There are plenty of ways to get media content from your PC to your TV: Boxee, its predecessor XBMC, Apple TV, and game consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 are just some of the devices already available for performing that feat. If you don't know an s-video cable from HDMI, though, even these straightforward products could seem daunting.

Cablevision's plan, called its "PC to TV Media Relay", is to use its existing cable infrastructure to replace those boxes or cables that existing PC-to-TV interfaces use. Run Cablevision's software on your broadband-enabled PC, and your computer will open a connection with Cablevision's servers. These computers format your media for transmission over the company's cable system, sending it all the way back to your house where it will be tuneable just like any other channel on your cable box. Though the round-trip your data takes may seem excessive, we appreciate the way it removes a lot of the uncertainty that might befall a user shopping for a similar solution; if you've got a computer that works, and cable work on your TV, then you're all set.

Some test markets will get access to the service this June, initially just for computers running Windows. When the rest of Cablevision's subscribers will receive access and when other versions of the software will be released isn't yet known.

We should see more powerful computers at this price point later this year. These are great machines to run Boxee.

(answering this question with the new Tumblr Ask feature on my blog)

Acer laid out its goals for some of its 2010 product releases and announcements, giving us a sneak-peak at what sort of gadgets it will be bringing us in the near future.

Besides netbooks based on Chrome, which we knew were on the horizon, the company also will be designing a tablet PC. Right now the system the tablet will run is up-in-the-air, with Chrome and Windows both options. It looks like Acer is taking a wait-and-see approach on its tablet decisions until it can analyze what sort of success Apple's entry into the field sees.

Acer is set to join the e-reader market this summer, with a compact device featuring a 6-inch screen. We've talked before about the problems with introducing an e-reader without content providers or a storefront lined up, and while Acer is going to face some stiff competition stateside, the company promises that it has plenty of international content partners lined up and ready to go. While it's too early to say yet when Acer's tablet will see the light of day, its e-reader should be available as soon as June.

Not content to let Apple be at the forefront of tablet PC rumors, Microsoft may be ready to announce a hot new portable device of its own. Rumors are fierce that today the company will announce a collaboration with H.P. to produce some sort of thin, touch-based hardware. Right now, it could be anything from a simple e-book reader to a full-fledged tablet PC, or something striking a balance in between.

This news follows up on a leak last fall of images of a Microsoft-designed tablet. Those showed a book-like design, with two screens separated by a hinge. Analysts figure that if that's the same project Microsoft may announcing today, it could be positioned as an all-in-one media portal with technology based on the company's Surface touch interface. We'll all just have to sit tight today and anxiously wait for Microsoft to show its hand.

• Building a PC, Part I: Minimal boot
• Building a PC, Part II: Burn in
• Building a PC, Part III: Overclocking
• Building a PC, Part IV: Now It's Your Turn
• Building a PC, Part V: Upgrading

Now, lest you think I am some kind of freakish, cave-dwelling luddite, what with my ancient two and a half year old PC, I have upgraded the CPU, upgraded the hard drive, and upgraded the video card since then. I also went from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB of RAM, but I didn't happen to blog about that. Normal computers age in dog years -- every year they get seven years older -- but mine isn't so bad with all my upgrades! I swear!

Judge for yourself; here's a picture of it.

But seriously.

A big part of the value proposition of building your own PC is upgrading it in pieces and parts over time. When you're unafraid to pop the cover off and get your hands dirty with a little upgrading, you can spend a lot less to stay near the top of the performance heap over time. It's like the argument for buying a car versus renting it; the smart buyers keep the car for as long as possible to maximize the value of their investment. That's what we're doing here with our upgrades, and a rebuild is the ultimate upgrade.

In defense of my creaky old computer, the Core 2 series from Intel has been unusually strong over time, one of their best overall platforms in recent memory. It was almost good enough to banish the excerable Pentium 4 series from my mind. Man those were horrible! But the Core 2 series was a solid design with some serious legs; it and scaled brilliantly, from single to dual to quad core, and in frequency from 1 GHz to 3.5 GHz.

