needs to be more precise and responsive and widely used. Also there are some people sceptical about Google’s part in their online venture and believe that soon Google will take over the world (just like Skynet in Terminator series) with all these personal information about them in its hand. Though it’s nonsense but people will be people, right?

On a final note, Google’s ideology of a web based OS is nothing new. It’s a good idea to move everything online and cut hardware/software costs but current infrastructure won’t allow to implement it on a really large scale that today’s regular operating systems enjoy. Those Windows killing propagandas are just overjoyed notions of foolishness. Completely online computing may be game changing, but not in recent future. And who knows if Microsoft is going to give them a challenge with their own offerings? After all, it’s still a Windows world.

June saw several technological breakthroughs this year, ranging from amazing battery life on Apple Notebooks to iPhone 3G S. While WWDC’09 caught most of the attention, Computex didn’t just go unnoticed. While it didn’t announce some glamorous spotlight-hopping products, NVidia’s demonstration of Tegra platform did mark a serious development in mobile computing.

Does 720p and 1080p video playback on your palm sounds good? How about PC grade RPGs and FPSs running @ 45 FPS on just on your hands? NVidia Tegra claims to do just these. And the best thing is that it manages to do all these consuming less than 1W of power. That makes way for amazing battery life in portable gadgets without taking a toll on performance. Inside Tegra, lie 8 independent processors each programmed to serve its own purposes.

Tegra houses Eight different processors for efficient operations

According to NVidia, each of these independent processors works only when needed and otherwise stays powered down. They are also claiming 25 days of music playback (yeah, it’s days not hours!) and 10 hours of HD video playback, quite insane for today’s mobile chips. Interestingly, the platform is not just meant to be used in PCs which is turned on when needed but rather on mobile devices which remains always on.

The Tegra chipset is not bigger than a regular Pen Drive

Tegra shows immense potential for a mobile platform combining never seen before performance and battery life together. It just needs suitable operating system that can manage tasks efficiently and offload them in proper fashion to those 8 processors. Microsoft recently confirmed that their upcoming Zune HD will be based on Tegra and even the prototype models showed a great fluency in using them. Planned to be released on Q4 of 2009, Tegra has the innate capability of blowing away the competition.

For more information on Tegra, check out the official webpage @ http://www.nvidia.com/page/handheld.html

Going through 2008, hardware vendors like Intel, NVidia and AMD buzzed off the terms Multi Core Processing and GPGPU support several times over various keynotes and presentations. While we had multi-core processors for last few years, none of the current operating systems can leverage that hardware power rightfully in multi-threaded applications. On the other hand, GPGPU (General-purpose computing on Graphics Processing Unit) is relatively new term, and signifies the use of GPU in common tasks which are traditionally meant for CPU. And that’s too largely unused in general computing apart from those developer junkies who like to play with codes.

Two biggest players in the worldwide consumer operating system market, Microsoft and Apple, recently announced their interests on these emerging technologies to provide way better user experiences by using prowess of latest hardware line. In PDC’08, Microsoft made it clear that they’re definitely tweaking Windows 7 to use multi-core processors more efficiently and the latest publicly released build of Windows 7 shows significant performance increase than Vista with newer processors having more than one core. In WWDC’09, Apple presented their current implementation of Multi Core Processing and GPGPU support in upcoming version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard. After the event, people who got Developer Preview of the operating system appreciated more fluency in terms of processing power and user interface in comparison to its previous version, namely Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

While it’s great to see that modern operating systems are going to use properly what they have under the hood, a typical comparison between efficiency levels is obvious.

Windows 7

Windows 7 is going to be the best operating system Microsoft has ever released since its existence. Unlike the vaporous hype Vista had till its release back in 2007, Windows 7 will definitely going to hit the target for Microsoft. Coming into the topic, the 32bit architecture of Windows, namely win32 was never optimised (better to say meant) for parallel processing from multiple cores. From Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie’s own words,

“Win32 was never designed for highly concurrent, asynchronous processing”. “Parallelism requires adjustments at every level of the stack. It involves the repartitioning of different tasks to different layers. . . . So look for a rebalancing of roles and runtimes. We need to formalize that in the operating system. Expect their first pieces in the next generation of Windows.”

Advertently, as some people were already suggesting (and are still suggesting), a complete rewrite of Windows core can only bring a solution. But MS is afraid of losing support for millions of PC that runs legacy software and hardware and since Vista shook the ground beneath their feet, they’re most eager to gain a fair share with Win 7 first. But, users need not to worry about that, Microsoft is already tweaking as much as possible keeping the current Windows core model intact and early benchmarks have shown notable extensions in performance.

