Iron Man 2 leads into The Avengers movie.

Marvel Comics is opening up a door that has never been opened before. Linking the Marvel movies together to form a single movie universe could be a disaster or a genius move, we'll just have to wait and see. I will be paying to see whatever Marvel movies come out because I'm a fanboy, comic book collector, & geek. It will be challenging to have so many big name superheroes in the Avengers movie without it being at least 4 hours long. The X-Men movies were good, but superhero teams don't translate so well into superhero team movies mainly because you don't have enough time to establish the origins of team members. But I guess that Marvel has decided to put out individual movies to establish the backgrounds of the team members of the Avengers which may work fine in the long run.

I thought the movie was just as good as the first Iron Man. Iron Man 2 had more comedic moments in it, but the laughs fit in very well. I believe there will definitely be an Iron Man 3, at least I hope so. Using Whiplash and Hammer as villains brought a decent amount of balance to the film. I like how they worked in more of the Avengers storyline. It was also good to see Howard Stark in the movie too, you never hear too much about Howard Stark in the comic books.

I guess how Fury ended things with Stark left Marvel room to go either way in terms of having Iron Man in the new Avengers movie. Finding Thor's hammer in the desert sets up the new Thor movie that is being worked on. The Captain America shield that Tony used to prop up his particle accelerator machine had to be an early prototype of some sort of Captain America's shield. I'm guessing that Howard Stark played a role in the creation of Captain America's shield back in the day. Will we see Howard Stark in the upcoming Captain America movie? It will be interesting to see where Marvel goes from here. There are still plenty of good villains in the Iron Man universe. I'm guessing that the next movie will be about either The Mandarin, Modock, or A.I.M. The end of the movie where Tony kisses Pepper makes no sense. They tried to develop a relationship in the first Iron Man and that didn't work, so why do it again in Iron Man 2?

I don't expect the upcoming Avengers movie to be anything like the comic book because it simply can't be, but it should still be good if done right without being hindered by a limited budget. I have no doubts that the Avenger movie may be the most expensive movie Marvel makes to date. We'll just have to wait and see true believers!

Apple iPad v. Amazon Kindle - Round 1

Both the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle are amazing devices. I have personally been able to spend some time with both devices recently and I wanted to share my initial impressions of both. The Amazon Kindle is good at what it does, display books in electronic format for reading. The Amazon Kindle 2 and the DX version are single purpose devices for reading only. The Apple iPad is a multi-purpose device that can be used as an ereader and much more. For the sake of rating the ereading experience alone on both devices, I believe that Apple provides a richer experience in ways that the Amazon Kindle can't. First, the Apple iPad is in color and the Amazon Kindle is not. In favor of the Kindle 2, it is priced lower than the iPad. However, the iPad is competitively price in the same range as the Amazon Kindle DX. If you are in the market for a purely simple ereader device and that is the only thing you want to do with the device and you did not plan to read PDF documents, I'd recommend the Amazon Kindle 2 to you. But if you were in need of a larger screen, and wanted to manipulate and interact with more content beyond books, then I'd go with the iPad.

As I spend more time with either device, I'll be posting further comments about the Kindle and iPad. If you have either device, please feel welcomed to share your testimony & review of your favorite ereader with the readers of Anything But Windows blog.

Installing and Testing Out Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1

I thought I'd take the time to install Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 since I'm definitely planning on installing the final 10.04 LTS release of Ubuntu on all of my computers. So far, so good, I haven't encountered any problems so far. My initial impressions are very good. The operating system is very snappy, and the over all look of Ubuntu 10.04 is a vast improvement from previous versions. I no longer feel as if I have to modify the .font.conf file to have my fonts look smooth. My wireless adapter on my laptop was detected right away. I will be testing out some features that I've read about to see how they work, to include testing out whether or not I can synchronize my iPhone with Ubuntu. I won't say I'm not doubtful about how good syncing the iPhone on Ubuntu is going to be. I have high hopes in regards to Linux support for working with the iPhone, but I'll keep my expectations low because Apple's history with allowing their devices to work with other operating systems. If syncing the iPhone does work, I don't believe it will work for long as Apple will more than likely release an update to the iPhone which would disable the ability for the iPhone to synchronize with Ubuntu. I'd really wish Apple would release a version of iTunes for Linux.