In recent posts we have talked a lot about Asus and some of the things that it is doing with the Eee PC and its Express Gate instant on technology.  Another vendor that I believe is doing some interesting things is HP.  HP innovation however seems to be more focused on touch technology, the sort of thing that has been in the news a lot over the past year because of the iPhone platform and Microsoft’s Surface technology. This is an area which I think is going to be come increasingly important especially with Microsoft’s next release of Windows slated to include touch and multi-touch integration.

New all-in-one PC

HP  have recently released an update of its iQ range of all-in-one PC’s with the release in the UK of the HP iQ500 which unlike the majority of its competitors features a touchscreen and HP’s TouchSmart application to take advantage of it.  The new version is an improvement in both looks and specification over the current HP iQ790 PC,  with quite stunning good looks that would good on any desk.  While, as you would expect for an all-in-one, the technical specifications will mean it is not the fastest, but perfectly adequate.

Touch capability

Like the current HP iQ790 PC, the iQ500 provides  its touch capabilities from a set of LED’s that are positioned around the screen detecting  the movement of one’s fingers. HP includes its own touch user interface called TouchSmart which can be used instead of the standard Vista interface and helps the efficiency of using the technology.   Touch capability is still in its early days and is still very gimmicky but HP have moved things forward with this computer.

However using a vertical screen is not very ergonomic, requiring the user to hold up their arms the whole time.  I think we are perhaps going to see more of this technology used with horizontal screens on something like a tablet PC.

As the iQ500 has now been released I expect some good deals on the HP iQ790 PC

I know that it must seem like we have been having a bit of a Asus fest over the last few weeks on this blog but I do think think that Asus is one of the vendors who are doing interesting things at present. Today I have one more blog about Asus before we move on to something else for a while, I promise!

Asus Eee Box

Along with all their new releases of netbooks under the Eee brand Asus have also announced a mini desktop computer similar in concept to the Mac Mini but of course, like the Eee PC netbooks, for a cheaper price.  The product, to be called the Eee Box, offers similar capabilities to the newest of the netbook range and runs off Intel’s Atom processor. It has been designed with a small but interesting angled case that will eventually be available in various colours. The unit measures just 23 by 18 by 3 cm so it will fit on your desk quite nicely. An interesting twist is that Asus is selling the feature that you can attach it to, and therefore hide it on, the back of any LCD monitor with the supplied VESA mount.

Entertainment Hub?

Asus is suggesting the box can act as a entertainment hub, but I am not so sure, as to be complete for this role I would have expected a DVD player to be included. Yes you can stream content but I do think it is a major gap in this units capabilities.  The Eee Box is currently due to be launched in the UK in September and should retail for around £200.  The initial versions will only be running Windows XP but Linux versions are likely in the future and like the Mac mini you’ll have to provide your own keyboard, mouse and monitor.

In the meantime the black Windows version of the Eee PC 901 is the most popular computer product on Pricegrabber and the rest of the Eee family are not far behind!

Do you think that the Eee Box will be as successful as the Eee PC?

In the previous post we looked at the reasons why you might want to upgrade to a specialist sound card rather than stick to using the sound chip provided “on-board” the mother board in your computer. Of course having the sound just come with the computer rather than having to go out and buy a separate sound card is a great time saver and makes things simple if you do not really need a very high quality sound. With a standard desktop however you will always have the option to go out and buy a new card and be able to fit it reasonably easily.

Sound cards for laptops

But what happens if you have just bought a laptop? All laptops these days have sound capabilities, provided “on-board”, but of course because of the nature of the construction you can’t just open it up and install a new sound card. So what to do?

Well there are actually plenty of options for those people who do want to upgrade their laptop sound capability, with products like the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook Sound Card. This is a product that will slot into an Express card slot which you might find on a new laptop, while a product like the Creative AUDIGY 2 ZS notebook card will fit into the PCMCIA slot on an older laptop. A third option would be an external USB connected product like the Trust 510EX USB 5.1 Sound Expert External. Plenty of options so happy listening!

Have you upgraded the sound capability of your laptop?

When I was …, well just a little younger than I am today, I liked to rebuild and upgrade my desktop PC as far as I possibly could until eventually it no longer made any sense to do so. One of my desktops bought in 1995 lasted for about 10 years as a result of upgrades. During the early years it was a very capable games machine with a very good graphics card (for the time), and a superb sound card. During the later years it was my Linux desktop by which time all the components were very well supported in terms of drivers, and was used by my young children to play basic games.

