• I like to have my entire collection–or as much of it as possible–with me. My phone (Galaxy Nexus) doesn’t have expandable memory; my old phone (Droid Bionic) didn’t always behave with the 64GB SDXC memory cards I own
• Having a phone call stop your music so you can answer it is convenient, but anecdotally, most of the phone calls I get while listening to music are ones I either can’t take (driving; in the subway passing through a small pocket of cell reception) or won’t take (scammers / telemarketers). So I actually prefer to have my music go uninterrupted and decide for myself if I need to take a call and stop my MP3 from playing

When my Zune died a few months ago, I resorted to using my old Droid Bionic as a stand-in. There was some minor success there, but as mentioned above, it didn’t deal with the high-capacity SD card gracefully at all times. Also, as much of an old fogey as this makes me, I’m much happier with physical buttons that I can rely on 100% of the time to skip, rewind, fast-forward, pause and play tracks as well as manipulate the volume. A smartphone with a volume rocker and a power button as its only physical buttons doesn’t cut it.

So I went ahead and spent what I believe is a very reasonable $58 on a Sandisk Clip Zip 8GB from Amazon. Sandisk has quietly been making solid, affordable MP3 players for those who care for them with its Clip line. There are some dedicated fans of the Fuze media player line as well. The Clip Zip, released in August of 2011, is so far the latest in the Clip family which includes the older SanDisk Sansa Clip and Sansa Clip+ models.

The Clip Zip next to my computer mouse

In my short time with it (I just received it yesterday), I’m really liking it. Part of it’s because I instantly nerded out on it and flashed a custom firmware to it. (I’ll get to that later.) It has a side slot for a microSD card, which–of course–Sandisk also sells. That means that you can store up to 40GB of music with a 32GB memory card, the highest “officially” supported card size. The physical controls are just fine–a 4-way d-pad which doubles as play controls when you’re not in a menu; a central selection button; and a raised Back button in the corner. A power button adorns the top. Everything I need to control the device without having to look at it, something people on the street these days are notoriously bad at. (I swear, pedestrians need to stop texting/gaming while walking, especially in NYC where a wayward biker can run you over.)

The DAC in the device leads to crystal clear, thumping sound, just like I remember. It’s not like the sound coming out of my phones was bad, but where there should have been dead silence there was instead a very faint but noticeable hissing whine. I never heard that on any dedicated MP3 player before my Zune died, and I expect never have to hear it, considering I listen to podcasts where there’s no constant music to drown it out.

The firmware it came with, however, leaves a bit to be desired. It did weird things like categorize podcasts under Audiobooks. Other Amazon reviews didn’t take too kindly on SanDisk’s UI, either. So before making the purchase, I did some research and planned ahead to install Rock Box, an open source firmware and UI that its development team has ported to multiple devices including iPods, Cowon players, Archos players, and more. It’s not particularly pretty and it’s a far cry from Zune’s incredibly fun interface, but it opens up the folder structure so that I can access what I want, how I want, and when I want. It doesn’t force your songs to be in a certain directory structure in order for you to find them. If your music doesn’t fall under an Artist \ Album \ Song hierarchy, the firmware doesn’t hide it or misplace it; you can browse the file manager however you want to find it. Having grown up with DOS, Windows, and directory trees, this didn’t bother me.

It doesn’t have to resemble a clumsy Explorer window, either. While at first it seems to limit you to the file browser, it presents you the option of compiling a database. The steps? Select “Database”, select “Build” and off it goes on its merry way, cataloging all of your music and spitting out the familiar categories of Album Artist, Genre, and the like (so long as you made sure your tag data is correct). It would have been nice if it asked me whether I’d like it to build the database as soon as I booted it up, though.

Rock Box on my Clip Zip quietly builds my database, though I do wish it did so by default.

The other problem with the official firmware is that out of the box, the device would not recognize my 64GB card, which is of the SDXC variety. SanDisk only “officially” supports up to 32GB SDHC cards. You’d think that it would put out a firmware update to support its own larger-capacity, faster cards, but no. Fortunately, Rock Box does, and so long as your card is formatted with the FAT32 filesystem (use SDFormatter or a similar tool), your device will see it.

Of course, the average Joe shouldn’t have to go through this, which is why things like the iPod exist. For my tastebuds, the combination of the price, size, and sound quality made the Clip Zip and Rock Box duo my best alternative, post-Zune. For those willing to tinker just a little bit, any fellow old fogeys out there who want their buttons back without having to pay over $150, this is an admirable alternative.

Check out the Clip Zip’s product page on SanDisk’s official site. You can also visit Rock Box at www.rockbox.org (also linked above); they have an automatic installer that makes it simple to update your firmware. (Note that if you go the Clip Zip route, you can find the official firmware–which you need in order to flash the update–here.)

Since then, many have hailed the death of PC gaming, with multi-platform games receiving poor treatment when it came to their PC ports. But in recent years, the quality of the ports–at least anecdotally speaking–saw a vast improvement. We’ve reached a point where PC gaming is just fine again. What’s more, such “rules” as those I used in that old article have become less necessary, thanks to improving price-to-performance ratios and the shrinking price gap between consoles and able-bodied computers. There have been, and continue to be, scores of articles in PC magazines and online tech sites dedicated to building a “cheap ass rig” that perform at the same level as a console, at a comparable price. With Valve’s Steam platform for PC’s and its so-called “Steam Box” looming, we seem to be entering a world where a PC-based platform becomes a mainstream alternative for playing triple-A, cross-platform videogames.

