You’ve seen the mockup of the Microsoft Store, now step inside for a look around the real thing. We asked Phoenix-area stringer Dennis Tarwood to head over to the snooty mall and check things out. Here’s what he experienced:

I’m in Scottsdale today to visit the off-Broadway tryout of a Microsoft store. (MSFT goes to the big city next week when they open in Southern California. As you can see from the photos, it bears a haunting resemblance to Apple Stores. (Despite Microsoft’s desire to distance their retail outfit from that of Mr. Jobs, the fact is, they did hire one of the same designers as a consultant, among other things.)

Though Windows 7 starts belting out its big opening number today, we’re here to see the whole show from Xbox to Zune. Still, the chanting before the store opening—as brought to us by brightly-shirted store employees—told us what today was: “Windows! Seven! Windows! Seven!”

Among those waiting in line were John Hernandez, an unemployed south Phoenix gentleman who jumped in line around 6 pm Wednesday and found himself in 23rd place. “I’m not much of a computer person,” said John. However, he heard there might be free stuff, so he stuck out the night outside the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall, and says he received food and drink from helpful Microsoft staff.

Most of the line, however, showed up this morning, including George Nesbitt. An IT third-shifter, he headed over around 7:00 am for the 9:30 am opening and found himself #134. Breakfast had already been served by 8:30 as energy bars and water kept the hardy-ish line nourished.

At 9:30, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner came out to bow and cut the ribbon, while another exec, David Porter, contented himself to stay out with the crowd and provide exhuberant high-fives to the team when the store flew open.

The store was touted as a local shop, just your Mom-and-Pop monolith in a town run by a former Wal-Mart exec. Towards that end, comically large checks with serious donations of $25k to $50k were presented to well-known local charities and partnerships announced, complete with training and software. (You’ll hear $1 mil mentioned with one check, but most of that was software donation. Your charitable mileage may vary.)

Inside the store, though, a Southwest feel was curiously absent as sleek and stylish took the day. Entry into the left-hand side of the store greets you with one of a few Microsoft Surface tables scattered through the store, available to help you find the product you need or simply get your fingers virtually wet.

The only local touches that were visible were Arizona Cardinals-skinned hardware and Grand Canyon panoramas on the constantly-shifting screens lining the walls. These changing panoramas gave the store an unexpected sense of space and breathing room on a very hectic first day.

No product is left behind as laptops from numerous manufacturers always flank you from the right and Windows 7 and Media Center PCs cover the wall to your left. A kids section rests in the back left in front of the relatively few shelves of PC software (mostly games).

Center back yields to the Microsoft Answers Suite (not a bar), where Technical Advisors (not Geniuses—or Gurus) meet you to take your hardware in and make it well. One gentleman with a dead laptop and an Xbox in for its fourth replacement received more help from Microsoft today than most celebrities in a year.

Oh, don’t rely on the store employees to be color-coded for your convenience. Microsoft Store employees are empowered to wear one of four colored shirts as desired, so you’ll have to ask your Customer Advisor to direct you to your Product Advisor or your Technical Advisor. At least that’s my advice.

In the end, it is an awful lot like an Apple Store, albeit one with Surface tables, Xboxes and more employee t-shirt colors. There’s no shame in that to start with, though; there’s certainly something to be said for building a show similar to the one that’s doing gangbusters down the street before taking it out on the road.

Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great. And cheap. Boot Camp‘s the free, official way to run them both natively on one machine. It’s easy to setup, and just works, except when it doesn’t. Here’s how to survive Boot Camp.

Boot Camp, to be clear, is different from virtualization software like Parallels or VM Ware Fusion or Virtual Box, which you let you run Windows inside of OS X, almost like an application. Boot Camp runs Windows natively on a Mac—you power on, click the Windows icon at the boot manager, and it starts it up, just the same as if you’d powered on a Dell. Why Windows straight up on a Mac? To live a little. Or in my case, to play PC games.

What you’ll need

• A Windows 7 disc
• A Snow Leopard disc
• An Intel-based Mac
• Free disc space!

More on system requirements here.

It’s easy, probably

Boot Camp, and the process of installing Windows in most cases, couldn’t be more straightforward, at least as far as operating system installs usually go. After you’ve got your Mac up and running like normal, fire up an app called Boot Camp Assistant (just use Spotlight). It’ll warn you to back up your disk before installing Windows, which you should, since you are asking favors of the hard drive gods here.

Boot Camp Assistant will ask how much of your hard drive you wanna dedicate to Windows. You want more than the laughably small 5GB of space it suggests. Since I keep around 3-4 games on my Windows partition at a time, and I want some breathing room just in case, I stick with 40GB, but you probably really want no less than 20GB. Slide the bar toward the Finder face, granting Windows how much hard drive space you want it to have. After you click partition, Boot Camp Assistant will start getting your hard drive divvied up for some Windows action, which’ll take a few minutes. Once that’s done, you’ll need your Windows disk.

