The Bing team today unveiled turn-by-turn directions for Windows Phones. Now for those that know me, you may know that I currently am using an Android phone (yeah, yeah, I work for Microsoft and use an Android phone; it happens). And one of the reasons specifically was for the free GPS app available via Google.

Having a phone with this kind of app makes my life less complicated, as it removes one more gadget from my life that I’d just as soon not have separately. But lately my Android phone has felt sluggish (it’s a G1), and with this announcement, I think it’s safe to say that I’m looking at getting myself a nice new Windows Phone 7 this holiday season. Anyone else making a major phone change soon?

The Microsoft Games for Windows team working with the SideWinder (gaming hardware) team put together a fun event a few days ago. Of course, I may be saying it was fun because I won third place in one tournament and first place in another.

Winnings included everything I needed for a lazy weekend: Fallout 3, 007: Quantum of Solace, SideWinder Mouse, SideWinder X6 Keyboard (won two!), and a LifeChat LX-3000 headset (see picture above or see an unboxing video here by a fellow winner).

Seriously, though, I want to thank those involved for putting this together. The more I work at Microsoft, the more I realize it’s a company full of some pretty cool people.

See below for my post-victory interview video. Incidentally, this is my first time posting a video of myself online. Given the context, it’s a little heavy on the “I’m a computer game nerd” content.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be the first impression of me for anyone who might come across it. But then, given all the hoopla around Susan Boyle, I decided I’d go with the “embrace yourself” mentality. This is me, no need to provide excuses or disclaimers (even if I just did).

Also, for you World of Warcraft players, I kid. Don’t take what I say about it too seriously. (I actually played it for a summer a few years back before giving it up for more gaming variety.) But for you coworkers I’m talking to near the end, take what I say very seriously (or just buy me lunch sometime).

First, I work for Microsoft. But I tend to purchase/use Microsoft products only when they are the best option for me personally (and they often are). In this case, I did actually look at Windows Mobile as my first choice. I’m on T-Mobile and not willing to switch carriers (most of my extended family is on T-Mobile, so I use hardly any minutes and like it that way, plus T-Mobile is the cheapest of all carriers and has been good to me the past few years).

Unfortunately, T-Mobile’s selection of Windows Mobile phones is pretty limited (and fairly outdated). I wasn’t impressed. There are some new Windows Mobile phones over at AT&T that got my attention, though the one I really wanted was the Sony Xperia X1. But I ran out of patience. It’s not subsidized by any carriers in the U.S. and has a price tag of $800 (not going to happen).

So I started looking at the G1 (the phone that a T-Mobile rep dubbed the “iPhone killer”) and was impressed by all the possibilities. Meaning, the marketplace of apps. Within an hour of using my phone, I had set it up as a GPS, a price scanner for shopping (scan any UPC and it shows me not only the pricing online but a map of stores around me and their pricing for the same products + it shows user reviews, etc.), a device to recognize any music playing around me, and most importantly a one touch resource for any information I need quickly.

I have an app that has a listing of support / customer service numbers for thousands of companies (huge time saver). A yellowbook app that allows me to look up a name (person or business) and then automatically gives me phone number, address, location on map, and directions (rather than doing many of those steps separately and tediously). I have a dead simple but powerful Facebook app along with an app that gives me movie showtimes/reviews/locations with one touch. One touch stock quotes on my portfolio. One touch access to my Netflix queue, Twitter, etc.

I’m just giving the highlights above. I have about 30 apps installed currently with many (like some listed above) providing features that simply don’t exist on any Windows Mobile phones that I’m aware of (or that I have access to, due to my carrier preference). And the phone is dead simple to use with each of these apps being easily placed on my phone’s desktop in whatever order I want. Being able to customize everything to my liking, I’m not sure I can go back to the days of the more locked down approach.

