Google Android on Acer

It looks like Google is about to give Microsoft a run for their money on another front - the netbook. Both Acer and Asustek have adopted Android and will be releasing netbooks running Android next quarter:

Acer Inc., the world’s second-largest laptop maker, will release a low-cost notebook powered by Android next quarter, Jim Wong, head of information-technology products at the Taipei- based company, said yesterday.

We like competition, it keeps prices in check and stimulates innovation. Would you run a netbook running Android?

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Apple iPhone 3GS

Unless you were asleep all day you're probably aware of the big announcements from Apple at the WWDC 2009. While Steve Jobs was noticeably not present the new iPhone 3GS was announced, as well as a $99 iPhone 3G and a new 13" MacBook.

So what's the big deal about the iPhone 3G S? "Improved performance," better battery life, a better 3MP camera with video capability, voice control, and a compass. Wait...a compass?

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Invisible Gel Ink Pen

I have never seen or thought of this beautiful and fantastic idea as i never come across to need it.Thinking about this idea would surely drive you to the invisible world.

We use pen to write some crap or some important notes ( i don't do this ) on a piece of paper.But what if , u cannot see what you have written lately on it after sometime . Wouldn't that be amazing to use such kind of pens.

Coming all the way from the ThinkGeek this product exactly satisfies the laws i have discussed above and finds to more suitable to be used by the magicians and some investigation units.

• Magicians doesn't want people what they are doing and make it amazing.
• Investigators doesn't want the trackers know nothing what they are doing.

This is an ink gel pen which writes but disappears after 24 hours.Amazing!!! isn't that?Take a look at some of the shots of this innovative product.

This pen features a special gel ink developed by real KGB scientists during the Cold War (and made in Russia), that disappears completely. Because it is a gel pen, you don't need to press hard which prevents paper indenting. You'll notice the ink fading within a matter of minutes - and it will be completely gone within 48 hours. And not just faded - gone! Even UV scanners won't be able to detect that anything was ever written with the KGB Disappearing Ink Pen. Spies need the best (you need the best), and the KGB Disappearing Ink Pen is the best there is.

KGB Disappearing Ink Pen

• Looks like a normal pen, but the ink will disappear completely within 48 hours.
• Special ink formula developed by KGB scientists during the Cold War.
• Even UV light won't be able to find a trace of your writing.
• Made in Russia.
• Dimensions: standard pen size - approx. 6"

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IBM : For Building SuperComputer

Computers can calculate at speeds and scales that far outstrip what an ordinary person can manage, but they still aren't anywhere near as complex as a human brain. IBM and five major universities plan to change that through a DARPA-funded initiative designed to build a computer that can mimic the way the mind works.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and five universities are receiving funding from a government agency to build a supercomputer -- but not just any supercomputer. They've been tasked with building hardware and software that mimics the human brain.

"There are no computers today that can even remotely approach the robust and versatile functionality of the brain," said Dharmendra Modha, manager of cognitive computing at IBM Research.

"The mind is a collection of mental processes dealing with sensation, perception, action, cognition, emotion and interaction," he told TechNewsWorld. "It can integrate senses such as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. And it can act in a context-dependent way in real-world complex environments in the presence of ambiguity, while requiring very low power consumption and being very compact."

Credits to : IBM

via : technewsworld.com

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Microsoft reveals Office2010 Secrets

The next version of Office moved a step closer to reality on Monday as Microsoft released an invitation-only technical preview of Office 2010.

However, the release of the software will be limited. Attendees of this week's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, as well as the recent TechEd show, will gain access to the desktop versions of Office 2010. Microsoft has also been taking sign-ups via its Office 2010: The Movie teaser Web site.

Also, it won't show off the program's biggest change--the addition of browser-based versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote.

Those so-called Office Web Applications are being demonstrated on Monday, but the technical preview of the Web apps won't come until later this year. For consumers, Microsoft plans to make the browser-based versions a free part of Windows Live next year, but hasn't decided whether they will include advertising.

The applications, which run in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, are aimed at both expanding the number of Office users within businesses as well as holding the ground threatened by Google Docs and other Web-based productivity programs.

On the desktop side, Microsoft plans a broader beta of the software later this year, with a final release in the first half of 2010.

