I loved by Nokia 8800 to bits, but it was lacking a little on the features side of things, so I went for it and back in January I joined the world of Windows Smart phones. I purchased at a bad time really, just missing out on the ‘Vox’ one of the first HTC devices to come with Windows Mobile 6.


(While finding that photo I came across the weirdest site)

This phone really scared me to be honest, really hard to configure and it took me quite some time to learn how to set it up and use the various functions. More than once I thought I should maybe return it and go back to my simple 8800. But I persevered and just about know my way around it – one of the most hyped functions is something I can’t really use just at the moment.

I have been keeping the firmware up to date and hoping I would see the Windows Mobile 6 platform hit this phone and while it was one of the most recent...

Oops. I guess my first CES update should have been called ‘the CES’ update. As usual it ended up involving a lot of drinking, learning a lot about upcoming technologies (a lot of which were ultimately covered a day before the public or press were even allowed on the show floor.

I also spent a lot of time flirting with my now current girlfriend over Instant Message, lost a stupid amount gambling (it seems my blackjack technique ultimately had some flaws)

Of course the event was focused around Windows Vista, but having used it for over two months up to that point there wasn’t a great deal that was new and exciting. Home Server was cool and we are starting to see and hear more about that now, the release of the Dreamscene was also cool and again that is also something that hasn’t yet appeared and is still a little bit too buggy to be generally used on a production system.

So how do I update this blog after such an action packed period? I was thinking...

I had to think about what day it actually was. Tom Warren and I arrived in Vegas at around 2pm local time, after a quick eleven hour flight, we were at the hotel by 4pm and at the bar by 20 past. We met up with everyone and got comfortably drunk, I wimped out at about 8:30pm to get some kip waking up the next day at around 5am - not so bad.

Before CES begins I have been attending a Vista RTM lab, covering a wide variety of topics many of which will I really can't talk about until after Bill Gates' keynote speech tonight. One of the topics we will be discussing today is Ultimate Extras, I have seen more than what the public and the testers know so far, but again - I can't talk about it!

Last night we had dinner and a show, by the time we went in it was 4am UK time and I was just about ready to go to a nightclub. I know Mary-Jo Foley was impressed by my moves. We went to Tony and Tina's wedding, which was certainly an interesting concept, basically dinner accompanied...

I have absolutely no idea which parties I have RSVPd to, but I am not flying out directly for CES - I actually have a Windows Vista lab on the Saturday and Sunday before hand. I ahve attended several of these labs, met and made some great friends so am looking forward to it.

There will of course be lots of familiar faces there as well as two guys I have not yet met who are big in this blogosphere thing we have such as Long Zheng and Brandon LeBlanc, however I don't think they are of drinking age so there could be some issues. I will most likely actually meet Robert Scoble this year, met him briefly last year when wandering around with Bink and gawping at plasma televisions the width of main roads, but that will be after CES has started.

Definately alot more people here this year and not all featured communities, hoping to move away from the Windows XP Featured Communities soon to something new with a shinier logo.

...

Like other featured community representatives, I have received a laptop from a choice of several laptops, mine arrived yesterday.

Back in October/November Aaron, the guy that deals with everything we throw at Microsoft, worked with AMD and some of Microsoft’s other hardware partners to organise some hardware for us to review and blog about.

I chose the Ferrari 1000 as it is small and powerful; the 5000 certainly does seem to be a lot more powerful but also a fair amount larger. The laptop came in the retail casing and preloaded with Windows x64 as well as several pre-release Acer applications and drivers to get us started.

Its review will most likely be ongoing over the next month or so, originally a potential two parts, but now three with the addition of “Why we received these?” which I will start with now.

Firstly, Long’s post pretty much has things covered: http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...-free-ferrari/ and as...