And now there’s even an app that enables me to get my work email (Exchange support). As a side note, not having Exchange support was one of the main reasons for weeks of me being reluctant to go with this phone. But once I heard about multiple G1 Exchange projects (within the G1 developer community), I made the jump with my fingers crossed.

It’s not perfect, of course. The phone’s shape, size, and look all could be a lot better. And the battery life is a huge disappointment. I often can’t make it through a day without having to charge. Also, it can’t do stuff like edit Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).

So what I’m saying is that my perfect phone would combine the look and feel of the Sony Experia (I like the full keyboard, sorry Apple), the doc editing features of Windows Mobile, the flexibility provided by a community app marketplace, a good battery life for at least a day’s use, and a decent price point (both hardware and carrier charges).

But since the perfect phone doesn’t exist, I went with what filled the most requirements on my list. What’s your perfect “smart” phone?

So my HP G85 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax died after nearly five years. Truth be told, though, I had been printer window shopping earlier this summer and was planning on replacing it relatively soon. At the time, I had tentatively decided on HP’s Photosmart C7280 all-in-one. It has everything my G85 had but is smaller, faster, and better (more features). You gotta love technology.

My first inclination was to run over to the local Best Buy since the company had just emailed me a 10% off coupon for the holiday weekend. (I tend to fall for the coupon marketing ploy.) But it was out of stock. Figures. So only then did it occur to me (embarrassingly enough) to check out the printer’s price online via Amazon. Amazon’s price: $209.99. Best Buy’s price: $304.99. Amazon 1, Best Buy 0.

In Best Buy’s defense, it had the printer for a cheaper price online: $289.74. And I did have a coupon for 10% off. Then again, though, that’s not much of a defense. It’s still quite the premium over the Amazon price, plus Amazon has free shipping.

I know this is pretty anecdotal, but it’s consistent with my previous experiences. Amazon doesn’t always have the lowest prices, but for me, at least, it delivers when it counts.

I’ve avoided the GPS scene and have relied instead on printing out maps from Google/Mapquest/Live maps. But having recently moved to a new city, I decided it was time to make the plunge. After some basic research and asking around, I went for the Dash Express. Here’s my first impression of the Dash Express and GPS in general:

I don’t know how I’ve lived without this thing until now. It’s not perfect (more on that in a sec) but is so much more convenient than what I have been doing. In fact, I think it’s an even bigger jump in convenience than my first jump years ago (the jump from using an outdated map you keep in your car to printing out turn-by-turn directions).

Truth be told, though, I don’t think I would have been happy with a GPS system had I given it a try before the Dash. The reasoning revolves around a number of features that are, as far as I can tell, exclusive to the Dash Express. The most important one (for me) is Send2Car.

Send2Car is basically a God-send for anyone converting to GPS from map/directions printing. It’s simple. Using an online account at dash.net, you can send addresses to your Dash Express. The next time you power it on, it shows the latest address(es) you’ve sent to it and asks you if you want to map / get directions to that location. It’s just that it’s so much faster and more convenient than dealing with looking up an address and/or typing it in manually while in your car.

And what’s even better is the browser plugin (I use Firefox). This makes it so that any address I find anywhere online I just highlight, right click, and click on “Send2Car” from my regular ol’ right click popup menu. As an example, I like browsing for new restuarants on my computer and reading reviews from various sites. Any time I want to give one a try, right click, Send2Car.

I only wish the feature would go one step further and let me manage my “Send2Car” addresses from within my online dash.net account. As it is, it only sends addresses to your car. If you want to look up or delete a previous address you’ve sent to your device, you have to do that from the device itself. But I brought this up with one of Dash’s tech support guys, and he said that this feature will probably happen eventually.

Other nifty features include real-time traffic and automatic alternate route calculation. All Dash GPS units are part of a network and give feedback on traffic conditions. So if there are enough Dash users in a given area (which there are in my area), you see real-time traffic on the route you’ll be taking. And the device automatically gives you two other routes to choose from and compare traffic with, if necessary.