But are we really?

It’s true that Steam’s Big Picture Mode goes a long way in standardizing a user interface for PC games that play nicely with a controller, not just from the perspective of Steam’s user interface itself but also in terms of getting developers to buy into the concept that people want to be able to play their games in their living room. If it’s multiplatform gaming you’re talking about, then with the power of Big Picture Mode, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to play the same cross-platform games which already exist on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with a controller and without having to fumble for a mouse and keyboard to click on dialogue boxes.

Yet there are still issues–some of which are misconceptions, some of which are very real–that a huge portion of the gaming populace see as complete hindrances to making the leap to what can–from a hardware perspective–be a potentially more powerful and flexible videogames platform.

It should be noted that as we don’t have any confirmations on what Steam Box actually will be, we can’t say for sure that it’s just a “PC in a smaller box.” Gabe Newell of Valve implied that they may go with Linux as the base operating system, and create a tightly-controlled environment. So it may not be that Steam Box introduces the wide world of PC gaming to the living room, but the important thing that it could do is unite people who are both in the living room and at their desk or on their laptop. The emphasis of this post is on PC gaming at large, as opposed to the Steam Box itself.

I mined my friends’ thoughts–those who don’t currently play many PC games–for some of their perceived issues with PC gaming, why they didn’t take advantage of the platform. I’ve tried to parse what I feel are still true today, and what are kind of misconceptions. Here’s what they said.

TRUTHS

(1) “Consoles are cheaper than computers.”

This goes without saying and, unfortunately, is still very true. From the hardware end. We’ll get to the variables below… in the Misconceptions section.

Yes, today you can build a complete box that costs $450, with performance that exceeds anything that the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U can put out, and very likely compare to the the first few years of the next generation of consoles. Take one look at how Far Cry 3 performs on the consoles versus a $450 box, and you’ll see the difference immediately.

But unless math has changed, $450 is still more than the $399 Xbox 360 with Kinect and a 250GB hard drive. (Strip away the Kinect, which I imagine a lot of people reading this would do, and it becomes cheaper.) The next step down is a $350 Wii U Deluxe set. $450 > $399 > $350, and that will never change. Plus, there’s another issue…

(2) “Hardware and software you buy isn’t always going to work with what you have. I just want to purchase a game and know it will work with minimal to no effort.” and “…crazy hoops to jump through in terms of random crashes, GPU driver updates…”

This is still a very real–and perhaps the biggest, from a tech perspective–hurdle with PC’s. Things are much, much better than they were over three years ago, but with specific regards to the pricing issue, the only practical way to guarantee great performance at a $450 clip is by… *drumroll* …building that machine yourself. And you have to make sure you’re building it properly so that everything works nicely. Reportedly, there was a Windows 8 issue where The Walking Dead wouldn’t load if you tried to use the Xbox 360 controller. I have not heard of a fix yet, other than, “Uninstall Windows 8 and reinstall Windows 8, lulz…”

Hmm. On one hand: Open the box. Take out the console. Connect it to the TV. Done.

On the other hand: Open up multiple boxes. Ikea the contents of multiple boxes together. Cut your hand on the case trying to insert a piece of hardware before realizing you were trying it the wrong way. Install your existing copy of Windows, or Windows 8 ($40) which is the cheapest option if you need a new copy. Update the drivers. Gnash your teeth a little for good measure. Connect it to the TV. Done. Unless you did something wrong and a driver crashes. Then update to the latest driver which came out a few minutes ago and try again.

Which one sounds more appealing?

Sidenote: In addition to my home PC, I’m toting a Lenovo laptop which came preconfigured (obviously) and plays all multiplatform games better than my consoles ever could hope for, and has a full-size HDMI port which connects to any HDMI TV. No need to build it. But see item (1). How much did it cost? $1000. $1000 > $400. And it always will.

Sidenote II: I refuse to note productivity as an advantage that PC’s (like my laptop) have any longer. A $300 non-gaming laptop (handles Office and email just fine) + a $400 console = $700. See item (1): $1000 > $700. And it always will.

Sidenote III: “…know it will work with minimal to no effort” is also a problem with Kinect. ZING!

(3) “If you care about playing online with your friends (and a lot of people do), you’re not only limited by YOUR PC’s specs, but also by theirs. [With a console] You know that the exact same machine will play games released on day 1 up until the next generation takes over. You also know that (aside from home theater hardware differences), you and every other person will be getting the same basic experience.”

There’s no way around this truth. Ever.  This is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Yes, as long as you meet some baseline minimum, you’re going to be able to play every game with every person who owns a PC with that baseline minimum. But not enough people meet that baseline minimum because they don’t game on PC’s. And the reason why they don’t game on PC’s is… well… item (3), which is this one. Not to mention the fact that such a baseline minimum is not documented anywhere. With the benefits of the PC being an open platform come the pitfalls of there being few, if any, documented standards (such as the “ultrabook” standard… perhaps we need a “gaming pc” standard).

(4) “I’m hooked on the achievement/trophy system, which isn’t implemented as consistently on PC.”

