Just got my KPC Shuttle mini PC and within 30 minutes I had it running. This PC is perfect for many purposes or when you need a small PC. I bought a barebones K45 KPC for $100, installed a P4, some ram, and some hard drive I had laying around and I was ready to go. The biggest problem anyone is going to have with this PC is the power supply, it is green but only has 1  sata and 1 standard 12v connector for your hard drives. There are plenty of ports on the back: VGA, Parallel, serial, Ethernet USB… You can look this up for yourself!

Here is the hidden gem I found! Everywhere I looked, there was no mention of a CD-Rom drive bay in the front online or in any documentation. I have amazing  news to report! Inside the KPC there is two slots for standard hard drives and one slot at the top for a laptop Rom drive. Unfortunately, you will have to take off the beautiful Plexiglas bezel that houses those pretty pictures in the front but with a little DIY fun, you can make your own.

Take a look at the pics.

Originally, the Shuttle KPC computer was supposed to be sold exclusive from NewEgg.com for $200 but they raised the price no doubt because of many orders. Currently, the KPC is no longer available. Even though Windows is not included and Linux is, any computer at a $200 price point is amazing. Celeron Processor, 80GB hard drive, 512mb of Ram, and no CD-Rom drive makes this computer possible but the fact that it is fully functional makes it a great deal. The linux OS included is great to give to a child learning their first computer or a Internet computer for the living room. I have found a barebones version for $100 which does not include the processor, ram, or hard drive for a project of my own. Going to have some fun in the weeks ahead.

To purchase this computer, check NewEgg.com frequently, the price might be $230 but should go to $200 soon.

I recently purchased a Blu-Ray Player not for my home theater system but for my computer and there are some things people should know before they try to tackle adding Blu-Ray to players to their computer. Luckily, I had been planning this so I was not as unprepared as some might be.

First HDCP which stands for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection and it is the new wave of copy protection added to Blu-Ray movie discs. The key to remember is that all devices in your computer that a Blu-Ray movie’s data will transfer through needs to be HDCP compliant or the movie won’t play. This means the Blu-Ray drive need to have HDCP but that should be included in all Blu-Ray players, your video card must be HDCP compliant, and finally your monitor must be HDCP compliant. If you have a computer with none of this, it can be very costly to add a Blu-Ray player and it might be cheaper to get a dedicated player for your TV. One last part you will need is software to play it on like Power DVD Blu-Ray edition which may be included with your Rom drive.

Seriously, this copyright junk really makes life miserable for honest people but it is necessary given all the people who steal movies and music over the Internet. HDCP is no joke, I have an nvidia 8800 GTS which is a high end HDCP compliant. To test HDCP, I connected my 8800 to two monitors, one HDCP compliant, and one not. I decided to move a playing Blu-Ray movie between the HDCP compliant monitor over to the non-compliant and as soon as I moved the window, it stopped playing and threw an error message at me. No exceptions, HDCP needs the Blu-Ray player, special video card, special monitor, and Blu-Ray player software. There is a possibility that there is some other HDCP compliant hardware that may be necessary which I have and have not heard of. This was tested on Windows Vista, I have no clue if XP will support Blu-Ray even with compliant hardware.

Everything I say goes for Windows computers only, all of you Mac people have to wait till Apple decides to add the functionality.

I have to say, hearing Hitachi and Toshiba announce a 500GB laptop hard drive is amazing and just impressive but they can’t be used in today’s laptops. Hitachi’s and Toshiba’s just add and additional platter which makes the drive thicker so it won’t fit in most of today’s traditional laptops by adding about 3mm. I don’t think this is the wave of the future but this could be a step to smaller desktop computers and for specialized smaller computer. I could see HP putting this in their super small desktop business and home computer or servers. Not entirely useful but seriously amazing to to see how far we have come. We are probably a year away from seeing standardized 500GB drives in most laptops.

The retail giant Wal-Mart has announced that it will officially stop selling HD DVD in June this year. Among others, Best Buy is also going to feature Blu-Ray in all of their stores. If you have been waiting for the war to end before buying HD DVD or Blu-Ray, I think your safe to buy Blu-Ray.

Looking for a good monitor for your computer setup? Look no further. I bought the Sceptre X24WG-1080P, 24 inch, 2 milisecond, widescreen monitor to replace my main 22" monitor and I probably would not write a review if I had not decided to use my old monitor as a second. What sold me was when I compared it to my what once was really expensive, NEC monitor that is about 3 years old. After viewing colors and a really true black I could not believe I had been using my other monitor for so long.