Much of what is in the technical preview of Office 2010 is not a shocker, given that a test version of the software leaked onto the Web earlier this year, although Microsoft is offering further details on what's in the product as well as how it plans to sell the new software.

In its last update to Office--Office 2007--Microsoft introduced entirely new XML file formats and a major shift in its interface to use a "ribbon" that shifts commands based on what the user is doing. Office 2010 is a set of less jarring changes, with Microsoft saying the goal was to make the basics better.

Office 2010 sticks with the ribbon motif, expanding it to include many of the Office components that didn't get the interface the last time around. Office 2010 will also come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions--a first for Office.

Word gets a collection of cool image effects that stem from the DaVinci Imaging Engine that was part of Microsoft's now-discontinued Digital Image Suite product. Word, as well as the other programs, gets a new "paste preview" tool that lets users hover over different paste options and see what their paste will look like before accepting that selection.

Excel gets a new feature called Sparklines, which are tiny graphs that can fit in a single cell of a spreadsheet. PowerPoint picks up video editing features as well as the ability to create a video of one's presentation, including voice annotations.

The Outlook e-mail and calendar program adds a conversation view feature, a la Gmail. Microsoft's feature goes further though, offering an "ignore thread" option which keeps a user from having to see a message string they are no longer interested in being a part of. It also has a "MailTips" feature that offers etiquette and security alerts before doing things as replying to a large group or sending a document outside the firewall.

To handle file tasks like saving and printing across Office, Microsoft has added a "backstage view" to each of the applications. It has also made it possible for multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously through co-authoring tools.

Microsoft is also simplifying the number of different Office bundles it sells. There will be three consumer versions. Office Home and Student comes with OneNote, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Office Home and Business adds Outlook to the mix, while Office Professional includes all that, plus the Access database and Publisher page-layout programs.

On the business side, Microsoft Office Standard, the standard package for volume licensing customers, includes Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, and Publisher, with the last two applications being new additions to that edition. Licensing Office Standard also gives businesses the ability to host the browser-based versions of the software. The Professional Plus version adds Access, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove), and the Microsoft Communicator instant-messaging program.

Microsoft has yet to announce pricing for any of the products.

via : cnet.com

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Optical Transistor from Single Molecule

ETH Zurich researchers have successfully created an optical transistor from a single molecule. This has brought them one step closer to an optical computer.

Internet connections and computers need to be ever faster and more powerful nowadays. However, conventional central processing units (CPUs) limit the performance of computers, for example because they produce an enormous amount of heat. The millions of transistors that switch and amplify the electronic signals in the CPUs are responsible for this. One square centimeter of CPU can emit up to 125 watts of heat, which is more than ten times as much as a square centimeter of an electric hotplate.

Photons instead of electrons

This is why scientists have been trying for some time to find ways to produce integrated circuits that operate on the basis of photons instead of electrons. The reason is that photons do not only generate much less heat than electrons, but they also enable considerably higher data transfer rates.

Credits to : ETH Zurich researchers
via : sciencedaily.com

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Printable Batteries

For a long time, batteries were bulky and heavy. Now, a new cutting-edge battery is revolutionizing the field. It is thinner than a millimeter, lighter than a gram, and can be produced cost-effectively through a printing process.

In the past, it was necessary to race to the bank for every money transfer and every bank statement. Today, bank transactions can be easily carried out at home. Now where is that piece of paper again with the TAN numbers? In the future you can spare yourself the search for the number. Simply touch your EC card and a small integrated display shows the TAN number to be used. Just type in the number and off you go. This is made possible by a printable battery that can be produced cost-effectively on a large scale.



It was developed by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz together with colleagues from TU Chemnitz and Menippos GmbH. “Our goal is to be able to mass produce the batteries at a price of single digit cent range each,” states Dr. Andreas Willert, group manager at ENAS.

Credits to : Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz
via : sciencedaily.com

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Single Molecules are Conductors

Researchers from Graz University of Technology, Humboldt University in Berlin, M.I.T., Montan University in Leoben and Georgia Institute of Technology report an important advance in the understanding of electrical conduction through single molecules.