Also, the device is integrated with Yahoo Local search so that you can browse a pretty comprehensive database of points of interest. You can get movie listings or even compare the current price of gas among gas stations in your area, all directly from the device while driving. It actually has a bunch of other advanced features that I haven’t even dived into (such as GeoRSS and a developer API for add-ons from third party services).

As for the GPS part of the Dash Express, I find it works very well. The voice isn’t annoying and turn-by-turn directions are spoken/displayed in an intuitive fashion. The user interface overall is very simple and clutter-free while also displaying most relevant information when you need it. If you make a wrong turn or skip a direction, I find that it recalculates your route very quickly.

But like I mentioned earlier, it’s not perfect. It takes way too long to get new “Send2Car” addresses showing up on the device. The problem is that once you turn it on, it takes a couple minutes to find an internet connection and resync. In the meantime, unless you pull over and wait, you have to know the first few steps of wherever you’re going before you get access to the address you sent to yourself earlier from your computer.

Part of the problem, for me specifically, is that our car is in a parking garage below our apartment complex. And when we pull out of the parking garage into the open, there’s nowhere to really hang out while waiting for the thing to get connected. So we have to drive around a bit. I’m not sure if this problem can be fixed easily, but even halving the wait time would be a great improvement.

I’ve heard some complaints of size. The standard picture floating around online (see picture above) scared me off initially. But once I received the device, I was pleasantly surprised. Keep in mind that this is my first GPS, so I’m not necessarily used to a tiny device. It seems about the right size and is much smaller than I thought. The picture above seems more like a marketing blunder to me. It makes it look like one of those older, portable cube TVs. It’s actually not a cube and is much smaller and better looking than it appears in that picture.

When it’s all said and done, this is a nearly flawless GPS device that does much more than what I was able to find via other devices. The only other downside might be the price, $299, though plenty of other GPS devices that do less are priced similiarly. But there is a monthly fee of $10 to $13 (depending on how much you prepay) to use the Send2Car and live traffic services. (It has a nice, long trial period; the first three months are free.) Although, personally, I’m fine paying a small incremental fee for value-added services I use that aren’t available from the competition.

*Update* Amazon now has the Dash Express selling for $254.49.

I don’t have a “smart” phone and am in the market. So what logically comes to mind? The iPhone, of course. But I’m a T-Mobile customer and most my extended family are as well, which means we can all talk to our hearts’ content without worrying about minutes. Thus, it’s hard for me to give up the plan my wife and I are on: 1,000 shared minutes for only $50.

But our contract with T-Mobile recently expired, so I thought I’d use that as leverage to see what T-Mobile could offer me to, you know, “retain” me. At the same time, though, I don’t want to admit that I’m mostly happy with their service. What followed was an interesting conversation with a T-Mobile “retention representative” I was transferred to.

She pointed out a lot of information I already knew, but I was fascinated by the approach. The message was basically a “don’t go, just wait” message but with no “official” information given. She talked about a “Google” phone and the 3G network, both supposedly coming in October. She took that and combined it with T-Mobile’s competitive pricing and threw at me the “iPhone killer” phrase.

The problem? Even though this was all coming from a very enthusiastic T-Mobile employee, she couldn’t point me to T-Mobile press releases, a T-Mobile FAQ, etc. She said it’s all coming “for sure” but then told me to search Engadget and The Boy Genius Report for more details.

What?! T-Mobile has an “iPhone killer” and their retention program is based on sending customers to search third-party blogs for more details? How bizarre. Hurry up, T-Mobile, I’m waiting to be amazed in October. But a word of advice: wake up the marketing department and start talking or you might just lose a lot of customers to the iPhone in the interim.

Sony has spent the last three years restructuring the company and today releases its big plans for growth. Apparently, the next big thing is electronics products that connect to each other and the Internet and stuff. You know, downloading movies onto a game console or syncing your music with a music player. Wow, I can’t wait for all that kind of technology to come out.