The Steam platform has achievements built-in. But does every multiplatform PC game? That’s the big question mark. The Assassin’s Creed II “trilogy” has uPlay points… but I haven’t seen any Steam achievements. Part of the appeal of a platform’s achievements system is that it’s universal. You look at someone’s Gamertag or PSN ID, and you see the achievements and trophies for all of that respective console’s games. But you can’t see my achievements for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations unless you look at my Ubisoft profile. Come on. Not even I care to look at my Ubisoft profile.

(5) “Draconian DRM.”

Steam takes care of all DRM, just like a Playstation 3 and an Xbox 360 have DRM by design (that’s what it means to have a closed platform). But here’s the difference: Console DRM is putting in the disc, or staying logged into your account. PC DRM is still a bit weird. When I launch Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, it’s done from Steam. But then Ubisoft’s uPlay application opens, and asks me to log into that. Once I’ve logged into that, I then have to seperately choose to play Assassin’s Creed: Revelations from the uPlay interface. Wait. Didn’t I already do that?

The days of rootkits that wreak havoc on your system are (supposedly) over, but inconveniences brought on by different publishers’ methods still exist. This truth, however, is becoming less and less problematic.

(6) “I think the bigger challenge that they need to overcome is moving it seamlessly to the living room. Networking is the answer, but people need an easier mass market plug-and-play networking solution from a brand they trust.”

You can play PC games in the living room much of the time. But not the same way with every PC, and not always seamlessly. Some people have their PC’s too far away for a long HDMI cable, for example. With a laptop, it’s generally seamless, but you run into physical hurdles elsewhere. I fit that “what, a long HDMI cable? get the hell outta here” use case. When I’m at home, I game on my PC. But in order to do so in the living room, I’d need to snake an extra-long HDMI cable from my bedroom to the TV. I could use my laptop, but then I’m not taking advantage of the extra horsepower my PC offers. (Yeah, I’m spoiled. Games look great on my laptop, but they look even better on my PC. Sue me.)

There are adapters that work like Wi-Di does: Plug it into your TV, set it up with your PC, and you have wireless display streaming–like the Wii U does for its Gamepad controller–from your computer to your big screen. But that’s an added cost, and it’s not console-simple. “Seamlessly” is the key word here.

(7) “More of my friends play on consoles.”

It’s also undeniable that any one person’s cadre of friends won’t magically appear on a different platform overnight. But I don’t consider it a fair criticism against one particular platform (the PC in this case) as much as it is a problem of market fragmentation as a whole, which is why I listed it under Misconceptions as well.

(8) “I can rent games for consoles but not PCs.”

Undeniable. Not until a successful subscription game service comes out for PC’s will this ever be turned around. (OnLive? Yeah, not doing so hot.)

(9) “I have a Mac.”

That’s your fault, buddy. #lulz

MISCONCEPTIONS

A note before I go into this: These are misconceptions, but they’re not the fault of the person as much as it is the fault of the platform not having its champions effectively dispel them. Computers are still seen as mythical beasts, and the fact that they really aren’t anymore isn’t necessarily effectively communicated. The point of the following list is not to call my friends stupid and ignorant, because they’re not, but to emphasize what the platform’s champions need to set the record straight on to show people that PC gaming isn’t nearly as much work as it once was. And maybe it’ll help some folks learn a little.

(1) “When I look at the system requirements for the latest game and how fast they change between games it’s intimidating.”

Fortunately, this is no longer the case given the rise in popularity of cross-platform ports that make the leap from consoles to computers. These days, if you go into obtaining a computer (either by building or purchasing) with the mindset that you’re going to want to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on it, you’ll most likely have the minimal hardware required to play all of those other lovely cross-platform games. In a way, I feel that the Xbox 360 had a lot to do with that, by establishing a development environment similar enough to Windows that developers can feel comfortable enough in porting games cross-platform.

(2) “…you have to install games and tweak graphics settings and whatnot on the PC.”

This isn’t really true anymore unless you are fiercely loyal to buying your PC games on a disc. With Steam and today’s other digital distribution services (Electronic Arts’ Origin service, to name another), the games pretty much install themselves once they’re fully downloaded.

Furthermore, today’s cross-platform games will automatically detect your computer’s hardware and tweak the settings for you. PC-only titles will also do this. (Unfortunately it’s more or less a recent trend–not as many PC games from the previous generation, if you’re counting in console years, do this.)

The best part about Steam’s platform is that any updates and patches are automatically updated when they’re ready. In the console world, because of each platform’s closed nature, it’s not uncommon for a fix to a debilitating game issue to wait in a certification queue before it actually gets implemented. Publishers and developers have some more control in the PC space, and as a result, you stand to benefit.

(3) “I’d rather sit on my couch and play games on a 42″+ screen than at computer monitor.”

Truth (6) applies here if you’re not equipped with a port that outputs to TV. But any hardware worth its gaming salt today–and in the past few years, even–comes equipped with a full-size HDMI port, or at least a DisplayPort. In the same way that you’d be a fool to buy that “new” Wii Mini, which doesn’t even allow for component cables, you wouldn’t want to shop for or build a PC that couldn’t output to HDMI. With Steam’s Big Picture mode, you have a gaming platform on your computer that is navigable completely with a controller, from your couch. The challenge is making TV output a standard, something that chipset makers need to buy into. It’s very, very widespread and you’re 95% likely to get a machine that can output to TV–but Intel and AMD need to make it a documented standard to guarantee it 100%.

(4) “More of my friends play on consoles.”