If everything went according to plan, skip this next section!

If something went wrong

It’s possible you’ll get an error that says Boot Camp Assistant wasn’t able to create the partition because some files couldn’t be moved, and you need to format the drive into a single partition. Basically, what’s happened here, most likely, is that your hard drive is fragmented like a mofo, and there’s not enough contiguous space for Boot Camp Assistant to create the Windows partition. Yeah, disk fragmentation. In OS X. Believe it. From here, there a couple possible solutions.

If you’re extraordinarily lucky, it’s possible you might be able to simply restart your computer and stuff will just work. Probably not! From there, you proceed to the free and easy solution. Using Disk Utility, resize your main OS X partition, reducing it by 40GB (or however much you plan on making your Windows partition). Hit apply, and pray. If that goes peachy, you’ll have 40GB of unused space on your disk. Go back to Disk Utility, and re-expand your OS X partition to reclaim the 40GB. After that’s all done, run Boot Camp Assistant again, and since the hard work of moving files around on the disk was done by Disk Utility, you should be golden.

If, on the other hand, Disk Utility also refused to change your drive’s partitions, you have two choices. The nuclear option is to back up, format your hard drive completely, then run Boot Camp and divide your hard drive into partitions from the Snow Leopard installation before restoring all of your OS X data via machine. Since my Snow Leopard install was practically virginal, as a totally clean (not restored) install that was only around 10 days old [ed. note—how the hell did your hard drive get so fragmented then?], I said screw that. Which led me to iDefrag.

It’s a $30 defragmenting program. I don’t know if my hard drive was really as disgustingly fragmented as it said, or if it’ll ultimately help my Mac’s performance, but it perfectly executed what I bought it for. Basically, you make a startup DVD (using your Snow Leopard install disc, so keep it handy), boot into it, and it shows you how gross and fragmented your hard drive is before going to work defragging it for a couple hours. Restart, you’re back in OS X, and Boot Camp Assistant won’t talk back to you again. At least, it didn’t to me.

The part where you actually install Windows, so grab some tea

Okay, welcome back, people without problems. After the partioning is successful, Boot Camp Assistant will ask you to pop in your Windows disc. If you’ve got one of these Macs and 4GB of RAM, you should install the 64-bit version. If not, go 32-bit. Now, all of the pains and glories of installing Windows will actually commence.

After you pick the language and accept the terms, it’ll ask you want kind of Windows installation you want. Pick custom, and you should get a list of hard drives to install Windows on. Make sure you highlight the correct partition and click format, which will transform it to Windows’ native NTFS file system, if you’re doing a partition that’s bigger than 32GB for Windows. Then tell Windows to install itself there. Go make a drink, and come back 20 minutes later.

Welcome to Windows land.

Now what?

To pick between booting into OS X or Windows when you turn on your Mac, start holding down the Alt key before the gray screen appears when you power on. (You gotta be fast.) It’ll give you the option to boot into Mac or Windows. Pick Windows, obviously. Once you’re totally in Windows, like with the desktop and everything, you need to pop in the Snow Leopard installation disc, and run the Boot Camp installer, which puts in place all the drivers Windows needs to actually run decent on your Mac.

After that, you should run Windows Update to grab the latest goods from Microsoft, and I’d suggest, especially if you’re running a unibody MacBook (or Pro) going to Nvidia’s site and downloading their latest Windows 7 drivers for your graphics card (the 9M series for unibody MacBook Pros, 8M for the previous, non-unibody generation).

Overall, Boot Camp 3.0 in Snow Leopard works way better and more smoothly than before: Multitouch trackpads on MacBooks feel way less janky; shortcut keys, like for brightness or volume, work exactly like in OS X (before, you pressed the function key); and you can read your OS X partition’s files from Windows now. (Back in OS X, you won’t be able to write to your Windows partition if it’s the NTFS format.) By the way, the command key, by default, is mapped as the Windows key, so you’re probably gonna annoyingly bring up the start menu a whole bunch. It’s natural.

Last week we put out a call for help. Windows 7 is great, but it just needs some sex appeal, you know? As usual, our lovely readers came through. Common themes in these Photoshops include: Apple, genitalia, sports, and ugh.

First Place: A man who simply goes by “Richard” sent us this, which I had to censor, extensively. Windows 7 is cooler just because of the mere existence of this picture, for reasons I’m not capable of articulating.

Second Place: Alex Gallitano. Yes! The graffitied stamp of a decreasingy edgy, increasingly irritating urban artist is exactly what Microsoft needs.

Third Place: What Dan Mansion lacks in subtlety, he more than makes up for in thoroughness. No slogan unturned, as they say.

And the rest! [warning: A few of these are pretty gross, and almost definitely NSFW]

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

No this isn’t the first Nokia-wielding fictional character or celeb that we’ve seen in this space, but the N81 recently spotted in the hands of our favorite psychopath has us wondering: would Dexter Morgan try N-Gage? And wouldn’t he prefer something with a QWERTY keyboard? Come to think of it, we always thought of him as a smartphone guy. Then again, times are tough, and as a new father he has to make… sacrifices.