Minimum size, maximum efficiency: The use of molecules as elements in electronic circuits shows great potential. One of the central challenges up until now has been that most molecules only start to conduct once a large voltage has been applied. An international research team with participation of the Graz University of Technology has shown that molecules containing an odd number of electrons are much more conductive at low bias voltages. These fundamental findings in the highly dynamic research field of nanotechnology open up a diverse array of possible applications: More efficient microchips and components with considerably increased storage densities are conceivable.



One electron instead of two: Most stable molecules have a closed shell configuration with an even number of electrons. Molecules with an odd number of electrons tend to be harder for chemists to synthesize but they conduct much better at low bias voltages. Although using an odd rather than an even number of electrons may seem simple, it is a fundamental realization in the field of nanotechnology – because as a result of this, metal elements in molecular electronic circuits can now be replaced by single molecules. “This brings us a considerable step closer to the ultimate minitiurization of electronic components”, explains Egbert Zojer from the Institute for Solid State Physics of the Graz University of Technology.

Credits to : Researchers from Graz University of Technology, Humboldt University in Berlin, M.I.T., Montan University in Leoben and Georgia Institute of Technology
via : sciencedaily.com

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Samsung's New 45nm Processor

"Today's ultra-competitive consumer electronics market demands rapid performance upgrades and effective cost reduction to continue its expansion," said Dr. Kwang-hyun Kim, Senior VP of Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics’ System LSI division. "Our S5P6440 application processor is specifically designed with those objectives in mind to offer substantial improvements in CPU performance at low power, high quality graphics capability, and lower system BOM cost. CE device manufacturers using S5P6440 can offer exciting new products such as next generation PND to the market in a timely manner."

Samsung's S5P6440 is based on an ARM1176 CPU core which runs at either 533 MHz or 667MHz clock speed. The CPU core and all on-chip hardware accelerators and peripheral interfaces are connected through a 64-bit AXI bus running at 166MHz, allowing ample input/output bandwidth for handling the multiprocessing requirements in real-life applications.



Samsung Electronics announced today the latest in its popular, ARM11 series of application processors, the S5P6440. Designed using Samsung’s advanced 45nm low power CMOS process technology, the S5P6440 offers a low power, high performance, and cost effective solution for consumer electronic products such as personal navigation devices.

The S5P6440 features 2D graphics acceleration hardware that is compliant with the OpenVG application programming interface (API) standard. The OpenVG API standard enables advanced graphics functions such as alpha blending for transparency effects, anti-aliasing for sharper graphics, and vector graphics support for scaling without loss of image quality. Utilizing this graphical capability, devices implemented with the S5P6440 can offer a vivid graphical user interface that greatly enhances the user experience.

Credits to : Samsung
via : physorg.com

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Metal Muscles for Robotic Bats

Robotics is one of the most interesting sciences in the world for both the one who uses it and the one who experiences it.Making artificial muscles is very important chapter for making of the robotics come to life.

The researchers have been putting their dreadful efforts in making the artificial muscles for the robots.I even read somewhere that U.S were making fly-sized robots which fly and function as spies.For the making of that fly-sized robots one has to make artificial muscles.

George Bunget at North Carolina State University made a demo Robo-Bat which uses metal muscles.The skeleton of the robotic bat uses shape-memory metal alloy that is super-elastic for the joints, and smart materials that respond to electric current for the muscular system.



Tiny flying machines can be used for everything from indoor surveillance to exploring collapsed buildings, but simply making smaller versions of planes and helicopters doesn't work very well. Instead, researchers at North Carolina State University are mimicking nature's small flyers - and developing robotic bats that offer increased maneuverability and performance.

Credits to : George Bunget at North Carolina State University.
via : physorg.com

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Way for Quantum Computers

Quantum computers have been the most better imaginable computers in the speeds it can operate.As it uses light as the energy for transferring information the speeds are tremendously high.But there was no predominant way to control the way the bits operated for the processing to take place in a quantum computer till the physicists have come up with a new path.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology had overcome a hurdle in quantum computer development,for formulating a viable way in which the single bits can be manipulated in the quantum processor while not disturbing the information stored in the neighbors.The use of polarised light to create magnetic fields finds a promising way for the quantum computers to operate without any problem.



The optical lattices uses the lasers to separate Rubidium atoms for use as information bits in the neutral atom quantum processors.These quantum processors are the devices which the researchers are developing into full fledged quantum computers. NIST were able to isolate and control pairs of the Rubidium atoms with polarized light , a highway which would make the concept of quantum computers come into reality.

