Be Excellent To Each Other

Twelve is a fucking irritating number. And we also appear to be derailing this thread somewhat.

First ads surface - decidedly not as annoying as the awful 'woman who lives with rugby players' Microsoft ad.

Not good either. But not as bad as those fucking awful "Bing" adverts They need someone to do better adverts for them, though.

Did any of you see the video of the Thriller rendition and party they had on the streets of Silicone Valley to celebrate the finish of their phone (and, of course, the death of the iPhone, including giant iPhones in hearses)?

It was creepy as hell.

Mmm. Silicone Valley.

I stole Mimi's E key.

I liked the robotic Asian girl.

A friend of mine works for Orange and went to a conference the other day where he was shown a Windows phone. It wasn't finished as a load of the stuff wasn't working on it, oh.. and he had to sign a disclaimer saying he wouldn't tell anyone what he saw..

Anyway, he said it looked pretty good and the integration with Xbox live was spot on. They had avatars all over the place and you could earn gamer points through your phone. Very clever!

I wonder if clever hackers will get this to work on my desire. I'd be interested to give it a go.l

Um, I think I want one of these when my contract expires. What's the best handset to go for? I've lived in a homogenous market for the last three years.

I'm interested in the functions between the phone and Xbox live.. colour me interested!

I reckon the HTC HD7 looks like the pick of them.

Oh balls. Now I want that.

Oh that looks pretty!!

That does look quite lovely, and I'm far more impressed by that than I have been by any Android phone so far.

The HTC Hub animations look a bit over the top, mind, but of course that's a non-essential piece of software.

I sat there thinking "My Desire does that" most of the way through.
Someone has already copied the 'start menu' onto Android, too

No doubt. I just haven't been that impressed by (looking at) Android, where WP7 hits some sort of strings with me.

Though no doubt a lot of it is due to ‘hang on, Microsoft are pushing forward?’

British love of the underdog, innit. Funny old world where Microsoft are the clear underdog.

Could be, though I do think Microsoft are making some genuinely interesting—and possibly exciting—UI decisions with WP7.

The ui stuff certainly does look nice, but I am fairly sure it is not something I'd be giving up the lovely openness of android for.

*snigger*

What does the lovely openness of Android give you that you find so compelling?

A Wp7 Start menu

The ability to download a fuckton of code that makes no sense to anyone except the guy that wrote it & even he's forgotten what half of it does?

Got to confess that I don't get that one.

That's called 'Working with Craster'.

Quoted for stone cold cast iron gold plated truth. I have read this man's code.

Was it the nested if statements in the MS counter?

Adventures in open source, innit.

As I found when I was trying to teach myself C++, just because the code is available doesn't mean it'll be documented.

I'm sure most of it will be documented. It'll just be documented with a


at the top of a 1,000 line block of spaghetti code.

It says something when regex is many times more readable than your code.

Your code smells of regex.

Not having to install stuff on my PC just to put music on it (unsure what WP7 will be doing with this, but I think it using Zune means it will require the Zune PC software).
Being able to use whatever search engine I want (fairly sure MS is forcing you to use bing for everything).
Being able to customise any element of the OS I want to, like replacing the keyboard, or adding stuff to the context sensitive menus.
Lovely emulators.

Also, subsonic is a killer app for me now, and unless MS are happy with people using alternatives to Zune on the WP7, I don't think there will be a subsonic app on the WP7.

I like a lot about what I've seen of WP7, and the launch devices look quite nice, but I think android is better suited to my tastes right now.

"A" Zune allows you to use it as a USB drive, and you can throw new music on it that way.
You have to manually tell the Zune to refresh the music database when you're done, though.

I think I would like a Zune... but I don't know why.

They're very good, and were very good three years ago (or whenever they came out).
Just a shame you couldn't buy one

Well, they're on the shelves today. Giz seem cautiously impressed:

http://gizmodo.com/5668738/windows-phon ... e=true&s=i

I reckon I'll probably make my next phone the HD7. Apple pissed me off too much over the 4.0 upgrade.

That does read like an advertisement, but colour me interested.

I like the sounds of the Xbox integration and according to a friend who works for Orange, the Microsoft rep who comes into his store is a very pretty lady so that's good enough for me!

SOLD!

I have registered an interst on the Orange website....

Not a bloody clue if I want win 7 or an android next...

Is win 7 an excuse to get an xbox?

Needing a dump is an excuse to get an xbox.

Err, I have the HD7 arriving today.

I will let you know what it's like.

Haha WTF?

I will be looking at the HTC Motzart today

Exhaustive review on Engadget, mostly positive but with some troubling aspects:

Still haven't got it.

Err, it's here.

I shrugged at the Facebook issue that Rich posted earlier, as I've deleted my account. What I hadn't planned for was for it to add all my MSN Messenger contacts into my contact list. I haven't used it in about three years.

This could be fun.

To be fair, I'd say they were both v1.0-type problems that I could see being resolved in future versions of the OS, although that's less forgivable when a company is entering a market three years late. The Anandtech review is notably more positive, bordering on gushing (and I'd rate Anandtech's reviewers over Engadget's).

Impressed so far, despite a few niggles. Will post something more tomorrow when I've got some time and had more of a play.

While what you say is true, both those Engadget points are pretty tough to forgive.