These days there seems to be much less of a reason to upgrade, especially with the general swing towards using laptops. In the “good old” days graphics cards and sound cards where nearly always provided as separate components while today these are usually provided as an “on-board” capability of the mother board.

Sound Cards

For most people the on-board audio provided by the motherboard will be fine, but if you are a big gamer, someone who uses their PC to watch a lot of DVD’s or wants to have the best music experience then upgrading to a decent sound card is going to make all the difference. One of the most recommended cards is the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series. These cards are provided in various modes, for gamers, music lovers etc., are highly regarded and come at a reasonable price. Most people will be amazed at the difference the sound card will make, with either headphones or speakers.

Do you upgraded your sound card? Did it make a difference?

In the last post we looked at the Sony Vaio TP2 Home Theatre PC a very stylish Media PC that would always look good in the living room. However there are a number of alternatives which may offer a better alternative in terms of system features that while perhaps not quite so stylish as the Sony, still have a set top box look that would fit right in beside the living room TV.

A very good example of this type of media PC is the Acer Aspire iDea 510 Home Theatre PC which sports a DVD player like look, but is able to give all the benefits of a normal PC . One important thing is that this device with the exception of the disk storage has been built using laptop technology rather than standard desktop components, this is means that it is very quiet which is an important factor when looking for a media PC. You don’t want to be turning up the volume just so you can hear the TV over the PC fans!

Like the Sony this device provides 500GB of storage, 1 GB of Ram and a Duel Core processor but it also provides dual TV - tuners allowing you to record two channels at once or record one channel while watching another. One other feature of this device is the vast array of input and output options meaning you would have little difficultly in connecting up to any input or output device. If there was one thing that was missing it would be probably be the lack of a Blu-Ray disc drive but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that in newer devices soon.

All in all a nice complete package that because of the PC capabilities will give you additional value than you would get with something like a Sky +, like the ability to manage music and photos, act as a DVD player & recorder etc. The included wireless keyboard would also allow you to browse the Internet etc.

There also seems to be some good deals around on this particular device at the moment.

Are you looking for a media PC?

The big tech news news this week is the joint launch by the BBC and ITV of Freesat a free satellite television service. Freesat is available to 98% of UK homes, including all those like myself when in the UK, that are unable to receive Freeview through a TV aerial. New users will have to make a single initial payment for a dish, set-top box and installation, but will not pay an ongoing monthly subscription.

So what with a free satellite service and the iPlayer from the BBC and the equivalents from ITV all giving the ability to download content, people are going to need something on which to save that content. For a long time I have looked at buying a media PC that was quiet enough to sit in the living room. Things like the Tivo have been available in the US, and we have the Sky + but media PC’s have yet to really take off in the UK. Things might be about to change however and I thought it might be worth looking at a few examples.

First here is one that would not be out of place in the most stylish living room, the Sony Vaio TP2 Home Theatre PC. Great looks, with a Blu-Ray disc player, a digital TV tuner, 2GB of Ram and 500 GB for all that digital content. The Sony is definately trying to redefine the PC for the living room.

In the next post I will look at another option with perhaps more substance than style. Do you have a Media PC? Is it a device whose time has come?

I think you may have guessed by now that I am a big fan of online applications. I believe that in the near future a lot of us will use these applications, and that they will be the basis for a lot of new internet companies. The startup of internet companies around online applications is set to become potentially much easier. The latest news in the online application space is the announcement of Google’s new App Engine which is designed to let the designers of software as a service applications to outsource hosting and data storage for their applications by using key elements of Google’s infrastructure.

Google App Engine

Essentially the Google App engine is very similar in concept to the popular services that Amazon has made available and are presently used by many internet startups. There is one major difference and that is that the Google approach is a complete bundled service. This in theory will make it much easier for the developers and entrepreneurs, but I am sure the news will start a lot of discussions around the world about the advisability of putting all your startup’s eggs in Google’s one basket. I can see good arguments for and against. What about you?

Stylish Desktop

Of course if you have a great idea that is just busting to turned into an online application, you will need a computer that defines you as the entrepreneur that you are! How about this Sony Vaio all in one desktop which is both functional and stylish?