It’s true, and it’s listed up above as such, but this is also highly personalized. Here’s where the truth becomes a problem when it’s leveled as a criticism of the PC as a gaming platform directly. If you own an Xbox 360, you can’t play with your PS3 friends OR your PC friends, and vice versa, and vice versa. So you go to where most of your friends are… and again: That really depends on your own group.

It also is meaningful to ask: What are you playing? If you’re not huge into Halo or Call of Duty multiplayer, but live, breathe and eat something like, say, World of Warcraft, Mount And Blade or Minecraft, how worried are you about the tens of millions of people on the console versions of Call of Duty?

So this one counts as both a truth and misconception, in a way. For those in a group of friends that won’t touch PC games, it will always be a truth. For someone like me, who dislikes most multiplayer gaming in the first place, it will always be a non-issue.

Sidenote: Let’s not avoid the fact, though, that Xbox Live is exceedingly successful and well-populated in general. No matter how many PC games have healthy player counts, XBL is a popular choice.

(5) “Do we use a mouse-like device, or a controller? I just never converted to mouse and keyboard controls to appreciate it.”

The controller issue has long since been resolved in multi-platform games, but has only been recently been resolved from an operating system perspective. Windows, MacOS and Linux, obviously, stand in the way. Steam’s Big Picture mode gets the nod here again for fixing the issue, since you can navigate around the entire environment, and launch and buy games, via controller. It’s even got a marker that denotes whether a game is fully compatible, partially compatible, or not compatible with a controller.

That there are partially compatible games is the big annoyance here. The “partial” comes from certain things–like pre-game startup windows–requiring mouse-and-keyboard input. This is rarely an issue with cross-platform games, but if a PC-only game is controller compatible, then it should go the whole way and not pester the user with these dialog boxes. Take care of that stuff in the game environment, or at least make these boxes controller-compatible.

The “not compatible” part is less worrisome. If you’re purchasing a game that’s not controller-compatible, it’s likely because the genre is tailored towards more than a controller can handle, and at that point you know what you’re getting into. After all, nobody will buy a World of Warcraft expansion pack expecting it to work with a controller.

…at least, I hope not.

(6) “Consoles are cheaper than computers.”

If we’re going by the same philosophy that says a $199 Galaxy SIII on Verizon is cheaper than a $299 Nexus 4, then yes, in every situation a games-capable PC is more expensive than a console, and will probably continue to be. That’s why it’s still listed as a truth.

But think about the phone contract you’re tied to and you realize that the hardware is NOT the only thing you pay for. If we talk about a phone, we have to think about the contract; with a car, the gas mileage; with a shaving razor, the additional blades. In that “added costs” vein (and ONLY in that vein), so it goes for gaming: The hardware is NOT the only thing you pay for when you buy into a platform. To really get an accurate picture, you’d have to tally up how much you spent on every game in your console library, plus Xbox Live or Playstation Plus costs, plus how much you spent on your console, and compare it against the same things on your PC (hardware, upgrades, per-game costs, MMO subscriptions). Quite often, you can find games on PC for less than their console ports. You aren’t 100% guaranteed to find a situation where if you stay with one platform or another, you will definitely make out having saved more money, but that’s exactly why this is partly a misconception.

As with with the friends thing, this really depends on your use case: when it is that you feel the need to buy games, and what it is you’re playing. But there are examples of great savings on the PC that I don’t see on consoles quite as frequently. I bought Mass Effect 2 the same year it came out on a Steam Sale for $10. It still currently retails on Xbox 360 for $20. Skyrim for the Xbox 360 costs $53 today on Amazon. It costs $31 for the PC copy, and it was frequently featured in Steam deals for that same price–including one sale close to when it launched. (Right now, Steam has it for $60; chances are that Valve’s waiting for its winter sale to drop it by 66%.)

A small sample of some multiplatform games I got over the last three years, on PC, for…

• $5 or less: Rainbow Six Vegas 2; GRAW 2; Alpha Protocol; F.E.A.R. 3; Hitman Blood Money; Command and Conquer – Red Alert 3; Assassin’s Creed; Trine 2 ($6.24)
• $10 or less: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Warhammer 40k: Space Marines; Oblivion; Crysis 2; Alan Wake; Alice: Madness Returns; Bioshock 2; Blur; Bulletstorm; Dead Space; Dead Space II; F.E.A.R. 2; Far Cry 2; Red Faction: Guerilla; Fallout 3 GOTY; Need for Speed Hot Pursuit; Resident Evil 5; Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; RAGE
• $15 or less: Batman: Arkham Asylum; Batman: Arkham City; Dragon Age: Origins; Metro 2033; Assassin’s Creed 2
• $17 or less: Darksiders; Darksiders II; Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Again, it’s not a 100% guarantee one way or another, but even after spending money on hardware upgrades, it’s very feasible to–over a five year period–spend the same total amount of cash on a PC and games as you would on a console and games, or perhaps even less. Anecdotally, and bear in mind that I’m a sale whore and frequently check up on prices for the games that I want on Amazon, I’ve had a much easier time finding games discounted for a significant chunk (50% or more) for the PC version as opposed to the console versions–and on PC, Steam makes it very easy to see the discounts when they happen.

(7)  ”I was raised on my father’s work PC, so I grew up with the idea that ‘PC’s are for work, this Nintendo is for gaming.’” “Comfort. Laying on the couch feels more relaxing. Computers feels like work.”

