The Gizmondo gets some BSOD love
By Peter Rojas 
posted Mar 24th 2005 10:01AM
posted Mar 24th 2005 10:01AM
The downside to having your new Gizmondo portable gaming console run on Windows CE? Ah yes, the return of our old nemesis, the BSOD.
This brought a smile to my face. What a hoot! At least PalmOS devices just freeze up on you, right?
But umm, that's not a BSOD. The clue is that it's not blue.
What happened to the version with the cryptic buttons? I was really hoping to see reviews where they told you to press the button with the 3 squiggly vertical lines to fire your weapons and press the Native American symbol for river to jump.
This thing is a paperweight.
That ain't a BSOD, its just an error message - still must be annoying. My T637 phone locks up more then my XP machine.
Still kicks the DS and PSP ass out of the box! BSOD?.... LMFAO.. any other acronyms we can use?
follow up - while confirming my post, the server replied with its own microsoft error message: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Transaction (Process ID 123) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.
/common/comments-confirm.asp, line 35
anyone else noticing engadget has been janked up the last couple of days?
Yep, we're having some server "issues", mainly due to a spike in traffic in the past couple of weeks. Traffic is growing a lot faster than we had anticipated and we keep having to add more server capacity every three months or so. Not that we're complaining, but trust me, all this is 100x time more frustrating for me than it is for you. I'm writing posts, reading the site, and searching for stuff all day long, so I'm acutely aware of the problems we've been having, and our tech guys (Brian and Dave) are working on it.
Wait a second. . . You're not your own tech guys???
Nah, it makes more sense to have guys who actually specialize in this stuff handle it.
good. i'm getting errors too.
I just popped down to the Gizmondo store on Regent Street. It is very plush inside and clearly fitted out at much expense, but I was the only person there (it was just after noon). Played with the device and it is not as large as it appears on the web, and the screen and interface is really quite good. The hot keys are a bit small, but the game controls are fine. As you can tell I am trying to take a positive spin on the Gizmondo because I'd really like it to succeed, but with it being so expensive, with so few games available and, yes, those BSODs (three of the six demo models had problems with the game .exe files), I am just another punter who agrees with the masses that it is going to die an unheralded and ignominous death, and soon. Further down Regent Street is the Nokia showroom, and the N-GAGE QD is truly sexy in comparison, which is saying a lot.
Thats not a BSOD.
(sorry for double posting)
I am shocked by reading all your negative comments. I'll try to fight Giz's corner.
"Big and bulky" it is way smaller then the PSP and it has a much much better battery life. Something is vital for a mobile device. The PSP doesn't have enough juice to watch a movie. How will you watch you free Spiderman movie? In two separate sittings?!? The fact that it has a smaller screen enables it to fit in your pocket -unlike the PSP.
"Lack of games" since the OS is WinCE lots of software is automatically compatible. Games just need porting from their PC versions. In time if the devices is successful there will be more games for it then any console just because the cost of porting is so low.
"Lack of branded games" EA and Ubisoft are porting games as we speak. Fifa soccer:
http://www.easports.com/games/fifa2005/gizmondo.jsp
The PSP games launch list was pretty barren of AAA titles too.
Price: PSP costs $250 USD, Gizmondo cost $430
GPS you can receive the position for free, transmitting does cost however. If you wanna go price a mapping GPS device it will cost you about 400.
GPRS: Yes is it very expensive now but that will come down with the introduction of 3G. It is just one of many features.
Ugliness: Ok the PSP is cooler but did you ever have a look at the DS?