Xbox Live Avatars

I thought I'd post some of my friend's Xbox Live avatars. I've linked directly to Microsoft's servers for the images, so if they don't show up, sorry, not my fault.

NXE - New Xbox Experience

So, a while back I signed up to be an early participant in the New Xbox Experience (that's Microsoft's way of making you feel special when you find bugs in their software). The Xbox is getting a new operating system interface rolled out via Xbox Live tomorrow and I was fortunate enough to be able to get an early look at it. One of the biggest changes, which I'm not going to go much into, is the addition of avatars. Basically, Microsoft saw that tons of families with kids were flocking to the Nintendo Wii and it's feature, the 'Wii Mii' and Microsoft wanted a piece of that action. Really though, the new Xbox avatar is nothing more than a customizable character you get to have on your Xbox Dashboard that stands around striking poses. You can even snap a picture of your avatar to use as your gamer picture.

From a users standpoint, all this is is a new paintjob on the same old car. Sure it ran great, but I guess Microsoft just felt a little too much rust was showing and they needed to touch it up. Nothing much changed in how the Xbox OS works. You still get the same information, just presented in a newer, flashier way. Here's how the new profile page looks when you go into it. Now instead of having to click on My Games, you get a page for each of the games you've played that you can scroll through.

There are a few interface changes that are marked improvements as well as a few that are easily a step in the wrong direction. One of the new changes I like is the way it presents achievements for each game. Before, you had to click on an achievement to get a good description of what it was, but now the display shows the description at the top as you scroll through them.

A stunning oversight in my mind is how they handled the background for the new interface. Before, we were able to download themes for our Xbox blades. This allowed users to customize the look and feel of their Xbox interface. A lot of users paid good money for themes they liked. With the new interface, Microsoft has gone and covered up half the screen so you can't see the theme image at all.

Selecting your theme

How the theme looks when applied

What would have been nice is if Microsoft had allowed users to make the background of the interface transparent or not there at all. This would allow people to still enjoy the themes they paid money for. If they can't do that, I at least hope Microsoft lets people download new, updated themes free of charge--themes that work on the New Xbox Experience.

One new feature that Microsoft is releasing along with the NXE is a new application that allows Xbox users to view Netflix streaming videos over their Xbox 360. While I can understand the marketing strategy to pair it with the NXE, I'm pretty sure the Netflix application (that's all it really is, an downloaded application) would have worked on the old dashboard interface just fine.

The only real sad part about the Netflix app is that Sony, Microsoft's arch nemesis in the video game market and owner of Columbia Pictures, has somehow managed to stop Netflix from allowing Xbox users to view their videos. Hopefully something can be worked out to allow the whole Netflix media library to be available to Xbox 360 users.

Another (cool?) feature that Microsoft added in this update is the ability for gamers to install their games to their Xbox 360 hard drives. This means that for those 15 hours gaming binges that your DVD drive in your 360 won't have to be constantly spinning your disc. Instead, after installing your game to your hard drive, the disc drive will only spin at first to make sure you have the game in the drive (their attempt at anti-piracy).

It took me only 15 minutes to copy my Gears of War 2 game to my 360's hard drive. The game takes up almost 7 GB of hard drive space. As I only have the old 20 GB hard drive, I'll have to upgrade if I want to copy any other games to my hard drive. It doesn't really make much of a difference in gameplay time, but I'm sure this is just Microsoft's attempt to throw money at the problems they've been having with the Xbox DVD drives malfunctioning and destroying game discs. The idea is just to reduce the wear and tear on the drive over time. Maybe it'll work for them.

Overall, I think the biggest improvement in the new interface has to be in the speed in which things load. Navigating through the old dashboard architecture was a real pain in the neck for some people because they weren't used to waiting so long (really, it was only a couple of milliseconds...but to some gamers, that's an eternity). The new interface is significantly faster at loading, especially when in a game. They found a way to make it faster and even provide a little more content available to the users than before.

Now, back to playing Gears of War 2...

Free Tech Support

Anyone else who reads this and considers themselves a geek is probably in the same boat as me. The more I do with computers and tech stuff, the more my family & friends view me as a free tech support guy. It started out when I was in school with my parents asking me simple stuff about setting up their email and such. That wasn't so bad. Gradually it spread to where my extended family was calling me about the simple stuff as well. As soon as my neighbors learned I was a CS student I became the first person they'd call whenever they had a computer question or problem. It went up a step when a year or so ago I helped my brother wire his apartment for ethernet so he could play his Xbox 360 in a different room from his computer. Apparently I am the only person who can use a crimp tool.

I find it funny how people seem to think I can solve problems with just a simple telephone call. I had an uncle call me because his computer was stuck constantly restarting and not loading the operating system. Somehow he thought I could just tell him to hit some magic key (right next to the Any key) to fix the problem. And it's not like I can just drive over to his house to fix the problem. He lives far enough away it'd cost me roughly $50 in gas to drive there and back. It would be cheaper for him to take his PC into a tech support shop and pay the $30-$40/hour they charge.

Now, I don't mind helping people with simple stuff or giving advice when I'm visiting or actually there in front of their computer. Doing support over the phone when they aren't able to converse on the same tech vocabulary level is very frustrating. With my family, I'll get calls while I'm driving down the road and have no frame of reference to what they're doing, and sometimes they're not even able to articulate what the problem is exactly.

I really think people should have to go through some sort of introductory course on how to use a computer before they actually get one. I think the biggest problem when it comes to computer problems, bugs, viruses, etc is user education level. A computer takes time and effort to keep in good working order, just as does an automobile. People think it's important to take care of their cars - get it washed, change the oil, etc, but they seem to think a computer will just take care of itself. Then they wonder why their computer runs so slow and is plagued with problems just a few months after getting it. Then again, you could always go overboard, as a friend of mine does, in that he reformats and reinstalls his entire operating system every few months just to be sure nothing is on there he doesn't want.