This one is exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to analyze and dispel here. But how can you argue against the emotional ties to a culture in which you were raised? Back in the day, I, too, used my PC mainly for WordPerfect, my Commodore 64 having long been sent to the closet and Super Mario World being the hero of the day. I suppose I’m different, though, in that I got PC ports of Golden Axe and Altered Beast (yeah, they existed) from my computer-loving uncle. Games never, ever left my computer, even if there were periods during which they waned. Everyone knows (or should know) that there were games on computers before they were on what we recognize as consoles today, but its public perception as an appliance is still, today, a hard one to shake off.

***

I’m hoping that with Steam’s large presence in the PC space, Valve finds some way to address both the truths and misconceptions. Steam is in the position to set a standard, going forward, that every game must also align to Steam’s own achievements system in addition to the publisher’s. I hope they do this. It’ll also need to ensure that publishers include an “auto-detect” mode in every forthcoming game that appears on Steam. At some point, it will need for all “partially controller compatible” games to become “fully controller compatible.” And while it’s never going to be able to magically bring Xbox Live gamers over to its ecosystem, one would hope that Valve can negotiate with Microsoft and/or Sony to enable some kind of cross-platform multiplayer. We can already link Playstation Network accounts and Steam accounts with each other. Let’s keep moving forward.

Looking at the variety of games, recent build quality of said games and the trend towards user-friendliness, right now PC’s are a viable enough gaming platform for those who choose to stay on it. PC gaming is no longer “dead”–for the time being. With consoles being based more directly on off-the-shelf PC architecture, I’m confident that the “arms race” trend of “needing” to upgrade your video card every two years will mellow out, relative to years past. But I still feel that there’s value in dispelling the myths, and more importantly removing the obstacles. Because we’re better as consumers when we’re more properly informed. Because things can and always should get better. Because PC gaming shouldn’t be at risk of dying again in the future. Because PC gaming shouldn’t seem as intimidating as it once was, for those who have wanted to delve but were too afraid. Because if newcomers want to put a gaming PC in the living room, they should know that it can be done easily, but the experience should also continue to become easier for them. Because Steam is a great platform with frequently great pricing, and everyone should be able to benefit. And one day, in some starry Utopia, maybe Steam will make more headway into an effort that Games for Windows Live failed at: creating a world where people on multiple platforms can play together.

Post script: After posting I noticed a few comments about the particular person not “needing” to go to a PC for gaming. Because this is the same comment levied by many a PC gamer when talking about why s/he feels consoles are inferior, I didn’t think this should have been in either list–though it certainly bears mentioning. At the end of the day, it’s all about what games you care for. Here, I wanted to focus on the perceived and real technical hurdles. I suppose the last “misconception” on the list is just an exclamation point on the “many of these problems are only perception” idea.

Windows 8 appears to make this process much simpler than in years past, if you’re coming from Windows 7, at least. I haven’t verified this on any XP or Vista machines, entirely because I no longer run either OS on any machine I use, but the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant made it a cinch for me to check what software or drivers might cause me issues. You can get a copy of it here.

The first thing it does is run a check on your machine. It took me about 10 minutes on both my laptop and desktop.  It then displays a window showing you what’s compatible and what items you might be concerned about. When you click on the latter, it’s sure to remind you that even if you don’t take any action now, Windows 8 will help you with those items if you decide to forge ahead and install it. Handily, after this step it also guides you to which version you should upgrade to depending on what you want to keep (and presumably, what OS you’re coming from, which it should detect on its own).

But more important options come about here before that next step. Each item on the list tells you whether you might need to install an update or it’s not compatible, and some of them provide direct links to either the manufacturer webpage or the actual file that you need. Very handy. In fact, I updated a driver for my sound card for the first time in a year because the upgrade assistant alerted me to it.

UPDATE: We have video showing you how Windows 8 totally won’t detonate your Steam install and games into a pile of digital feces.

Now, Ice Cream Sandwich has been running quite nicely for those who took the risk–whether it be via a custom ROM or an unofficial, leaked Motorola Release not yet approved by Verizon. But this is still behind Android’s current best and brightest, Jelly Bean. Very few devices have been updated to Jelly Bean by their carriers, so unless you’re rocking Google’s Galaxy Nexus phone or Nexus 7 tablet, you most likely won’t get it without help from the development community. The same goes for the Droid Bionic, but the funny thing about the Bionic’s situation is the fact that we don’t even have an official Ice Cream Sandwich build yet. So, for those of you paying attention to the title of this post, you’ll understand the minor nuttiness here.

Two famed Android developers, who go by the handles of DHacker and Hashcode, are responsible for bringing to the Bionic a port of Cyanogenmod 10, itself a custom ROM from a long-running series of excellent custom ROMs for Android devices. (You won’t find “official” Cyanogenmod ROMs for the Bionic anywhere–all instances of Cyanogenmod for the Bionic are ports done by other developers, given the locked bootloader problem alluded to in last week’s post.) While the alpha build has been floating around the development community for a few weeks now, only as of Monday did the duo get 3G/4G data working consistently, right from boot-up without any finagling (I was never able to get it to work before). They also managed to get camera functionality up and running, though you’ll need to use a 3rd party app for that (many community members swear by Camera 360 Ultimate; I think it’s pretty good as well) and movies need to be shot at a low resolution for the time being. But the inclusion of photos and data is enough to put even a ROM in alpha state over the “daily driver” jump (meaning that they’d be willing to use it on a daily basis).