As far as gaming, the 2 milisecond response time is amazing. I played Crysis on this monitor and never noticed any ghosting at all. The monitor is full 1080P so I would emagine High Def movies would look amazing although I refuse to buy any HD format until a winner prevails. Looks like it will be BlueRay soon! All I need is DVI but the Sceptre included DVI and VGA. The actual resolution is 1920×1200 and the contrast ratio is 4000:1.

One other thing. I have my monitor mounted on the wall so it is not an issue for me but I hear this monitor is wobbly on it’s stand.

Here are the full specs:

Model

Brand
SCEPTRE

Model
X24WG-1080P

Cabinet Color
Black

Display

Screen Size
24"

Widescreen
Yes

Maximum Resolution
1920 x 1200

Recommended Resolution
1920 x 1200

Viewing Angle
160°(H) / 160°(V)

Display Colors
16.7 Million

Brightness
300 cd/m2

Contrast Ratio
4000:1

Response Time
2ms

Display Type
WUXGA

Connectivity

Input Video Compatibility
Analog RGB, Digital

Connectors
D-Sub, DVI-D

D-Sub
1

DVI
1

HDMI
No

Convenience

User Controls
Power on/off, OSD (On Screen Display), Contrast, Brightness, Clock, phase, Selection, Auto-adjust, Color Temperature, Audio Volume, OSD H-Position, OSD V-Position, Display Mode Detection

Regulatory Approvals
CSA, CSA-US, FCC Class B

Built in TV Tuner
No

Built in Speakers
2 x 2W

Features
Wall Mount Bracket (optional): Height 100mm x Width 100mm

Manufacturer Warranty

Parts
1 year limited

Labor
1 year limited

You can get this monitor for around $350 at NewEgg.com

The data on our computers is important and priceless to us which is why hard drive failure is big issue these days. Data Robotics’ Drobo "The world’s first storage robot," hopes to fix this issue for everyone with a robotic smart approach to managing your hard drives. Drobo is available for $500

Drobo works like this: You fill up two to four of the four available slots for SATA hard drives, currently 1 TB is the max. Drobo gives you approximately half the amount of storage you put in it. Drobo automatically backs up another copy of your file on another drive so that in the event that one drive fails, you still have your data and you just replace the defective drive. Upgrading drives with Drobo is also easy, you just need to only replace one at a time and wait till Drobo tells you with it’s lights when it is ready. Drobo is making copies of your files to the new drive so you wont lose any data. An important note to make is that Drobo formats a drive with it’s own format each time you put a drive in, so if you take all four drive out at the same time you will lost all of your data. Drobo does withstand power outages so if you want to take out all drives, possibly try unplugging the power plug do whatever you need to do, put the drives back in and then power on Drobo. With Drobo running off of USB only, the people at Data Robotics say Drobo is not for  backup but it certainly can serve the process.

Oh wait a minute, Drobo now has a new friend DroboShare which allows more of a data backup solution with its network connectivity. Available for $200, DroboShare sits on the bottom of your Drobo and allows it to connect to your network via Ethernet.

Drobo cons: Expandability used to be my biggest worry but DroboShare boats connectivity expansion allowing two Drobos to work together. Drobo is also super loud, the fan in the back always seems to whine when I don’t want it to and I worry about heat on the drives because I see minimal airflow. Another note on the fan is if it breaks, there is no easy way just to replace the fan. The fan is necessary to cool your drives. Finally, my biggest concern is price. Why pay $700 for a Drobo and DroboShare that comes with no drives when I can pay $600 for an HP MediaSmart Server that does way more than the Drobo and comes with a 500GB drive. Why spend approximately $600 on a Drobo and a 500 GB drive when you can get the same but a whole server to for the same cost with the HP.

My final thoughts: Drobo is not worth the cost and is too loud. If you turn off your computer when you don’t use it and you don’t mind spending extra money for simplicity, a Drobo is for you. I really like the idea behind Drobo and the creators deserve to get paid for their creation. I just hope that Drobo can sell enough to drop the price closer to what I think it is worth. I do like that Drobo works with PC’s and Macs.

You can buy a Drobo here: Link

Affordable servers are here for everyone. This home Server idea is great for home and small businesses. Here I have the HP home server I bought for myself and family. From the beginning, the HP impressed me with its elegant design and won me over with its simple software.

