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  • keith
  • Member Since Dec 16th, 2007
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Recent Comments:

I am using the power support film on my unibody MBP. I do not have any of the line issues and you can't see the glossy at all, in fact it's almost as good (if not as good) as my matte screens I already own.
I can highly recommend the Power Support anti-glare film.

I looked at the Moshi film. and it's horrible in comparison. I did not like it at all.

And as far as the 13" goes, the 9400m is a pretty powerful graphics card in spite of being integrated. A vast improvement from x3100/gma950's of yesteryear.
I switched from TwitterBerry to UberTwitter the minute I found out about it, its leaps and bounds better then TwitterBerry. I haven't tried out the above client, nor have I got an invite to SocialScope yet, but I would love to try out SS. UberTwitter is the best free client I've found myself.
I have been a XBMC user for many years, and have been alpha-testing Boxee from the beginning. I was one of the guys who signed up for their PCH in September and had to wait until nearly Feburary to get it shipped. With that said, I sold it within 2 weeks for almost double what I paid for it because exactly what everyone above said.

The UI sucks guys.
If you don't think it does, use XBMC/Boxee/Plex for awhile and you'll be in awe of how streamlined everything is. YAMJ is nice, if you've never seen anything else but it doesn't compare to XBMC/Boxee/Plex.

I could use the a100 ok, but my roommates, esp the non tech ones, hated it with a passion. It was slow, buggy, and very non inuitive. I got asked every day 'when is xbmc coming back?" Luckily, around the same time the a100 got sold, Boxee reached Beta status. Now everyone uses and loves Boxee. They even brag about it. You think your friends are impressed with YAMJ? Go download Boxee or XBMC using Mediastream and configure that up properly and it will blow your mind and make you the envy of everyone.

XBMC is available on all platforms (Linux, OSX and Windows) and Boxee is in open alpha in Linux and OSX but still closed for Windows.

Screw simple media streamers. Go with a real media solution. Your friends and family will appreciate it.
Oh an another thing, XBMC/Boxee is self contained. No using DirectShow filters, no fighting with Windows usually. It's a much cleaner end user experience and runs the same on nearly every platform. Windows has more bugs, since its the newest port but in 6 months everything will be solid and based off one codebase. I can't wait!
I've been doing SVN builds of XBMC for a year and a half and recently switched to OSX from Linux for my HTPC and it's perfect now. I got a $450 2ghz device that plays all my media and my roommates and friends never have to open up terminal to type in commandline sequences to bring optical audio back like they did on Linux.
Guys, MediaPortla is a complete redesign using .net. At one time it used some XBMC code but I think that day is beyond now.
So think of it as a project 'inspired' by XBMC when it didn't run on anything but a Xbox.

Now that XBMC is ported, its a different project completely. I have used it in the past but personally I prefer Boxee and XBMC myself. Long live good open source software!
I have 4 NAS's in my house:
1) Thecus N5200B
2) Promise SureStor NS4300N
3) Ubuntu Machine with 3ware controller
4) Roommates Ubuntu Machine with software RAID

I also recently started setting up an Openflier machine at work for iscsi/nfs for VMWare ESX.

While rolling your own is an excellent idea if you have spare parts laying around, I do not recommend it for home use because of loudness and maintenance required is much higher then a dedicated professionally built NAS. I am phasing out all my older tower machines for small/quiet/low power these days and the cost is about the same.

For specs, I prefer my Thecus hands down. It's the fastest RAID I've owned .(see smallnetbuilder NAS charts) I have a chroot'd Debian environment on it so the ability to install anything and the basic UI has most of the common functionality. (itunes/daap, media/dlna, ftp/nfs/smb, etc) but it's fairly primitive. If you're not technical, don't get this. Get the ReadyNAS. It's much easier to use and streamlined (and designed by people who speak english natively)

For cost, the promise is sure appealing. It's my newest and I only paid like $230 for the chassis. It's quite slow though, and I haven't done enough testing with x264 streaming with it yet.
Or rolling your own, if you have the parts.

All in all, for my purposes I would buy a small device like a Thecus or Promise any day of the week before lugging out another tower, and custom building it all. The price is too close to be worth the hassle to me.

I love this app and how it syncs to the cloud, but after investigation I realize its $7/mo plus $13 for the app. Not a good deal at all!
Anyone recommend a free/cheaper replacement that doesnt cost monthly?
As soon as I upgraded to Leopard the keyboard starts to ocassionally go out and gradually get worse and worse. Before I formatted back to Tiger I tried Archive and reinstalling and finally a full wipe. I have a 1st gen Macbook (1.83ghz Core Duo) and its driving me insane. I really like Leopard but keyboards more important.
I'm disappointed in Apple! I'm a Linux convert and surprised at the huge threads on their own forums of people like me. Open source, even MS, would of have this fixed already.
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I'm looking for a solid state drive, around 32 to 64GB, for use in my web server. The drive will contain my web sites and the operating system, either Windows Server 2008 R2 or Ubuntu. Large storage is handled by a separate RAID array, so capacity is not an issue. Rather, I am looking for the fastest, longest-lasting, and most reliable drive under $150 that is suitable to my application. Any thoughts? Thanks!"

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