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Author Archives: Bill Catchings

Lights! Camera! Action!

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on August 10, 2012

While we continue working on the testing, white papers, and Webinars that are part of the HDXPRT 2012 roll-out, we also are working on some other things as well. The importance of HDXPRT shows how the world is moving toward a much more visual/graphical future. To keep up with that trend and with our benchmark, we are adding video content to the site.

At Principled Technologies, we have been embracing video in a big way. We built a dedicated video-production studio (picture lots of green walls) and bought the necessary video, audio, and lighting gear, so our talented video-production staffers have all the tools they need. Our goal is to be able to quickly create for our clients all sorts of videos of things like our performance reports. We are now able to utilize those same video assets for the XPRTs (HDXPRT and TouchXPRT).

To get things rolling here, we created a video blog based on an entry from a few weeks ago. We will be experimenting with doing more with video, including videos explaining and promoting HDXPRT and regular video blogs. Let us know what you would like to see!

Bill

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Posted in Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT, TouchXPRT |

HDXPRT 2012 has left the building! Now what?

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on July 27, 2012

HDXPRT 2012 is finished! We are shipping out the HDXPRT 2012 DVDs to the Development Community membership. If you don’t get yours next week, please let us know. If you would like a copy of HDXPRT 2012, please join the community and we will gladly send you one.

We are also putting out a press release, preparing white papers, and doing the myriad things involved in shipping a product. The benchmark itself, however, is done.

Now that we have had a couple minutes to celebrate that moment, it is time to ask, “What next?” The first and most obvious thing will be to get the RTM of Windows 8 and see what we need to fix to make HDXPRT 2012 work with it. We hope we won’t need to change much–maybe we’ll get lucky and everything will work fine. Regardless, we’ll let you know what is necessary to make HDXPRT 2012 work on Windows 8 or will create an updated version that works on Windows 8.

We will also begin the next cycle for HDXPRT 2013. Now, however, is the best time for you to let us know what you would like to see. Are there particular tests you would like to see? We can add inspection tests to HDXPRT even before the next full version. By an inspection test, I mean a test that may not be relevant for all users or environments and is not part of the overall score. The test might also be an experimental one that we want to try out for possible inclusion in the overall score in the future.

But, for the moment, we plan to enjoy our weekend. We hope you have a great weekend as well!

Bill

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Posted in HDXPRT 2012, HDXPRT 2013, Let us know your thoughts, Windows 8 |

History in the making

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on July 13, 2012

We are quickly approaching the debut of HDXPRT 2012. It will be the second version of HDXPRT developed under the benchmark development community paradigm. This milestone provides a nice opportunity to look back at what has happened over the nearly two years since we started creating community-based benchmarks.

The most obvious accomplishment is the development of HDXPRT 2011 and HDXPRT 2012. HDXPRT 2011 has been used around the world for evaluating the performance of computers using applications doing activities that consumers do to create and consume content. We are hopeful that HDXPRT 2012 will be even more widely used.

We also announced earlier this year a new benchmark, TouchXPRT. This benchmark will provide a way to evaluate the performance of the emerging touch-based devices, including tablets. TouchXPRT will debut later this year, initially on Windows 8 Metro.

We have been working hard to get the word out about the benchmarks. We’ve been writing this weekly blog, conducting Webinars, and generally talking with folks in the computer industry. We’ve visited with members of the community around the world at trade shows like CES in Las Vegas and Computex in Taipei. We also spent time with members of the press and computer hardware and software developers. Over the coming months, we are planning to revamp the Web site, add video content, and generally find ways to better engage with and extend the development community.

Less obvious, but equally important to me, has been the development of the development community itself. Developing benchmarks has not been done this way before. We are doing what we can to make the process open to the community, including releasing the benchmark source code. We are optimistic that this method will grow and be a real asset for the industry.

As we look at the growing family of benchmarks under the benchmark XPRT umbrella, the question is always what is next? How can we improve the products and the community? What performance areas do we need to look at in the future? Battery life? Macs? Phones?

Thanks so much for joining us on this journey. The members of this community are what make it work. We look forward to continuing the journey with you!