At present I am working in the Middle East and out here the houses usually have large rooms, and so I am lucky enough to have a home office that is really quite spacious. However back in the UK my home is significantly smaller, with associated smaller room sizes. My house is quite old, but in newer houses the rooms are often even smaller and often don’t have storage built in. This means that the space that you might have in which to set up a desk or home office is often not exactly palatial. When I was based in the UK my home office was actually in the “box room” and once you had the desk in there, with a chair, a few shelves and a filing cabinet there really wasn’t much room for much else.

At this point you really don’t want to have to add in a large desktop computer and monitor. A few years ago I had a large desktop computer under the desk, which was awkward and got in the way of my feet, and a huge (it seems today) 19” CRT monitor that really took up all the desk real estate.

What I really needed was a computing system with a much smaller footprint. This basically has two aspects the computer itself and the monitor. For the computer, one way of achieving a lower footprint is to buy a laptop, which is probably becoming the more common method these days and one which allows you to take your computer with you. This is the approach I use. I have a docking station at the office and at home. Another is to get a small footprint computer such as the Acer Aspire L100 Small Form Factor Desktop or even something like the Apple Mini. The first of which will also provide you with a relatively easy upgrade capability. These will have minimal impact on the desktop and real estate and may even be able to sit on the shelf. If you still have a CRT monitor then the move to an LCD screen such as the really is a no brainer, giving you back your desk, as even quite large screens will have a very low footprint.

An alternative to the above choices is to go for some of the really attractive looking “all in one” computers such as the Apple iMac or the Sony Vaio VGC-LM1M. One thing for sure is that a lack of space these days should not mean you have to compromise on your computer.

When I started working with computers way back in the good old days of computing, when we had 80Mb hard disk drives the size of washing machines (I kid you not!), I would use what was called a dumb terminal. This looked like a PC in that it had a screen, although with no graphics capabilities, and a keyboard, but had no local resources for computing and relied on a large central computer to do all the work.

This model called the client server model, apart from demonstrating how ancient I am, was the standard computing model at the time, but went somewhat out of fashion with the rise of the PC. Although this approach never really went away completely, it has recently been making a comeback for a number of reasons.

Firstly with the continuing rise of web based applications, there is less and less need for significant local compute power; you just need to run a browser. Secondly a lot of home users and office workers rarely, if ever, really use all the computing power of their PC when running their email, browser and the odd office application. Thirdly any system that is centrally managed is far easy to administer. Do what to upgrade a program on one central server, or go around every PC that uses that program and do the same upgrade multiple times? This approach is now being looked at again for small business and in areas like education as there are also potential cost benefits to this approach. It is not so obvious in the home environment, but is a good potential model for a home which owns a lot of computers and where there is a lot of “support” required. I personally thought about it as an approach on a number of occasions.

The term “thin client” has come to be the term used to describe the low power computing devices that managed the experience for a user. Thin because the device does not have to have a thick layer of applications installed. An operating system, capable of supporting a network and a web browser are probably the minimum requirements. A number of the hardware vendors now provide relatively inexpensive thin clients, a good example of which is the HP T5720 Thin Client Desktop. Of course for the technical minded or for those on a budget, older hardware can be remodeled as a thin client, potentially extending their useful life.

Has anyone tried implementing a thin client solution at home, in a business or at a school? It would be interesting to hear about your experience.

Laptops these days have overtaken desktops in terms of sales, and from all the adverts in the media, you might be forgiven for thinking desktops no longer have a place in the modern home. In fact, in practical terms the popularity of laptops does mean that there are fewer manufactures making desktops at all and budget desktops are even rarer as manufactures are less interested in cutting their margins to the bone to get the price down.

But what defines a budget desktop? Well really as it is called a budget desktop it is all down to the price. My definition would be a PC that cost less than a given a price, and the best budget PC would therefore be a PC with the best specifications possible for that rate.

I generally set a budget price of £400 and with that budget it is possible to find a few nice examples such as the HP DX2300 Desktop. For around £350 you get an Intel dual core CPU, with 1GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. This would provide a very nice system, capable of doing most computing tasks, as long as you weren’t expecting to edit video regularly or play the latest games.

Have you bought a budget desktop recently? How and why did you decide on your system?