I was initially unimpressed with the new Core i7 architecture that Intel launched to replace the Core 2. While the new Nehalem architecture is a huge win on servers, it's kind of "meh" on the desktop. I have endless battles with overzealous developers who swear up and down that they use their desktops like servers. Sure you do! And you're building the space shuttle with it, right? Of course you are. Yeah.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Desktop, there were some other reasons that I started thinking seriously about upgrading from my overclocked Core 2 Duo to a Core i7 upgrade:

• The Core i7 platform uses triple channel DDR3 memory. While the benefits of the additional bandwidth are somewhat debatable on the desktop (as usual), one interesting side-effect is that motherboards have 6 memory slots. While 16 GB is theoretically possible on Core 2 systems, it required extremely expensive 8 GB DIMMs. But with 6 memory slots, we can achieve 12 GB without breaking the bank -- by using six 2 GB DIMMs.
• The Core i7 is Intel's first "real" quad-core architecture. Intel's previous quad core CPUs were basically two dual core CPUs duct taped together on the same die. No such shortcuts were taken with the i7. While the difference is sort of academic, there are some smallish real world performance implications.
• Mainstream software is finally ready for quad core CPUs. It's not uncommon today to find applications and games that can actually use two CPU cores reasonably effectively, and those that can use four or more cores are not the extreme rarity they used to be. Don't get me wrong, scaling well to four or more CPU cores is still rare, but it's no longer spit-take rare.
• Intel introduced the mainstream second generation Core i5 series, so the platform is fairly mature. All the new architecture bugs are worked out. It's also less prohibitively expensive than it was when it was when it was introduced.

At this point, I had the seven year upgrade itch really bad. My 3.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 8 GB of RAM was not exactly chopped liver, but I started fantasizing a lot about the prospect of having a next generation quad-core CPU (of similar clock speed) with hyperthreading and 12 GB of RAM.

If you're wondering why I need this, or why in fact anyone would need such an embarrassment of desktop power, then I'll refer you to my friend Loyd Case.

Don’t ask me why I need six cores and 24GB. To paraphrase a Zen master, if you have to ask, you do not know.

Loyd has indirectly brought up another reason to choose the i7 platform; it's pin-compatible with Intel's upcoming "Gulftown" high end 6-core CPU. So, your upgrade path is clear. (It's also rumored that the next iteration of the Mac Pro will have two of these brand new 6-core CPUs, before any other vendor gets access to them, which is totally plausible.)

As far as I'm concerned, until everything on my computer happens instantaneously, my computer is not nearly fast enough. Besides, relative to how much my time costs, these little $200-$500 upgrades to get amazing performance are freakin' chump change. If I save a measly 15 minutes a day, it's worth it. As I like to remind pointy-haired managers all over the world, Hardware is Cheap, and Programmers are Expensive. OK, maybe I'm biased, but the conclusion was overwhemingly clear: it's UPGRAYEDD time!

This is a more than an upgrade, though, it's a rebuild -- a platform upgrade. That means I'll be assembling the following …

• new Motherboard
• new RAM
• new CPU
• new heatsink

… and dropping that into my existing system, which is highly optimized for silence. The case, power supply, hard drives, DVD-R, etc won't change. On the outside, it'll look the same, but on the inside, it's a whole new PC. This is analogous to replacing the engine in a sports car, I suppose. On the outside, it will appear to be the same car, but there's a lot more horses under the hood.

As I said in the first part of my building your own PC series, if you can assemble a LEGO kit, you can build a PC.

Take your time, be careful, and go in the right order. So, first things first. Let's assemble the CPU, heatsink, and memory on the motherboard -- in that specific sequence, because modern heatsinks can be a pain to attach.

Man, check out at all that hot, sweet, PC hardware! I get a little residual thrill just cropping the picture. Love this stuff! Anyway, that gives us a mountable motherboard with all the important bits pre-installed:

• ASRock X58 Extreme motherboard ($169)
  Inexpensive, has all the essential features I care about, and is recommended by Tom's Hardware. I'm not into fancy, spendy motherboards; I think they're a ridiculous waste of money.
• XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 cooler ($35).
  Direct contact between the CPU cooler heatpipes and the CPU surface is the new hotness, or rather, coolness. It really works, since all the top performing CPU coolers use it now. This one is fairly inexpensive at $35 and gets great reviews. Also, I highly recommend the optional screw mount kit ($8). Modern CPU coolers are large, and the mounting mechanism needs to be more solid than plastic pushpins.
• Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 2000 ($135) × 3
  I've had good luck with Kingston in the past. I went with their semi-premium brand this time, as I plan to do a bit of overclocking and the price difference is fairly small. Remember, this is a 12 GB build, so we'll need three of these kits to populate all 6 memory slots on the motherboard.
• Intel Core i7-960 3.2 GHz CPU ($590)
  While you could make a very solid argument that the Core i7-920 CPU ($289) is a better choice because it's identical and overclocks to the same level, I was willing to spend a bit more here as "insurance" that I get to the magical 3.8 Ghz level that my old Core 2 Duo was overclocked to.

