High Tech Household

Forget the iPad, this tablet by Freesource can run Linux, Chromium OS, or the Android OS.  It has a 7″ screen, can run HTML5 video, and retails for $199, roughly $300 cheaper than its Apple counterpart.  The look is pretty cool, and the open architectures of Linux/Chromium/Android make the possibilities for development far greater than for that of the Apple iPad.  It is still a prototype, but it looks pretty cool.  A video of the workings of prototype in action is below the break.

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Cool gadget? Apple’s first dud (recently)? There’s been a lot of buzz about the announcement last week of Apple’s new gadget.

• First, from the horse’s mouth: Apple’s official iPad page
• Some fairly mainstream press from CNN
• And a technical critique

In my own opinion, I think this is a disappointing release. I think it does everything that an iPhone or another smart phone does, but now it’s not big enough to put in your pocket. Also, the iPad might have been a great video chat device, but a camera was left out.

To carry it around, you’d need a bag for it, anyway So why not spend hundreds of dollars less, carry a couple of pounds more, and just use netbook or laptop? It’s definitely got the cool factor, but it just doesn’t seem usable enough to me to be of interest to anyone beyond the usual Apple enthusiasts.

For my money, I’d rather just use a smart phone. With today’s bright beautiful touchscreens, even reading for long periods is a pleasure on a smaller, more practical device.

Sensing the tone of this write-up, Mike’s wife found an interesting slideshow of prior Apple mis-steps.

I have been wanting to build a Home Theater PC for a while, but was waiting for the launch of Windows 7 to do so.  When Windows 7 was released on October 22, I started researching what I would need to assemble my own Home Theater PC, and began ordering parts.  Last week, the parts arrived for building my home theater PC using Windows 7 Media Center.  I spent a good deal of Friday night and Saturday putting it together and getting it ready for use.  By Saturday afternoon, I had the PC up and running and connected to my television.

Windows 7 Media Center has a lot to offer as a Home Theater PC (or really, a Home Entertainment PC), including Recording and Playback of TV (DVR-functionality), Movies and Netflix, Hulu and Internet TV, Music and Photo Libraries, and more, all controlled via a remote control and optional wireless keyboard.  Media Center also supports hardware (called Media Center Extenders) that allow you to stream your Media Center content to other TVs throughout your home.  What sets Media Center apart from just a traditional DVR or TiVo is the extensibility.  Third party developers, enthusiasts, and hobbiest programmers can create programs that extend the functionality of Windows 7 Media Center, much like people write apps for smart phones such as the iPhone and Google Android.   Best of all, it comes included in all editions of Windows 7.

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Have you ever thought about setting up a home server? Especially if there are more than a couple of computers on your home, it can make a lot of sense to have one machine where everyone’s data is stored. This also makes backups a whole lot easier for the local administrator, i.e., you. A NAS might be just the thing.

‘NAS’ is short for Network Attached Storage. Basically, it’s a machine on your network that serves as a big hard drive for the users of that network. They’re very common at large- and medium-sized businesses, and they’re popping up in small businesses and homes more and more. On a home network, you can give each of your users a chunk of disk space on the NAS for their documents and media. It’s not recommended to actually install programs to the NAS, but this stuff, especially photos, music and video, can quickly take up a very substantial amount of hard drive space. Having it all in one place reduces duplication, and allows to set up a workable backup regiment.

A consumer-level NAS works more like a little network device, rather than a computer, even though, deep down, it is basically just a PC. You usually don’t actually interact with the operating system on the device, but instead a web interface or a piece of software that you install on some other machine on your network. There are even some routers to which you can connect storage (via USB, usually) that can then act like a NAS themselves. Ars Technica recently had a quick write-up on NAS devices; it’s worth reading.

If you’re a little more technically savvy, you might consider just buying a smaller desktop whose sole purpose would be to store your users’ files. Then you could dispense with the web interfaces and whatnot, but you would have to be comfortable with configuring those file services yourself. Microsoft sells Home Server to help with that, as well. Any number of Linux distributions would be ideal for this purpose too. You could also be sure that it includes a DVD burner to make those backups even easier. A home server, though, is a bit more than a NAS. And it’s enough of a topic for a whole other article..

The next major version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system is being released into the wild soon, October 22nd to be precise. This will be a very important release for Microsoft, who have experienced increasing pressure recently from Apple on the high-end and Linux netbooks and nettops on the low-end.

So, whether you’re upgrading from Vista, you’ve been holding out since XP, or you’re thinking about jumping (back?) to Windows from Mac or elsewhere, there’s a lot to take in about this latest OS from Microsoft.

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Plastic guitars? Drums taking up the living room? Is a band video game a good family game night activity? Read on for a his-and-hers review by my wife and me of Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band.

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As the world gets more wired, and the practical uses of computers continues to evolve, the concept of having a computer in your kitchen is becoming more and more common (HGTV even has an article on their website about it and how to best place a kitchen PC from a design standpoint).  A kitchen PC can have many practical uses beyond being just another gadget toy, such as:

• Keeping Shopping Lists
• Searching the vast array of food blogs (shameless plug:  My wife has a food blog called Domestic Pursuits) for finding recipes
• Storing and easily retrieving recipes, both thoes found on food blogs and those originally on paper
• Monitoring Children’s Internet Usage
• Checking on important emails while waiting for food to cook
• Using Skype or Google Voice as a primary audio/video phone

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