JolieSimons.com

I love my Wii. My husband and I managed to stand out in the cold, freezing ourselves to the bone for nine hours outside of a Wal-Mart in order to get one, but the wait was totally worth it. The night we got it, we stayed up until very early in the morning playing Wii Sports, the game that comes packaged with the Wii system in this country.

The thing about Wii Sports is that it gives you the opportunity to actually get off the couch in order to play games. There are real motions involved. To play baseball, swing the Wiimote like a bat. To play golf, swing the Wiimote like a golf club, and so on.

When the concept of the new game Wii Fit was introduced at the famed E3 convention and advertising videos were placed online, the inevitable backlash began. This video on YouTube lampooned the strange motions that accompany a Wii Fit gaming session:

After all, who would want to play this game? When playing the game, you look very silly.

Wii Fit is the next evolution in Nintendo’s bid for an “active gaming” market. The game comes packaged with a balance board, a white board on which you stand in order to do most of the minigames involved in Wii Fit. You can also check your weight and track your progress over time. There are aerobics, strength training, yoga, and balance games you can play, all using the ingenious balance board to measure weight fluctuation and center of gravity.

After seeing and reading about recent demonstrations, including a somewhat-puzzling demonstration on NPR’s Morning Edition, I’ve decided that the Wii Fit is the next frontier in active gaming and I’m all for it. Perhaps kids all across the country will play fun balance games while at the same time dropping some pounds. Perhaps it will bring families closer together with games everyone can play. Or perhaps it will surprise everyone and become a flop.

Whatever it is, I want one. If my family is reading, you can buy me one for my birthday which I know is in the fall, but I take advanced presents.

Wii Fit is now available at stores for about $90.

I’ll admit it: I’m a Vista hater.

I purchased the seminal Microsoft product recently when I bought a new laptop for work. The laptop works okay. I got a good deal on it, certainly, but it comes with a version of the Vista operating system.

Since then, I’ve been battling Vista on what seems like a daily basis. This OS is so huge that it dwarfs the 1 GB of RAM I have. Since then, I’ve battled lockups from opening too many programs at once, and become frustrated at the insanely long time I have to wait just to start up my computer in the morning.

I should also mention that I purchased a Zune, the Microsoft-made MP3 player and Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s wildly successful iPod. Turns out that refurb Zune I bought for such a steal online recently decided to up and die on us.

My husband and I, not expecting much, went ahead and sent the Zune off to Microsoft for repairs. After all, the player was under warranty, but it was a refurb model purchased for cheap. I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope.

Two weeks later, much to our chagrin, Microsoft sent us a lovely FedEx package. It was our new Zune, a replacement for the old one that didn’t work anymore. It was even the same color and was all new: no scratches, no dents, no greasy fingerprints from trying to play the Zune through the car stereo while simultaneously sucking down some Taco Bell on your way to work.

I should also mention that we own an Xbox 360 that has also required repair, and we have never been turned down for our repair requests.

I love a company that stands behind what they sell. Screw hating on Vista all the time. I love Microsoft.

Here’s our new-to-us Zune. Isn’t it a beut?

As many news outlets are reporting, Toshiba is expected to announce the end of their HD DVD technology, essentially taking the company out of the next generation race for high definition movie technology. Toshiba will stop manufacturing HD DVD players and will cease printing HD DVD titles. As many are reporting, this could have a ripple effect in the computer and gaming market, including the loss of HD DVD burning technology for computers.

Despite HD DVD’s lower price points, Sony’s Blu Ray technology ultimately won the war with studios, and this trickles down to customers. Studios were attracted to Blu Ray’s  new laser technology, meaning that Blu Ray discs are protected from copying–for now. When customers don’t have many purchasing options in the HD DVD format, they will choose not to invest in HD DVD players or titles.

HD DVD players could be purchased for as low as $100 in some cases, or for $180 as an addition to an Xbox 360 console. Blu Ray, on the other hand, required an investment of $400 or more to purchase a Playstation 3 or standalone Blu Ray player.

Toshiba, which created DVD technology, was unable to get a foothold in the high definition movie market despite having several advantages over Sony’s Blu Ray. HD DVD’s were based on DVD technology and could be produced more cheaply than Blu Ray discs. HD DVD players were online-ready, and customers could use online features and instant online updates with their HD DVD players, whereas Sony has only just recently announced a move to make Blu Ray technology sync online. HD DVD’s have better menu technology, and the difference in picture and sound are negligible.

There is no word, yet, on why Toshiba’s partnership with Microsoft or it’s demanding presence in the movie market–with their ownership of DVD technology–couldn’t save their foothold in the market.