Credits to : Physicists at National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST)
via : physorg.com

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NanoPillars : Solar cells

Solar energy is one of the free energies which the nature is providing us and the scientists and researchers are trying to efficiently use the solar energy. The researchers at the Berkeley has found out a new way of making solar cells which would be cheap,energy efficient and also flexible.

The researchers at the U.S department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley have come up with a way to fabricate solar cells from low cost and flexible materials.This new design grows up optically activated semi conductors in an 2D arrays of vertical Nano-pillars which were measured to be a billionth of a meter.

Aluminum substrate forms a forest of Cadmium Sulfide nanopillars and also serves as a bottom electrode.Embedded in a clear cadmium telluride and a equipped with a top electrode of copper and gold forms an inexpensive and efficient solar cell.

Credits to : US Department Energy & University of California

Via : physorg.com

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Parallel port is not accessible in Windows XP

hi once again. I am doing a mini project for my college and decided to do an oscilloscope.I have got a good circuit but was not able to get output from that. Even the simple programs like blinking an LED connected at the parallel port of my PC was not possible because Windows XP doesn't give user access to the parallel port. It was almost 20 days I have tried for it without knowing this.

And then somewhere I came to know that Windows XP does not give user to access the ports.and there I got the software which gives the access to these ports. You can download it from the link which is provided under this post. I will soon post the pictures of my project called the oscilloscope.

DOWNLOAD

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Free Oscilloscope

I had to do a mini project for my college to get some marks out of 50.I came across many projects and selected the project called "PC based Oscilloscope".My aim was to make a real cheap PC based oscilloscope.One of them is this LPTScope called for it uses the LPT port of the PC.
For making this LPTScope person needs some knowledge on the LPT port of the PC.I will try to give enough information on the LPT port.

Specifications of this oscilloscope:

This table shows real max sample rates you can expect from this oscilloscope:

Machine type	Sample rate (kSamples/sec)
Pentium MMX at 233 MHz	180
Pentium4 at 1.6 GHz	257
AthlonXP 1.7 GHz	267

Image shows the screenshot of the software which turns your
computer into a free oscilloscope.

This project uses two resourses which can be divided into two parts.You guessed it write Hardware and Software.

Hardware

Hardware in this project is not so hard to understand as it is a very simple circuit.The Analog to Digital Convertor called the ADC is implemented using the ADC0820 IC which is a 20 pin package.The components required for this project are listed below.

Component	Quantity	Rating
Resistors	9	1K
Resistor	1	1M
Resistor	1	10K
Capacitor	1	100nF
Capacitor	1	100uF
Diode	1	IN4148
Zener Diode	1	IN4733A
Integrated Circuit	1	ADC0820
Regulator	1	IC7805
Supply	1	9V

Software

Nothing important to say about the software as it is provided freely.

Download lptscope program for windows (Version 1.1) here
Download source of lptscope (Version 1.1) here
Download lptscope program for windows (Version 1.2) here
Download lptscope source for windows (Version 1.2) here
Download lptscope software for DOS here

The software is pretty easy to use and has an additional capability for testing your printer port whether it is a bidirectional one or not.It also has an ability to switch among ECP and EPP automatically.

More on this is coming soon....

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Super Atoms

Reading the name Super-Atoms while searching for cool technology i was really excited to know about this new technology and i hope you would be too.A magnetic superatom is a cluster of atoms together in such a build that it can mimic many other elements in the pereodic table.These would help to make electronics devices in the future which would be much faster and with larger storage area.
The newly discovered cluster consists of one vanadium atom and eight cesium atoms,acts like a tiny magnet that can act as a manganese atoms in magnetic strength while preferentially allowing electrons of specfic spin to flow through the surrounding shell of cesium atoms.
The super atoms gave a third dimension of the periodic table.The chemical properties of the super atoms that have been identified till now were similar to the ones in the periodic table.

Magnetic super atoms mimicing manganese.

They found that the eight cesium atoms had given the atoms stability as the outer shell was filled with enough electrons for stability.An atoms is in full stability only when the outer shell electrons are completely full.This is what happens when the two atoms comes together shares the valence electrons and then acquires stability.
An important contribution would be to find the combinations of the atoms which acquire stability and finds a new species of magnetic super atoms.