We here at TechConsumer have been pretty harsh on Sony, but it feels like the company has been playing catch up for a long time. And even in areas where it was once the innovator, it now sucks. (Here’s a site that rates the best “CD Players / Recorders,” and Sony is at the bottom of the list.)

Now seems like as good a time as any to recap some of Sony’s blunders for just the past year (we wouldn’t want this post to get too long):

Sony Charges $50 Extra to Sell You Laptop with No Crapware

“But apparently Sony figured out that if 70% of its customers aren’t interested in two dozen icons of offers (really Sony, 3 to 4 is one thing, but over 20?), the company should offer a crapware-free version of its laptops. Sony, in all its branding glory, has decided to trademark the term “Fresh Start” but has made the huge mistake of charging $50 for it.”

Sony DVD Player + Sony Movies = Won’t Play

“Does Sony really think that it is acceptable to produce DVDs that don’t even play in your own company’s players, nevermind players by top manufacturers such as JVC, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, RCA, Samsung, or Toshiba?”

Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVD by End of 2008

“While the vast majority of Blu-ray players out there are the ones built-in to the Playstation 3, Sony has plans for cheaper Blu-ray players including a new focus on “IT devices.” (Because we all would adopt Blu-ray if only our computers had it, apparently). Last but not least on the list of reasons, more Blu-ray movies will be offered by Hollywood studios to entice you into switching to the new format.”

The $100 PS3 Game: Gran Turismo 5

“When Sony announced that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue would be available for $40 in April, I couldn’t help but have a knee-jerk reaction. How could Sony get away with charging $40 for GT5 Reduced Lite Junior Prologue when the full version would sell for only $20 more? Here’s how, the word is out today that the full blown version of Gran Turismo won’t be out for another year! Is this a new business model for delayed games or just Sony trying to satiate the rabid Gran Turismo fans?”

Blu-ray in the News: High Prices & No Microsoft Love

“Since Blu-ray became the next generation movie disc format of choice, the consumer supposedly has been better off. But Tom’s Hardware claims that prices of Blu-ray players are higher than ever and that now, in fact, is the worst time to buy.”

Paul’s Soapbox: DRM, 3G, Playstation Home

“For those not familiar with Playstation Home (also referred to as just Home), it is Sony’s total copy interpretation of Second Life The Sims Online a virtual world. It was originally announced in March 2007 and scheduled to come out in open beta in August 2007 and public release in October 2007. Later they promised a ‘Spring 2008′ delivery, only to announce in Spring 2008 that it would be coming out in Fall 2008.”

Feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment below.

So I had an extra $50 that Amazon gave me for buying an HD DVD player and was interested in getting a new mouse for my computer. For my day-to-day computing needs, I’m a laptop user all the way (and have been since 2001) but still prefer a mouse attached over a touchpad. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but try out Logitech’s VX Nano cordless mouse.

Just like it looks in the picture above, the USB adapter is small enough that you can plug it in once and just leave it plugged in even when you pack up your laptop. I should say, though, that it does stick out ever so slightly. So if your laptop bag is a bit of a tight fit (mine is), then you might need to be careful when taking it out so that the adapter doesn’t get snagged on anything.

But that’s a small price to pay for the added convenience. Otherwise, the mouse itself is great. It’s small but not too small. (I think its shape works well.) It has a few extra buttons that can be customized via the software it comes with. Speaking of which, the software isn’t too bloated. It installs quickly and is fairly straightforward and easy to use.

The sensitivity/precision is very good (much better than my previous mouse) and is easily customizable. Even the scroll wheel speed/sensitivity can be adjusted. And the mouse comes with batteries and a nice little carrying case. (I’m always a fan of products that are prepackaged with obvious things I would use.)

I only have one minor quibble. The scroll wheel doesn’t work as a middle button. For years now I’ve been used to pressing down the scroll wheel of most any mouse and having that work as a middle button. (Its most popular use for me is in Firefox as a “open in new tab” click rather than the left click “open in existing tab” or the right click “show me a menu.” I like having all three options with three buttons.)