Bill

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Posted in Application-based benchmarks, Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2012, History of benchmarking, TouchXPRT |

Tablets everywhere

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on June 29, 2012

Everyone wants in on the tablet market. This month, two software vendors have announced hardware tablets—Microsoft’s Surface and Google’s Nexus 7. Both vendors in the past relied on OEMs to create tablets using their software (Windows and Android). Both have met with limited success doing so.

Now, both are trying Apple’s strategy of controlling the hardware as well the software. Unlike Apple, however, Microsoft and Google still need to work with their OEM partners. I’m looking forward to watching that delicate dance!

I’m looking forward more, however, to being able to actually play with both of those products. I’m also looking forward to using TouchXPRT on such products. We have not given you an update in a while on TouchXPRT, but rest assured that we are hard at work on it. Once we have HDXPRT 2012 ready to go, we will give you more details on where we are with TouchXPRT and its current schedule. The touch and tablet market are heating up and we plan to be there for it. As we have indicated before, we will support Windows 8 Metro in the first version, but we see a real need for TouchXPRT to work on multiple platforms. So much to do!

Please note that today is the end of the beta test period. We appreciate the results, bugs, and suggestions you have sent so far. Feel free, however, to continue to send us any feedback or issues you find even after the official beta period is complete. After today, we can’t guarantee to be able to address them, but we will try.

Bill

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Posted in Performance testing on tablets, Touch-based benchmarking, Touch-based computing, Touch-based devices, TouchXPRT |

Software updating when everything uses software

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on June 8, 2012

Software updating when everything uses software

The latest beta of Windows 8 Release Preview is out and we are scrambling to see what works with it and what doesn’t. After many years in the software industry, I’ve come to expect that. Now, however, pretty much everything goes through many cycles of software updates. The results can be annoying. Or worse.

Two weeks ago, I took my Nissan LEAF in for its 6-month check-up. While there, the dealer did a software update. I’ve had no real problems with it and, in general, I love the car . However, after the update, the LCD display on my console is different. It now displays the time in the upper right. Unfortunately, that time is different from the one that displays beneath the windshield. I guess I need to read some manuals. Annoying.

This week, the Garmin Edge 500 bicycle computer I use had an available update and I updated it. Everything seemed to go fine on my 36-mile bike ride a couple days later. When I went to upload the ride to the Garmin Connect Web site, it told me I need to update my Edge 500 (to the same version) and claimed there were no new rides on the device. After some frustration, I managed to get it all working without losing the data from my ride. Very annoying.

It seems like I’m constantly updating my iPhone, my Xbox 360, my TV, my iPad, Windows on my PC, Mac OS on my Mac, and, of course, applications everywhere. Usually, the updates work fine. But, when the glitches happen, I am tempted to never update anything again. Very annoying, indeed.

In the meantime, it’s back to working on updating HDXPRT 2012!

Bill

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Posted in HDXPRT 2012, HDXPRT development process |

HDXPRT 2012 and Windows 8 follow-up

Bill Catchings
By Bill Catchings
on June 8, 2012

HDXPRT 2012 and Windows 8 follow-up

As I discussed a couple weeks ago, the beta of HDXPRT 2012 has some problems with Windows 8 and consequently will not install. However, with the latest version of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, some of the issues seem to be better. Using some command-line options, you can get around the installation restrictions. That is what we have been doing in our lab. (Don’t worry, we hate hidden options as well, and there should not be any in the shipping version!) We’re hoping you can help us test the HDXPRT 2012 beta on your latest systems under Windows 8.

The complete details of how to install and run the beta on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview are in this forum post. (login required) Please let us know what you find out on your systems, either in the forum or via email. We have encountered some crashes in apps and we’d like to know what you find. We provide some instructions for running individual workloads in case you need to work around such an issue. We are also interested in hearing if you see any performance differences between Windows 7 and Windows 8 that don’t make sense to you. While the Consumer Preview license does not allow the publishing of performance results, we still need to start the process of understanding what is going on with Windows 8.

As always, thanks for your efforts to make HDXPRT 2012 as good as possible!

Bill

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Posted in HDXPRT 2012 beta, Let us know your thoughts |

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