I’ve known Thomas Hawk for about a year or so now, having met only once in person at our co-hosted Geek Dinner. What’s impressed me most about Thomas is his fresh perspective that is unfettered by allegiances to any particular technology or brand as a high-end enthusiast. He’s a family man, works in the financial industry and is smart and pointed about his technology feedback. You can see this yourself in his criticisms regarding HD across the DVR space, and admittedly regarding a few products I’ve worked on :).
I got a mail from Thomas yesterday:
You guys are really working on great technology. Can’t wait to blog about it…
Pinged the folks in PR. No embargo on the bloggers – let’s start the conversation, get the feedback. Thomas rolls up his sleeves on what he saw here. My favorite excerpt:
One of the most impressive aspects about Longhorn is the speed with which it catalogs, organizes and searches your PC. In addition to great new views (you can see a physical representation of every file on your PC that can be magnified as you move the scroll wheel of your mouse), the speed at which Longhorn renders the views was spectacular. Best of all was Jim’s reaction when I expressed my delight at how quickly views were rendered. Jim reacted strongly and said that the speed that we were seeing was unacceptable and that over the course of the next year the system will get even faster.
Sometimes for those of us close to building the technology, we’re so familiar with the product that we start to take things for granted, both big and little- since we’re running our products for weeks or months in builds before others get to really see it. It’s great that the hard-working teams are getting recognition for their hard work. Stay tuned… lots more to do.