Blatant advertising for Microsoft

Since my Studly Hubby started working for Microsoft, he has become a constant pusher of all things Microsoft. Because he is so obviously biased, I usually just roll my eyes at him. However, I have to admit that I have discovered a few Microsoft products that I am now a big fan of:

1. Zune. (Microsoft's version of the iPod). I had an iPod, and it broke. And all my friends had iPods, and they broke too. So for the next round I thought I'd try Zune. And it's been great! Plus, it has a radio (that works really really well). It could pull most of my songs in from iTunes and their software is pretty easy to use. The only negative: at the moment, you can't run Zune software on a Mac.

2. Cloud computing. Microsoft has two websites for cloud computing (storing information on the internet instead of on your computer) - Microsoft Mesh, and Skydrive. Both are in beta versions right now (translation: they aren't done making it yet). Microsoft Mesh will be really awesome eventually, because you can put a folder right on your desktop and move stuff in and out of it with ease, however at the moment it is stupendously glitchy. Skydrive works great, and has saved me in quite a few situations when I needed to transfer large data files to collaborators on the other side of the country pronto, or back up a humongous image or document.

3. Livesearch for images (Microsoft's version of Google). A negative of Microsoft's search engine is that it doesn't retrieve the same high-quality list as Google, however when it comes to searching for images, I found that Microsoft's search is far superior - the layout is extremely usable and the number of repeat images is tiny compared to Google.

4. Wonderwall (also in beta). This is the new hollywood gossip page from MSN Entertainment. I like.

5. The website my Studly Hubby is developing (for video) - it hasn't launched yet but when it does it's going to be sooooooo cool. It should launch this week, I'll keep you all posted.