Usually all the big boys come to play at E3 including Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, along with countless software developers and publishers.

This year, Gametrailers.com has teamed up with E3 to bring tons of the information from the show floor via video to consumers not invited to the show. Sadly, since E3 2006, the show has slimmed down considerably to better serve the gaming media.

Things I’m looking forward to hearing about this year are:

• Little Big Planet (PS3)
• Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
• Gears of War 2 (XBox 360)
• New Wario Game (Wii)
• Secret Nintendo game (Wii)
• Anything new on the MMO front especially WarHammer Online
• Decisions from Microsoft about a Blu-ray addon to the 360

Of course, anything exciting I just can’t hold back, I’ll try to post here. With the PS3 maturing and the 360 already in it’s prime, this looks like it might be a very good year for gamers.

Post from: techTalk

So how does this effect you? Well if you’ve already made the switch to Vista, you should shouldn’t be bothered with this news. However, should you still be running XP or planning to purchase a computer with XP installed, you should consider a couple of points.

First, Microsoft won’t stop supporting Windows XP until next year. They’ve officially stated that XP will be fully and freely supported by online updates and patches until April 2009.

Secondly, Microsoft is already working diligently on the successor to Vista, dubbed Windows 7. They have stated that it should be released by late 2009, however, Microsoft is known to miss release dates by months.

And lastly, there’s no need to rush. If you’re at a point where your Windows XP computer isn’t very able to run Vista, then simply keep XP for now and plan to upgrade sometime after 2009 has passed. We should know more about what Microsoft will be doing around that time.

To read the official letter from Microsoft about the fate of XP, click here.

Via Digg.com and ZDNet.

Post from: techTalk

Back in late January, mega-corporation and software giant Microsoft placed a bid to buy everything Yahoo!, the online search company dealing in many facets of the online communities existing today. The bid was priced at $44.6 billion (huzzah!) and Microsoft patiently waited for Yahoo! to bite.

Yahoo! didn’t. In reply, Yahoo! said it was worth more, estimating a $5 billion inscrease for the company’s worth. Microsoft gawked and held fast to it’s original bid.

After several weeks of analysts puring over the possible merger, Yahoo! defiantly shouted “No!” again and again at Microsoft.

So this month Microsoft finally backed off from the deal, withdrawing it’s bid. However, many in the tech news industry speculate Microsoft may still take more hostile actions to aquire Yahoo! any way possible.

In my opinion, if Microsoft were to aquire Yahoo! and it’s retained brands such as Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, Geocities, etc., Microsoft will have its hands in many more properties than it can handle at this point. Microsoft seems to be losing focus in every one of its properties and failing to perfect the ones the company relies upon to survive. Windows Vista is a very good example of this, and yet Microsoft would rather dabble in the venues of online advertising, search and community than improve upon its best franchise.

Post from: techTalk

Microsoft announced they will be rolling out three new models of the Zune this holiday season: Zune 80GB, Zune 8GB, and Zune 4GB.

The larger 80GB model includes an internal hard-drive, wireless support for syncing with your PC and other’s Zunes, and will only be available in black. (But they were so committed to the brown!)

The more petite 8GM and 4GB models feature everything the 80GB model sports, but are available in baby powder pink, deep red, pea soup green, and, of course, black.

More in-depth information of the actual announcement can be found here.

If I may be so bold: I understand why Microsoft is releasing 3 versions of the Zune. If it worked for Apple, it should work for Microsoft. But is it too little too late? Why is Microsoft playing copycat trying to catch up instead of trying something new?

Post from: techTalk