It adds up to about $1000 all told. A rebuild is definitely more expensive than one-off upgrades of CPU, memory, and hard drive. But, remember, this is a rebuild of my PC -- and a fire-breathing, top of the line performance rebuild at that. That takes spending a moderate (but not exorbitant) amount of money.

Now that we've got all that stuff assembled, the next thing to do is open my existing PC, disconnect all the cables going to the motherboard, temporarily remove any expansion cards, unscrew the motherboard and lift it out.

Once the old motherboard assembly was pulled out, I plopped in the new motherboard, screwed it down, and reattached the cables and expansion cards. Don't close up the PC at this point, though. Before powering it on, double check and make sure all the cables are reattached correctly:

• Power cables from the PSU to the motherboard. There are usually at least two, on modern PCs.
• Hard drive cables from the HDDs to the motherboard.
• Power switch, Reset switch, Activity light cables. Without the power switch connected, good luck powering up. This motherboard happens to have built-in power and reset switches for testing, but most don't.
• Fan connectors from the Heatsink and case fans to the motherboard.
• Power cables from the PSU to the video card, if you have a fancy video card.

If anything is wrong, we'll just have to re-open the case again. On top of that, we need to monitor temperatures and airflow, and that's much easier with the case open.

Fortunately, my rebuild booted up on the first try. If you're not so lucky, don't fret! Disconnect the power cord, then go back and re-check everything. I get it wrong, sometimes, too; I actually forgot to reconnect the video card power connectors, and was wondering why only the secondary video card was booting up. Once I re-checked, I immediately saw my mistake, fixed it, and rebooted.

Once you have a successful boot, don't even think about booting into the operating system yet. Enter the BIOS (this is typically done by pressing F12 or Delete during bootup) and check the BIOS screens to make sure it's detecting your hard drives, memory, and any optical drives successfully. Browse around and do some basic reality checks. Then do not pass GO, do not collect $200, go straight to your motherboard manufacturer's website and download the latest BIOS. On another computer, obviously. Most modern motherboards allow updating the BIOS from a USB key, so just copy the BIOS files on the USB key, reboot, and use the BIOS menus to update. After you've updated the BIOS, set BIOS options to taste, and we're finally ready to boot into an operating system.

While this may sound like a lot of work, it really isn't. All told it was maybe an hour, tops. I'm fairly experienced at this stuff, but it's fundamentally not that complicated; it's still just a very fancy adult LEGO kit.

Courtesy of this $1000 rebuild, my ancient 2.5 year old PC is reborn as a completely new state-of-the-art PC, at least internally. That was always part of the plan! Next up -- once we've proven that it's stable in typical use -- overclocking, naturally. I'll have more on that in a future blog post, but I can tell you right now that Core i7 overclocking is … interesting.]]> http://www.obsessable.com/laptop/asus-eee-pc-1201n/ Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:39:00 -0700 Samuel Axon NEW NETBOOK: Asus Eee PC 1201N goes on sale at NewEgg one month ahead of schedule for $499.99]]> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10417324-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:24:43 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnabobtechNewsBlog/~3/f0_N6CCPOtI/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:12:12 -0700 range http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnabobtechNewsBlog/~3/ZOHnI9mEZcg/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:20:21 -0700 alisha k. Oregon Trail is an undeniable classic, but all that long, laborious travel, all that pesky resource management… after a while, don’t you really just want to start jumping the mountains in your covered wagon? Let’s Go Find El Dorado is a game tailor-made for anyone who ever wanted to see a cow ramp over the mountains while…]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnabobtechNewsBlog/~3/7bnwS1NyMsY/ Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:27:07 -0700 range