But there is a workaround. What’s interesting is that the scroll wheel is actually two more buttons. If you push it to the left, it clicks. Or if you push it the right, it clicks. This is instead of pushing it down as a click. So I customized both of these clicks as the middle click I’m used to. I guess it’s just a little bit of an adjustment in movement from down click to side click. And I can see how some might like the added flexibility of having two customizable buttons in the scroll wheel.

In any event, overall I think it’s a great little gadget. I give it a 9/10.

ITaP (short for Information Technology at Purdue) is offering advice for potential buyers of the iPhone: Wait. According to Frank Wolf, Mac specialist and systems administrator for ITaP:

“The iPhone is still being considered by many to be a revision-one product when thinking about it in an enterprise. I recommend to the people we support that they hold off on getting an iPhone until the next revision is released.”

Here’s more of his reasoning as to why you should wait:

“Early adopters run a risk of getting left out of more enterprise-friendly features of future releases. The next version of the iPhone is rumored to be 3G-capable, which would bring faster cellular network speeds.”

And he’s not the only one from Purdue’s IT department saying to wait. Julie Kercher-Updike, associate vice president for ITaP, says, “If your primary use for a device is for a phone, Internet access on the go, and reading e-mail, then the iPhone is a pretty slick device. If you want to have up-to-the- minute calendar access, then the iPhone might not replace your Blackberry just yet.”

Apparently, synchronizing the iPhone with enterprise Outlook or Entourage calendars is a hassle and includes some manual processes: “Campus computer users who want to use a handheld device primarily to check and schedule meetings probably will want to continue using a device that synchronizes wirelessly like a Blackberry or other Windows-compatible mobile device.”

Another problem is that the iPhone doesn’t support 802.1x, which makes it so the device doesn’t work with the latest client for accessing Purdue’s wireless network.

This shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone used to new technology. It’s difficult enough to create a breakthrough product, let alone have it interface properly with existing infrastructures. But that isn’t to say that the trade off of having the latest gadget isn’t worth it to some people. It is. But for the rest of us, here’s to the second generation of tech products.

*Update* Coincidentally released the same day, check out this article called Apple: All signs point to a more business friendly iPhone.

*Update 2* Wow. Not sure what’s causing the next gen iPhone news today, but here’s another take that says the next gen iPhone could be here “mid-year.”

While this holiday season has been met with record online shopping, remember that many retailers (even the online ones) don’t necessarily offer their best prices leading up to Christmas. I personally did much of my Christmas shopping via Amazon. And today being the day after Christmas, I thought I’d check the current prices on all those presents I bought and shipped. Here’s what I found:

Out of approximately a dozen items ordered, four had significant price drops. For example, I purchased this Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote for $88.55 in the first part of December. Day after Christmas price? $79.99. And let’s not forget this Toshiba HD DVD player with 7 HD Movies deal that I have been following for some time as part of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. The price had been closer to $250 for the two weeks before Christmas but has now dropped back down to $179.

Of course, I shop with Amazon for many reasons. And one of those reasons is the company’s 30-day price guarantee. It’s a simple process: call Amazon customer service (1-800-201-7575 ext. 7 to get a human right away) and give them your order number(s) or email address. Any price drops on items you purchased within the past 30 days will be credited back to you. I went through this process on my four items while writing this article, and it took me less than ten minutes to get back a credit of an average of 10% of the original price.

So if you’re an Amazon holiday shopper, be sure to check your orders for the month of December. Let us know in the comments if you find any price drops.

*Update* TechCrunch has an interesting piece that has some stats showing just how successful this holiday season was for Amazon. For those who like stats even more, Comscore has more numbers about this season’s online shopping.

*Update 2* Amazon press release: Amazon.com Wraps Up Its 13th Holiday With Best Season Ever