Antony’s Personal Opinion

(This entry is originally posted at Antony’s Mobile Blog)

Sun Microsystem’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, has posted an interesting blog about the future of mobile phones, Just Ask a Teenager. Yes, yes… I hear you are asking, “Are you sure Sun’s CEO is talking about mobile phone?” Shouldn’t he talk about ultra-fast multi-processor server or the most secure and reliable data storage. Well, not this time…

Here is what Jonathan said in his blog:

…But considering the volumes - nearly 5x the number of people buy a phone each year, than buy a PC, the conclusion seems obvious. And I don’t know about you, but when I sample my nieces and nephews, even those in the USA, with “which would you rather have, a new iPod, a Motorola RAZR, Danger’s HipTop, Microsoft’s XBox or Windows Vista?”, I get a pretty consistent answer. (Hint: it ain’t Vista.)…

I think this is just confirmation that we are on the right track. Mobile phone (or “cellular phone” as they call this gadget in the US) may have a chance to replace handheld and laptop in near future.

I have been experiencing a problem with my Yahoo! Messenger 8 in Windows XP SP2 in the last couple of days. My Yahoo! Messenger now requires too much CPU power as well as memory usage. See the screenshot below. As you can see here, Yahoo! Messenger eats 98% of my CPU power and 223 MB of my memory!!! Isn’t it crazy?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what I have done so that my Yahoo! Messenger is very hungry now…

After googling this problem, I have found some interesting links below:

• With the latest version of Yahoo messenger, why does CPU usage hit 90% and memory usage continually increase? - The suggestion is to switch back to Yahoo! Messenger 7.
• [Y!M] Re: Watch out for Yahoo Messenger eating up your CPU cycles! - The problem could be because of one of the Yahoo! plugins.
• Yahoo messenger.exe 100% cpu usage - Only a thread of discussion, no real solution yet.

Any other hints???

Last week, Microsoft announced their latest toy, Zune, that is supposed to challenge Apple’s iPod. There are so many feedback. Some of them like the features, such as WiFi connectivity. Some others have negative feedback on Zune.

I am so interested reading posts from Engadget saying that Zune is not compatible with PlaysForSure.

The service and device will not be PlaysForSure compliant, meaning you will not be able to use your Zune player with Napster or Vongo, for example. This will be an entirely new system. Microsoft will continue to support and develop for their PlaysForSure initiative, but all things PlaysForSure are handled by two entirely separate division that will not have any crossover.

Why is this so interesting for me? Zune comes from Microsoft (although it will be manufactured by Toshiba). Microsoft has launched an certification program, called PlaysForSure, for media services and devices. The goal of PlaysForSure is interoperability. It means I can buy songs from any services, such as Napster, URGE or MSN Music. Then I can play them in any devices, such as Creative Zen or iRiver. Furthermore, I can also play them in my PC using Windows Media Player.

That’s the whole idea of PlaysForSure, which is good for customers. Songs from any services can be played in any devices. Why don’t Microsoft make Zune compatible with PlaysForSure then? Perhaps they want to make money from Zune online store, just like what Apple have been doing with iTunes. I guess Microsoft don’t make so much money from the device itself, so they have to find another way to earn money.

Well, as a customer of PlaysForSure, what should we do? Our songs from Napster won’t even play in Zune. Do we have to buy the same songs to play them in Zune? Well… we can strip the DRM off using FairUse4WM and then transfer it to Zune. However, it’s not the way Microsoft want us to do, isn’t it?