Gallery: Screen Grabs: Nokia N81 preserves the evidence on Dexter

Filed under: Cellphones

Screen Grabs: Nokia N81 preserves the evidence on Dexter originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

It was inevitable that Apple would take their unibody manufacturing prowess from their MacBook Pros and focus it on the MacBook line. We just never expected the new MacBook to be as enticing as the 13-inch Pro.

It’s Basically a White Macbook Pro

To illustrate just how good the internals are on the MacBook, just compare them to the current base 13-inch MacBook Pro. Both have a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo with a 3MB L2 cache, a 1066 MHz frontside bus and a 2GB default RAM. They also have a really similar LED backlit display, which eliminates the problem of narrowed viewing angles that we docked the first generation unibody MacBooks for, and both now have the same contrast ratio. The only difference is that the Pro has a 60% greater color gamut.

The new body

The rounded edges and a reduced number of seams make the new MacBook appear to be a flattened marshmallow. A glossy, rubber-bottomed marshmallow. It’s an immediately more appealing shape than the previous generation of white MacBooks, marking the end of the transition of Apple laptops to unibody construction. That rubber bottom is also pretty satisfying, both in the fact that it grips surfaces better to not slide around, and because it’s a more thigh-friendly material when the machine heats up. The whole body is more solid, thanks to an aluminum sheet and some more structural supports found in the teardown.
Otherwise, there are many other small design changes you’ll appreciate. The trackpad is now the standard glass multitouch type found on the Pros, the screen has a more prominent bezel and the iSight is circular instead of square. Keyboard layout is the same, but on-key shortcuts have been updated to the latest standards. It also comes with Apple’s new 60W power adapter, which has a tip that looks more like the MacBook Air than any of the previous chargers.
In general, the build quality is more solid and more “Pro” than ever before, despite the material being polycarbonate instead of aluminum. It’s like trading up from a Toyota Yaris to a Camry—not luxury, but it’s a noticeable difference.

Benchmarks and Battery Life

Comparing the 13-inch aluminum unibody MacBook of 2008 to the 13-inch aluminum unibody MacBook Pro to the 13-inch MacBook now shows that there really isn’t a big difference between the three models. The small discrepancies fall inside the margin of error, and some change can probably be attributed to the fact that the first two machines were running Leopard, whereas the machine we have now is running Snow Leopard.

Point is, this MacBook isn’t really that much faster or slower than the one last year.
Just as the transition to non-replaceable batteries increased MacBook Pro runtime, so too has the transition benefited the Macbook. Except for the fact that there’s no external battery display on this unit for some reason, and that there’s no infrared port for Apple Remotes.

The new MacBook ran 4 hours and 12 minutes, longer than the two most recent MacBook Pros, using the same metrics as we did before: Wi-Fi on, keyboard backlight on low, non-stop H.264 movie playback. In real-world circumstances, that battery life can only get better. Our testing is processor-intensive.

What’s also interesting, according to the teardown, is that the battery is only 60 watt-hours vs. 55 on the old one, yet it gets a lot more battery life. This is probably due to internal optimizations that Apple made, not just because there’s a fatter battery.

Some new problems

• A consequence of having an improved, unibody construction is that you can no longer replace the battery yourself. It also means that native battery life will be longer, as demonstrated in the testing above. In fact, unlike Pro machines where people really do want to swap batteries for extended field use, an improved internal battery will serve regular users much better.

• For some reason, Apple decided to make the entire area surrounding the keyboard as glossy as the outer shell, meaning that your wrists have a more sticky feel when you’re typing. It’s not a huge deal, but it is less usable when compared to previous generations or the MacBook Pro line.

• Again, like the Magic Mouse, the white polycarbonate (plastic) will get scratched easily, and will show scratches if you look at it from a certain angle. It doesn’t diminish performance, but it is annoying if you’re anal about your stuff.

Where does that leave us?

Right now is the brief window in time when MacBooks just got bumped up in specs to match the low-end MacBook Pros, in order for the MacBook Pros to have room to grow without leaving the entry-level machines too far behind. If you’re in the market for a MacBook, this could be the best time for you to buy and feel good about your purchase, knowing that you’ll get the same performance as a machine that costs $200 more.

But keep in mind, this development basically implies that the MacBook Pros will be getting the Core i5 and i7 processors some time in the next year.

The unibody construction was an inevitable upgrade to the MacBook line, and one that brings many more benefits than it does faults. There shouldn’t be a drastic change in the MacBook design any time soon, so now is probably the furthest away from the next generation as you’re going to get. [Apple]

Polycarbonate unibody construction looks, feels great


Has just about the same specs as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, so you’re getting a good deal


Finally get Pro stuff like the multitouch glass trackpad


Glossy wrist area is slightly too sticky


Can’t swap out batteries, but you do get longer life in return


Firewire port is gone