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Vijay

Member since: Feb 16th, 2006

Vijay's Latest Comments

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Recent Comments:

TiVo Premiere spotted in Best Buy with March 28th retail date (Engadget)

Mar 18th 2010 8:51AM Odd... I thought this was old news. The dude at a Massachusetts Best Buy told me last week that it was coming out March 28. Was he not supposed to?

Source: Next-gen Ford Police Interceptor will debut this Friday in Las Vegas (Autoblog)

Mar 11th 2010 10:50AM @ Jei:

The next-gen Explorer is going to be on the D4 platform, which is an evolution of the Ford D3 platform, which is Ford's name for the Volvo P2 platform.

Can someone tell me why a Taurus with AWD, pushing more power to the rear wheels, is worse than the Crown Vic? I'm really confused about this. NYC has a fleet of early 2000s Chevy Impalas, which means PDs are more than willing to consider unibody cars.

Google's big announcement: Google Buzz is sharing, Gmail-style (Download Squad)

Feb 9th 2010 3:36PM So this is Wave 2.0, with integration? Is that right?

Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft 'no longer brings us the future' (Engadget)

Feb 4th 2010 2:18PM I don't know about "anti-innovative corporate culture", but I think that MS is a large Medusa of a conglomerate. The high-profile stuff (Windows, Offices, etc.) is conservative, but the lower-profile stuff is much more innovative, by my read.

Looking at Sync, Natal, Surface, and Zune together, you get the sense that MS is aiming for a completely different role from "sexy software maker". They are looking to be the integral intermediary for the now-digital life that everyone has.

Sync: Intelligent, user-friendly, and carefully-thought-out in-car computing and digital life integration.

Natal: More-or-less peripheral free-user-sensing software and hardware, with an eye to future gesture-based interface for all computing.

Surface: Similar to Natal, except touchscreen, and completely different file paradigm.

Zune: Stable OS platform for mobile devices, that's extensible and works well on more or less any hardware.

Take all four together, and you're talking about fully integrating one's productivity, fun, and utility through a single company's offerings. Even as a non-fanboy, it's pretty easy to tell that MS is not eyeing innovation for 2010, but rather 2020. And they seem to be out ahead of a lot of companies.

Volvo introduces new direct injected, turbocharged 2.0-liter GTDi (Autoblog)

Feb 1st 2010 11:33AM Yup. The old three-digit-named Volvos had the number of cylinders right in the name (with a couple exceptions). For example, the station wagon version of the 850 was technically the 855, and the 854 was the sedan.

8 = series name
5 = cylinders
5 = doors

So 740 had 4 cylinders, 960 had six, etc.

The most notable exceptions to this rule were a couple years of 260 and all 760 Turbos. Until that the early 90s, Volvo only made a 2L straight-4 (known as the Volvo "redblock"), and used V6s from a (not great) partnership with Renault and Peugeot. The V6s were generally pretty bad, in terms of power, gas mileage, and reliability.

The engineers started developing the current engine family (known as the Volvo "Modular Engine") in the late-80s to bring all engines in-house. The first engine used off this line was a longitudinally-mounted straight-6, used in latter-day 960s/S90/V90.

The Modular Engine was simultaneously being tested on the 850, which was a testbed for three simultaneous shifts in Volvo's methodology.

1) Transverse mounting, for safety and space reasons.
2) FWD or AWD
3) Engine flexibility - all the engines would be based on the same technology, but Volvo could adapt it down to 4 cylinders or up to 6 cylinders.

The decision was made to build a 5-cylinder engine because, if they were able to solve vibration issues of transverse-mounting AND 5-cylinder engines at the same time, they would have an engine platform adaptable to 4- and 6-cylinder variants.

So, since 1991, this engine family has been used, and since 1993, this engine family has been in ALL Volvos.

Volvo introduces new direct injected, turbocharged 2.0-liter GTDi (Autoblog)

Jan 29th 2010 4:56PM You know they solved most of the vibration issues when the first transverse-5 engine came out on the 850, ages ago, right? This engine tech is almost 20 years old, so they've gotten a lot of (literal and figurative) mileage out of it, and didn't spend "all their development" on this recently.

Agreed with the rest that it's long time to retire it, but your concern was basically solved in 1990, and moving from 20-yo tech to a more efficient version of 4-yo tech is a marked improvement.

Rumormill: Ford to sell Volvo to Geely for 1.8 billion on Feb. 8 (Autoblog)

Jan 28th 2010 6:44PM "Volvo has never made profit for Ford and dosn't seam like they will."

That's true, if you exclude all the work Volvo engineers did building the Volvo P2 / Ford D3 platform in the mid-90s, which was re-engineered with Mazda into the C1 platform, which itself was then re-merged with D3 to create the EUCD platform. Direct descendants of the Volvo P2 lineage - Ford D4 and EUCD2. The Ford D3 line is still in use, too, though they're moving to the D4.

In essence, four instrumental platforms, out of which you get such cars as the new Taurus, the new Explorer, Euro focus, Mondeo (not sold in US), and the future Fusion/Mondeo, were built using Volvo's platform technology.

Since Mulally's big thing is global platform unity, and the Volvo-derived platforms are the most flexible, it makes sense to keep that IP in-house.

Last night's Tonight Show felt like a series send-off (AOL TV)

Jan 13th 2010 11:12AM While I'm with Coco, I wanted to note that Leno isn't the bad guy here. NBC was afraid of losing him to another network, since he never promised to retire, and they worked with him to come up with this half-baked idea for the 10PM timeslot. While Leno is involved in this matter, it really comes down to Zucker.

Conan says no to 12:05 Tonight Show - BREAKING (AOL TV)

Jan 12th 2010 6:05PM Absolutely. Unfortunately, they're making a bad situation worse by trying to keep Leno when they've already passed the torch. NBC's smartest move in the last week would have been to cancel the ratings disaster that was Leno's show, and work with him to develop a brand-new weekly show. Conan's ratings would have been bumped by a better lead-in, and Leno would have looked like a gracious guy who got caught in a bad situation.

Conan says no to 12:05 Tonight Show - BREAKING (AOL TV)

Jan 12th 2010 4:22PM More soberly, rumor is that Conan has a $40-50M buyout of his contract/timeslot. I think Conan (and agent Ari Emmanuel) are playing chicken with the network: spend 40M to push Conan unceremoniously out the door, or back down and keep Conan's Tonight Show?

Either way, NBC looks terrible, Leno looks complicit, and Conan comes out rosy.