In the graphics front, Windows AERO UI is already hardware accelerated and the introduction of WDDM 1.1 promises greater augmentations. Graphic card manufacturers like NVidia and AMD announced newer drivers supporting the new version of WDDM even before the actual release of the new OS. Still there’s no word on GPGPU support in this version of Windows. There are no words on GPGPU support in Windows 7 and it’s still not clear if Microsoft already implicated the technology within their new OS. I don’t think there will be much of that kind of support (if any) and MS will introduce it with DirectX 11.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

WWDC’09 saw the official release announcement of Snow Leopard, featuring Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Keeping up with their tradition of hypocritical Microsoft bashing, they didn’t forget to ridicule Vista and 7 in saying about some increasing complexities. While these claims are totally idiotic, Apple’s introduction of above technologies is simply great.

Grand Central Dispatch (GCD for short) is the Apple’s incarnation of native multi-core support in OS level. They want Snow Leopard to control the threads generated by various applications rather than letting those apps to do it. This gives greater control to the OS and makes it stable & efficient to use the available system resources. In their own words,

“A new technology called Grand Central Dispatch takes full advantage of multicore systems by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central Dispatch also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that utilize all the power of multicore systems.”

That means everything from opening a finder window to backing up in Time Machine will be multi-threaded and the threads are in turn processed by multiple cores at the same time. While this sounds really cool, user installed third-party applications need to be GCD enabled to take advantage of it.

OpenCL is Apple’s foray into GPGPU and they have all the major graphic card manufactures with them for that cause. It stands for Open Computing Language which is based on C and easier to implement for developers than a whole new coding system. As Apple puts it,

“With graphics processors surpassing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL in Snow Leopard is a technology that makes it possible for developers to tap the vast computing power currently in the graphics processor and use it for any application.”

The everlasting feud between MS and Apple is going to take an interesting turn as they’re both waiting to release their brand new OS in a month’s difference. While Apple is quite clear with the features they are bringing to access these two current technologies, MS is relatively quiet with their part in this. I hope something significant is really brewing on Redmond that’ll blow others out of water on release. It’s too early to tell since both of the releases are at least 3.5 months away. Personally, I’m quite attracted by what Apple’s going to offer soon and thinking about buying a MacBook Pro in recent future. Let it come October, let the technology to unleash the prowess of processing power.

Microsoft never caught the eye of the storm when it comes to online search endeavor. MSN Search, even when rebranded by the name of Windows Live Search, never stood up to its feet to pose serious threat to the biggest searching phenomena called Google. Recent times saw the exponential growth of Google and its all-out domination left a little space for others to cope with. Still, Live Search didn’t accumulate the guts to be at least a distant second on the scene. Yahoo, on the other hand, is holding the crown for biggest site on the web, even with constant threats coming up from Google.

Microsoft’s recent idealization of recreating, rejuvenating and obviously rebranding Live Search is not just a timid update to catch up with latest tech but actually a desperate attempt to gain as much share as it can on search market. Even if they have stepped on online marketing through their search business, Windows and Office suits are still the biggest assets for Microsoft. And in a time when both of their coveted platforms are going into the right direction, winning a huge appreciation from tech enthusiasts and creating stirs among the crowd, they can finally concentrate hard on Live Search with a happy and relaxed mind. Since Windows Live services started getting regular updates in recent times and was upgraded to Wave 3, it was obvious for Live Search to get something new and neat like rest of brand. And Microsoft, staging a complete reincarnation, didn’t just want to sport a new look rather than a complete rebranding. For the purpose, they had couple of codenames lined up, creating rumors of ‘Kumo’. Early screenshots of rumored Kumo started appearing on internet a few months ago and that represented a rough sketch of what’s coming.

Kumo, while just an internal codename, had mixed remarks from internet users. Since the advent of Google, it became a popular term and even a verb to represent a web search in general. It’s now more obvious to hear or say “Google it”, “Let me Google it for you” etc. Human mind always gets attracted by innovative and sometimes weird terms to describe something, Google perfectly exemplifies that. Now, Kumo, according to the same rule, neither brings a serious note nor shows brilliant weirdness. In my opinion, MS shouldn’t bring a brand named as Kumo in the market, it’ll not survive (remember CUIL?).

Bing, on a different note, sounds rather simplified. It’s not too weird and not so serious, providing an easy to remember (and type) term for an online finder. Certainly, people are arguing over the name, whether it lacks the ‘bling’ factor and definite coolness. What I think is that if Bing is not cool, it’s definitely not cold. A ‘Zing thing’ isn’t present here but not many of them survived on the web world besides Yahoo. Some folks are criticizing it for oversimplification and somewhat unexpected and uncanny nature. I just want to remind them of Google that it was not a serious or definite name for a super business model but the name didn’t hold it back from becoming what it is now. Bing may become a success, who knows? Microsoft should continue the up gradation, without thinking much about the naming convention here. A good looking and functional search engine can even fix the naming flaws, if any.