Most other phone functionality works, but among the things that still need kinks worked out are bluetooth connectivity, HDMI connectivity and getting the stock camera to work. You also won’t get Webtop with this, so if you’re using a Motorola Lapdock, you won’t be able to use it if you flash this ROM.

Expanding a notification

I’ve been using Jelly Bean on my tablet for a few weeks already, and I was very excited to have it on my phone as well. On the web you can find several in-depth looks into what Jelly Bean has to offer, both from a bells-and-whistles standpoint and a subtle functionality standpoint. One of the subtle things that I’ve found makes my usage much snappier is the ability to expand an email notification to show you the first few lines of the email that comes in. It’s a trivial thing up-front, but I notice that I use it a lot, and I’m able to glean messages much quicker than if I were to open the message in Gmail and scroll through it. Project Butter is great, and although I previously used launchers and hacks to speed up the behavior of my phone’s interface on Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s nice to know that you’ll get a smooth UI experience without having to tweak anything.

If you want to take the plunge, you’ll want to follow the universal Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade guide written by XDA member crobs808 here. Then, when you get to the “Optional” section, for downloading the ROM in step A you’ll want to grab the CM10 Alpha Build here.

I was mildly interested in the concept and technology for my Droid Bionic, but a combination of the price and lukewarm reception to the so-so performance of the OS running on the lapdock deterred me from doing anything more than admiring it from afar.

Almost a year later, Motorola–now known as Motorola Mobility (thanks to its new owners, Google)–is changing its strategy as a company and potentially shelving the webtop feature. A quick dive into the XDA Developers forum revealed that, since its inception, Webtop–now version 3.0–had changed from a barebones Linux OS with old, pokey Firefox 4 running as its default browser to a tabletized, high-res version of Ice Cream Sandwich… provided that your device ran Ice Cream Sandwich in the first place. Another quick dive into eBay showed that new Lapdocks were being sold for as little as $70.

One more dive, this time into my wallet. Admittedly, I wasn’t entirely sober at the moment, but in the name of morbid curiosity and geekery, I decided to jump on one for my Bionic, which in fact running a leaked Motorola build of Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Hardware

The Lapdock for Bionic seems exciting when you pull it out of the box. It’s barely longer and wider than a letter-sized sheet of paper, and certainly thin enough to qualify as smaller than ultrabook size. I travel out of town 50% of the time for work, so I found appealing the thought of taking this with me and keeping it as a dedicated blogging, emailing and browsing machine while I left my main work laptop locked in my desk at the office. Light-as-a-feather laptop? Check. Even when in the office, I could plug my phone in and instant-message with my friends and family, since the office blocks AIM and gChat, among others, and I hate using virtual keyboards or Swype heavily. Circumventing office productivity measures without abandoning my touch-type ways? Double-check.

Open it up and start playing with it, though, and the bad news sets in. Initially, the keys feel nice and punchy. But once you actually try typing out a sentence, the space bar is unresponsive unless you hit it in the right spots or with extra force. Avoidingsentenceslikethese is a major chore. The trackpad’s mouse buttons are a bit squishy, and while they’re not as bothersome as the space bar, they could stand to be quite a bit more responsive. The space bar is the more egregious problem–throwing in a travel mouse to mitigate the mouse-button issue is not much of a hassle and a pretty standard practice with laptops in general, but packing in a separate keyboard, too? Eh, no thanks.

The OS

Before I talk about the Webtop OS itself, please bear in mind: If you are still running Gingerbread on your phone, your experience will be completely different as Webtop on that OS is a barebones Ubuntu instance with Firefox 4. As I mentioned before, I tested this using Ice Cream Sandwich. (And if you’re still using a Bionic with Gingerbread, consider updating to one of the Ice Cream Sandwich leaks. It’ll breathe new life into your phone, and you don’t even need to root it.)

With that out of the way…

Once you hook your phone into your lapdock, the screen will… amble for a second… and then light up with one of those typical “welcome” messages. Click past that and you’ll be in a high-res, tablet UI version of Ice Cream Sandwich. Meaning, your Back-Home-Recents buttons will be on the lower left-hand corner, and your clock and notifications will appear on the lower right-hand corner. All of your apps are present, and you have access to all of your files with whatever file manager you have installed. In short, you are seeing everything on your phone as you would normally–only in landscape, tablet mode, and high resolution.

To me, this is a good thing. You don’t have to adapt to a new operating environment or feel like you don’t get full access to your apps. With a Gingerbread phone, running them in a window to the side may be adequate, but is that really what you wanted? Probably not. What if you wanted to play Final Fantasy, which only plays in landscape? Unless you can rotate that window, you’d have to turn your head to the side… or lay the lapdock on its side. (And if you’re using Webtop through a TV, um, good luck.)

Certainly there are caveats. The Gingerbread iteration’s Firefox browser came with Flash support. That’s one area you might be lacking here, because several users have reported trouble getting Flash to work with their Bionics on the Ice Cream Sandwich leaks–myself included. (Browsing in iPad mode should alleviate most, not all, concerns.) Amazon Instant Video might be unusable since there is no native Android app, but I’m happy to report that the Netflix app works just fine. Unfortunately I got grainy video, even when attached to my home Wi-Fi network, but it’s satisfactory enough in a pinch.

