Zunyx is now on XBox Live

It has been over an year I have had my XBox 360 console but I hadn’t gotten around to setting up my XBox Live account. Yesterday, I got around to doing it and I was happy. I updated my XBox interface, set up my account and played for a while as well, just to compensate for using my XBox as a DVD player for so long.

Most of the process was quick and easy. In fact, I didn’t have to spend too much time on my GamerTag because I inherited my ZuneTag on account of using the same Windows Live ID. Now that is really cool. I used the time I saved to build myself [what I thought was] a cool avatar.

One little misadventure that caused me some concern was that when I was trying to add my XBox to my home network, I tried to do so using a D-Link wireless router connected to my XBox that would link to my wireless DSL modem. This caused the infamous 3RLoD problem (general hardware failure) and nothing would work.

I used it as an opportunity though to scope out some of the wacky suggestions on the web to fix the problem like the towel trick which by the way sounds like total nonsense. All I did in the end was power down the console, unplug the video and power cables (yes, this is important; just powering off and on didn’t work), plug everything back in and fire it up.

I now have the console connected directly to the modem through an Ethernet cable but I can live with that until I purchase my XBox Wireless Networking Adapter.

Oh! And that’s not all. I also set up my XBox as an extender with my media center PC. This means that I can now stream my media content from my PC to my TV through the XBox. It does pretty well even on a wireless connection. I can also use my XBox as a DVR to record live TV. Pretty cool huh?

Windows 7 is dripping with awesomeness

I spent some time yesterday to install the Windows 7 (Beta) on my laptop. I sort of felt dumb for having waited as long as I did given the extraordinary feedback I’ve been hearing. I got to it eventually and man, am I glad I did! Windows 7 totally rocks! It is very stable, quite fast and very well organized. I love how IE launches in a flash, how Outlook loads in an instant and several other little things that are already making my life easier.

Some of the new features are pretty cool – I especially like the full screen previews you get when you hover over the tabs in the taskbar and that the window is actually brought to the top when you hover over the preview. Makes it very easy to switch to the one you want. Other features such as jump lists and homegroups are very neat. The one feature I am missing badly at this point is Windows Touch. I don’t have a touch-sensitive screen on my laptop – so I won’t be able to interact with Windows through touch – but Windows has this feature now.

Thing I like most though, is that getting to typical configuration tasks on Windows has been made extremely easy and efficient. Also, the OS infers most of the information and makes it easy on you. The libraries feature for example, lets you add several locations where you store your music, pictures etc. so that you can access those locations through a single click.

And then there’s IE8 which has several cool new features of its own! Remember Microsoft Paint? That doodle app we used to play with when we were kids?? Even Paint has undergone a change with a new Ribbon menu and cooler interface (see above). Take my word for it – it is time to move to Windows 7 the day it hits the shelf.