When I saw James Kendrick’s post on Vista SP1 hitting his HP Mini, I decided to be a little proactive about why SP1 wasn’t hitting my machine. I’d been wondering what in the world had been blocking Windows Update from delivering the Vista Service Pack 1 goodness that I’d been craving for the last month or so. I’d download every single possible update offered, optional or otherwise, and it still wasn’t popping. I finally came across this post by Nick White on the Vista Team Blog, in which he explains that any other language than the below five offered by Microsoft will be released in the second wave of updates in April.

Since I am running Vista Ultimate, I’d downloaded a language pack some time ago, and it turns out that as soon as I uninstalled it, the SP1 update came up in right after installing one minor update that hadn’t been offered before that.

SP1 is downloading as I write, and I’m looking forward to a leaner, meaner, mobile blogging machine!

Interestingly, my total download required was only around 65MB-as opposed to the max of 400+ MB. I guess all the updates I’d downloaded before that did do something.

UPDATE: Turns out there’s a specific post on the Vista Team Blog dedicated to this point, located here. They say that SP1 for the other 31 languages should be coming soon, although a hard date wasn’t provided.

FYI: Should you be truly desperate for SP1 on your machine and WU isn’t offering it up, you can download a standalone installer directly from MS by going to this page.

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According to Engadget (see post below) as well as a number of other online news sources, the iPhone now does screen caps.

Wow.

Who would’a thunk it? You mean we can instantly get a screengrab of whatever is on our screen at the moment?

You might have heard that the latest iPhone 2.0 beta firmware allows users to save web images to its running camera roll for later download to its host machine (or sharing via email). Well, a reliable source let us know that the image capturing good times don’t end there: the iPhone now capable of taking full screen caps (like the one above) simply by holding the sleep button, then tapping the home button. We haven’t personally tested either technique (we already know what you’re thinking: we can’t say whether it captures screens from a video), but apparently it flashes white to indicate the cap’s been taken and the image has been added to your roll. Let’s hope these two neato features make it to the release firmware.

You’ll have to excuse my facetious tone for just a moment. You see, Windows Mobile phones have been doing the screen capture thing for years. I’ve personally used at least four capture tools, and there’s gotta be a good bit more out there.

As far as the cute hardware shortcut key trick, two points:

1) Not to sound rude or anything, but does Apple know that they’ve only got two buttons to work with? Better give some thought as to where you’re assigning that shortcut…

2) WM owners have the nifty option of setting their hardware keys to whatever they want! Yup, that’s right…we can selectively choose to invoke any application with the simply press of a button.

Someone please wake me up when the iPhone comes up with something WM can’t do (UI aside).

(iPhone screengrab credit to EngadgetMobile.com).

So the big news at CTIA this year was the Samsung Instinct for Sprint. The next in a never ending parade of wannabe “iPhone killers”, the Instinct, IMHO, fails to deliver any particularly exciting features. What made the iPhone stand out, apart from it’s uniquely “newbie” friendly UI, was it’s overwhelming number of features that most users hadn’t encountered before, while still technically playing in the “dumbphone” sandbox. The Instinct, however, doesn’t merit playing there, for the simple reason that it’s UI isn’t close to the iPhone’s. Admittedly, I haven’t played with it in person, so this post is more of a rant than a review, but from all appearances it appears to be a glorified edifice to Sprint’s various services than an actual iPhone contender.

Once the Instinct is matched up against devices in the Smartphone class, it’s features quickly become ho-hum. Allow me to demonstrate…

1) GPS? Bah. Been there done that. And, while the Instinct uses the cumbersome, ancient client-server TeleNav application, Windows Mobile devices have been using locally stores, full featured sat-nav apps for years now. Really.

2) EV-DO Rev. A? Bah. HTC Mogul…’nuff said.

3) Customizable Favorites? You have to be kidding me. That’s a feature? Par for the course on any, yes any WM application launcher. Comes standard (some form of an application launcher, I mean) on almost all current WM devices.

4) Pocket Express? I reviewed PEX Version 4 for WM last year! (Click here for the review, in case you’re interested).

5) Live Search? Again folks, Instinct is attempting to steal WM’s thunder…reviewed last year here. FYI: If you’re a WM user, you can download it over-the-air easily by firing up IEM (Internet Explorer Mobile) and going to wls.live.com.

And thaaat’s all folks…that’s it. The much touted Instinct broken down and torn apart for your ranting (or mine) pleasure.