With only a mouse pointer to navigate with, you won’t be able to use pinch-to-zoom or any other multi-touch functionality. Using CTRL+mousewheel up or down doesn’t work either. This generally isn’t an issue with websites, though, since the screen is large enough (both physically and from a resolution standpoint) that you’ll rarely find yourself needing to zoom in or out.

But even forgetting about multi-touch, since Android was designed as a touch-UI platform, it feels awkward mousing through the environment. Swiping left and right to access your various homescreens feels chunky with a mouse: Click, hold, fling left or right, release. Sometimes you haven’t flung quite far enough, and so the screen begins to transition, but then bounces back into place. Similar quirks happen for pretty much any swiping behavior, like removing tasks from your Recents menu.

Also, because I’m so mentally tied to normal mouse operation when a trackpad or mouse becomes available to me, I found myself trying to click-and-drag to highlight words. Android doesn’t work that way. I had to re-train myself to click and hold on a single word, wait for the word-highlight pincers to appear, and then drag those left and right to highlight. Awkward. But not impossible.

Performance

If only the lapdock performed as zippily as an undocked ICS Bionic does. Right away you’ll notice a slight amount of mouselag, more with the trackpad than with a USB mouse. This already does not bode well, especially given the cognitive oddities noted above when trying to mouse through a touch-based UI.

Furthermore, apps lag when you open them. Pages seemed to stall when loading while using Chrome. Bringing up the Recents menu felt pokey, as well. Animations hitched more frequently than I was used to for the ICS leak (which is almost to say that they hitched at all, period).

The real killer, though, was trying to use Office apps. I tested with QuickOffice and OfficeSuite 6. Both apps lagged, with the former being more problematic than the latter. As I typed long strings of text, there would be a delay of at least several milliseconds that continued to grow as the sentence I was typing became longer and longer. It was normal to see the display spit out my last two or so words after I completely stopped typing. Not all is lost: Gmail, Google Docs and the WordPress Apps seemed to exhibit none of these issues. But it’s still a disheartening thing to see. Perhaps it’s the fault of the apps, and not the lapdock?

On a hunch, I used SetCPU to set the minimum CPU frequency of my phone to 1GHz (which is also the fastest, unless you somehow happen to be running a kernel or custom ROM that allows you to overclock). This did not help much except for apps opening up at a slightly speedier clip and the Recents menu being more a touch more responsive. The Office apps saw zero benefit. Stick to Google Docs, though, and I suspect you’ll be okay.

Battery life, on the other hand, won’t be an issue. The lapdock doesn’t just sap your phone’s juice–it actually augments total battery life with its own battery. Reviews report 8 hours of battery life. I had it on for a few hours unplugged using it for a few minutes at a time, with the screen going to sleep after a minute of inactivity, and never saw the battery meter shrink.

What’s the Use Case?

If you’re in an office environment whose wired and wireless LAN blocks things you’d like to have, such as personal email, instant messaging, or certain sites that you probably shouldn’t be visiting at work anyway if you care at all about being productive (such as, ahem, this one), having this thing around is handy.

It’s also decent if you want something lightweight to take with you to a coffee shop to write that great screenplay you’ve had bouncing around your noggin, and your local venue doesn’t provide Wi-Fi for free. You’d have to stay on Google Docs and avoid the two Office Apps mentioned above, of course.

I doubt you’d get any serious gaming out of this. I’m not sure what drivers are supported but I was unable to get my USB Logitech RumblePad 2 to work at all. Would something like Dead Trigger work with the mouse and keyboard? Forum posts I’m reading seem to indicate a big fat “no”. But you might be able to run Max Payne off of a wired Xbox 360 controller. (It worked for the Nexus 7.) I’m also concerned about the performance of the lapdock–getting an intense 3D game like Dead Trigger to run smoothly at all would be a challenge. I even got performance hitches just testing out Final Fantasy. But that may be a tale for another day, since there are issues with that port to begin with.

So it’s good for lightweight computing. Here’s the thing: tablets and ultrabooks already exist for lightweight computing, too. Where does this leave something like the lapdock?

If you think about it, tablets and ultrabooks themselves form this weird two-layered middle-ground between smartphones and traditional laptops. This lapdock seems to be occupying that tiny wedge of space–the middle-ground of the middle-grounds, if you will. It doesn’t perform as smoothly as an iPad, the top Android tablets, or even the phone that plugs into it, and certainly nowhere near the ultrabooks it seems to most emulate. And its future is uncertain–we don’t even know if Motorola will support it past today.

The only endorsement I can give it is that if you already own a Motorola phone that supports it, you could end up paying under $100 for a 2 pound “laptop” that lets you email, browse and use Google Docs with a real keyboard. Even if it performs at a somewhat pokey clip, that’s an intriguing price. Less so if you already have either a top tablet and don’t give a rat’s ass about a real keyboard, or an ultrabook of at least average speed.

I’m one of these fools. I see something shinier and faster, and if I can’t get it I resign myself to pining hopelessly. So when the Samsung Galaxy SIII came out, normally I would have salivated and wished that my contract was up soon so I could switch.