To start, the HP Windows Home Server is amazingly small, it fits just about anywhere. Open the front door to reveal 4 slots to install SATA hard drives, turn it  around and there is the necessary Gigabit Ethernet port, a ESATA port, and a 3 USB ports for external hard drives. Supposedly drives can be swapped while the machine is on.

The HP comes with 3 discs, one for the HP as a recovery, one for installing the connector software necessary to backup your computers, and one for reinstalling windows on a failed but backed up computer. Yes, if I am to understand everything, you only need the one CD to backup any computer that needs to be restored and has been previously backed up. I suspect, during the process, you will need the original installation  disc. You will also get a setup poster, a couple of manuals, and necessary cables to get up and running.

Upon installing the connector software, I noticed there were some pretty cool features HP added. Namely, the ability to keep all your music in a central place and make it available in iTunes in every computer on your network. Each computer has its own backup and can have shared folders. You automatically have folders setup so you can share files with every computer. This is possible  with current Windows but because you will always leave your server on, the files will always be available. You can setup a way to log into your PC when you are not in your network, share photos online making your server a web site and much more. What is really worth mentioning is the fact that Windows created some sort of challenge for developers to develop software for the server so you will see software that will make the server better soon.

The main thing that makes this Home Server so good for everyday people is because it backs up your computer and you can forget about everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, changes on your computer is backed up every night. You can backup your whole system in the even of a failure or just backup certain files or drives. File backup is necessary because it is not a matter of if your hard drive will fail but a matter of when.

The only downside to Windows Home Server is going to be fixed soon with the recently announced Power Pack 1. The Power Pack will fix some bugs and more important, allow 64 bit connector support. Most people only use the most common 32 bit but anyone using x64 is out of luck for a little while. The release is set to be sometime in the first quarter of 08 so pay attention, it will coming soon.

Some people ask me what type of MP3 player to get for themselves or for their kids. Usually, the question is, "should I get an iPod Nano or the iPod?" Most people are tempted to go with the full iPod because you just get more storage for the price.

My answer is: Depends on what you are going to do and how you are going to treat it. If you are getting the MP3 player for you kid or are going to use it while you are active, ie. the gym or jogging, you want to go with the Nano; but, if you are going to hoop it up to your car or use it while on a plane or home, go with the full blown iPod.

I have mentioned this sometime before but it is because the Nano uses flash memory and the full size iPods use a hard drive. MP3 players with flash memory have no moving parts and tend to take a beating much better than a music player with a hard drive. The full size iPod has a mechanical magnetic arm inside that can easily break when dropped hard enough or numerous times. Yes, when you think of price per GB or Gigabyte, the Nano is going to be much more money than the full size iPod but chances are it will last much longer when used by an active person or a child.

I just bought a Canon HG10 which is a pretty nice consumer High Definition digital camcorder that records the video onto an internal hard drive.

What I did not think of, which I cant believe but it happens to all of us, is that HD camcorders record in AVCHD format which is ahead of its time right now. AVCHD stands for Advanced Video Codec High Definintion and it is basically a format that most High Def Camcorders have adopted to compress the files. The only problem there is just about no software that will make that video be viewable on your personal computer. As icing on the cake, if your main computer is Vista x64 (64 bit), you are really in trouble.

The Canon came with some junk from Corel that did not give me the options I wanted to edit my video. In fact, it would not even install on my 64 bit machine. I hear the only other option for Canon’s is the Pinnacle Suite but they have not ever been a recommendation by me. Just not what I am looking for. Ideally, I would want Adobe’s Premier Elements to work but it wont. I have heard there may be an update so I will keep looking.

My solution:
Good thing I have a brand new MacBook Pro with iLife 08. iMovie took the video off of my camera with no extra software, it just worked the first time. It looks like Apple’s Final Cut and Final Cut Express will also work. Ok, ok, I now see why the movie industry is still on Macs. So now I will import the movie files from the camcorder onto my mac and then transcode them into a format my 64 bit machine reads and then I can just pick and choose quite a bit of software that will work with the mpeg4 codec for example. I think I will go with Premier Elements 4.

Conclusion:
If you run any Windows X64 machine, forget about AVCHD for now unless you want to do what I do. If you own a 32 bit version of Windows, you might want to use the software your camcorder came with and then transcode the files into something else, and then move it to your favorite movie editing program. If you own a Mac, upgrade to iLife 08 and you should be good. For more advanced techniques, try our Final Cut Express. So what is my point in all this? The computer and software industry is still not ready for AVCHD, if you buy a High Definition Camcorder that uses AVCHD, prepare for your favorite video editor not to work and prepare to do some work to get your movie edited.