See, I own a Motorola Droid Bionic, a phone that has been promised an update of its now-ancient Android 2.3 operating system (Gingerbread) to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but time and time again, Verizon failed to deliver. It was promised at the outset of Q3 2012; it is now the beginning of Q4 2012. Some folks stopped believing it would ever come. The writing, it seems, should be on the wall: with my upgrade eligibility over a year away, I’d throw up my hands and just drop the cash on the shiny, new, and un-subsidized phone.

I like to think, though, that I saved my phone–gave it another full year at least–by doing what many tech-savvy Android phone owners (something I am not) resort to doing: flashing a custom ROM.

A quick dumb-down primer for those as dim-witted as me: A custom ROM is what folks commonly call firmware or operating systems which have been modified by development communities from their “official” versions, generally for mobile devices like phones and tablets. (I’ve never heard the term applied to something like a personalized Linux variant for a computer, but I suppose the analogy holds.) The Android operating system, in particular, is left open source by owner Google, who is perfectly happy to let developers and phone OEMs craft their own variants of the OS (within certain standards, depending on the situation… it gets a little complex here and I won’t go into it).

Initially, I just wanted to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich just so that I could be running at what’s supposed to be the current standard of the platform. (Technically, it’s actually supposed to be Version 4.1, Jellybean, but that has not yet seen wide official proliferation–even on new devices.) What I ended up with was a phone that was actually much speedier and had better battery life than before, with zero changes to its physical hardware. (There are quite a few ROMs out there that do this, but the one in particular that runs on my phone comes courtesy of a development group called Team Liquid: Liquid ICS 1.5, Revision 1.)

The road to the ROM wasn’t straightforward–not for regular joes like me, and not for Team Liquid and others who were developing their own ROMs for the Bionic. You can read the history of the ICS update woes here. Some intrepid followers found official builds from Motorola and soon Ice Cream Sandwich updates–each one progressively more stable–were unofficially leaked across the web. Had it not been for this, the development community may not have ever been able to build stable ROMs for the device because all of Motorola’s devices come with locked bootloaders. Thanks to the leaked Motorola builds, the developers at least had some base to work off of that would allow them to boot the phones into Ice Cream Sandwich. The hardest part was done.

A sidenote: To date, we have at least eight iterations of the Ice Cream Sandwich leak for the Bionic. Certain folks on the XDA Developers forum say the scuttlebutt is that Verizon continues to reject each successive release because Motorola has been unable to get Flash working in Ice Cream Sandwich.

It’s not hard to see that it would have been a painful waiting game. At some point, if you wanted just to stay current (Gingerbread just wasn’t cutting it), you’d have to jump if you wanted to avoid buying a whole new phone.

After going through the steps to reset my phone to factory standards and then update to one of the leaked ICS builds, I tried it out. It went well–the phone was smoother both in operation and the user experience. It wasn’t silky smooth like newer phones, but it sufficed, and at least my phone was more current.

But the tutorial I read made a recommendation on the ROM from Team Liquid, who was focused on making their ROMs’ performance “liquid smooth”. It also mentioned that I could use the new Google Now features without needing Jelly Bean (which is in development by the community but doesn’t yet have a build with stable cellular data connectivity).

After following the steps and installing the Liquid ROM, I find that my phone runs very fast compared to what it did on one of the later stable Motorola Ice Cream Sandwich leaks, and Gingerbread feels like a choppy user experience by comparison. Transitions and their animations are faster, and often smoother. App loading and task switching are much brisker. Using pinch-to-zoom on photos and web sites is very smooth, almost (though not quite) as smooth as what I’ve seen Jelly Bean can do.

Is there still a reason to crave Jelly Bean? Sure. There are slight interface and usability improvements that Jelly Bean implements over Ice Cream Sandwich as well as some background tinkering. But for the time being, due to the increased speed I’m experiencing and the addition of Google Now, I almost feel as if I have an entirely new phone–Jelly Bean or not.

To tell you the truth, I feel almost angry that for so long, Bionic owners like me have been holding a decently powerful piece of hardware without an operating system to take advantage of it. No, the Bionic won’t trounce the Galaxy SIII or even its contemporaries in the Droid Razr or Droid Razr Maxx, even with a fast custom ROM, but it’s certainly speedy enough that you most likely won’t care.

(Sidenote: I bought the Bionic after it had been out for a short while, just as Motorola announced the Droid Razr. Despite the faster processing power in the newer phone, it has no removable battery. That’s a key factor for me. I recently bought the extended battery on sale, and even with 4G connectivity my phone can last two days before needing a recharge. Plus it’s easier to kill and reboot the phone with a battery pull if it freezes for whatever reason.)

Potentially voiding your device’s warranty and facing the possibility of rendering it inoperable are surely reasons to be scared of turning to the development commmunity (hint: if you follow directions, you have nothing to worry about). But sometimes when you’re dealing with a device that seems to be going unsupported and, worse, whose potential remains unlocked, it’s worth the risk of going down the underground path–especially when its OEM just had a press conference announcing a new line of phones whose budget $99 model packs better hardware that what you currently have. (In fairness, Motorola said that all 2011 devices would receive Jelly Bean updates… but with the caveat that they won’t update “some” devices and would instead issue a $100 rebate for you to spend on a new device.)

If you’re a Bionic owner, or otherwise own a pretty fast phone that has ceased to receive updates from its OEM and your carrier, you should consider taking the plunge. As long as you know where to look and can follow instructions to the letter, you might squeeze another year or two out of a phone that once made you feel as if you were left behind.