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Smallest Molecular Gear

Nanotechnology is that technology that cannot be seen.I mean't cannot be seen with our naked eye.Scientists have understood the uses of nanotechnology and gears are the things which can make a highway for the Nano-machines.
Scientists made 1.2nm(nano meters) small nano gear and this would be too big with the ones compared to the gears which are going to be built in the future.

Nano-Gears of size in the scale of nano-maters.

Making the gear of the size of few atoms is not a big achievement but one should be able to have control over the rotation and several other physical properties of such kind and this would be an amazing thing.This is exactly what has made Professor Christian Joachim popular in the world of Nanotechnology and Nano machines.
He said that "the team at the IMRE(Institute of Materials and Research Engineering) has invented a working and controllable nano-gear which is going to make way for more machines which are no more than the size of a grain of sand".

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Opera Unite:Web Server

If your browser becomes your web server would'nt that be amazing???

Opera 10 has been one of the top browsers in the world since it's launch and it has made an interesting move in the business by coming up with a new idea of embedding a web server into the browser.This move would surely move it's place in the list of top browser's.
This software has been named as the Opera Unite for uniting the two tools and said to harness the power of today's fast connections and hardware,allowing us to define the future landscape of the web.one computer at a time.
Opera provides an oppurtunity for the developers to develop cool applications and share them with their friends directly connecting them with their computers and connect with many people at a time.As it all happens with the browser itself and hence no additional software need not be downloaded.It is found that initially opera provides demos like messenger and media player and later give an ocean of applications.

Opera Unite browser with a web server.

Download

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Microsoft's Morro

Microsoft is ready to release it's own featured security suite called Morro.It's been clear that Microsoft has announced to give away this new feature as a replacement to the existing Microsoft's Windows live One Care for Windows PC users.Company professionals have been rejecting to provide more information on this new product.
Though there was no information from the professionals of the Microsoft but still there were many images of the Morro have been on the search engine results.I have come up with this screen shot in my search.This seems to be nothing interesting in the looks while still having the theme of the Windows Defender.Hope this would have something fabulous in the way it works.I am waiting for some torrent coming related to this to download it.

Screenshot of the upcoming Morro software.

Are you not waiting for that???

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Great Free Cleanup Utilities

Junk off course is a big problem for computer users which hides inside the computer doing nothing but taking down the speed of the processor.But,sometimes this can be a way by which viruses or trojans can make an attack on our valuable information stored inside our memory.

Cleaning of this junk is so important for us so that our computer looks cool and tidy.Often we don't find enough time to search all of this junk and probably won't be able to clean it.

There are fortunately a slew of free softwares to search this junk and unimportant files on the computer and delete them with your permission.

Here are five worth checking out.....

• BleachBit
• CCleaner
• Comodo System Cleaner
• FCleaner
• Glary Utilities
• nCleaner
  

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Word Reader Reads All Your Text Docs

Though we have got some real cool text-to-speech convertors online the new one named the Word Reader has got some important place in the top list for it's simplicity and easy to use tool.The features of this reader unlike the ones we already have is that we don't need any extra software for opening these text files and then copy the text into the text-to-speech convertor software and then let it speak.
Word Reader is now available to speak loudly the text in the form of different formats.Word Reader 5.0 is now able to transform the text in the following formats into voice.

• Microsoft Word 2007 (*.DOCX)
• Microsoft Word 97-2003(*.DOC)
• Hyper Text Markup language (.htm , .html)
• Rich Text Format (*.rtf)
• Plain Text Format (*.txt)

Microsoft offers Viewer for all this to do for free but it is too costly for a person having less bandwidth as its size is 25MB.Word Reader is now available as free version while it is only 5MB of size to download.You can download from this link under.

DOWNLOAD

For getting more information about this software get in here to the main website.

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Quantum Technologies by Manipulating Light on Chip

A team of physicists and engineers at Bristol University has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light — photons — on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards long-sought-after quantum technologies, including super-powerful quantum computers and ultra-precise measurements.

The Bristol Centre for Quantum Photonics has demonstrated precise control of four photons using a microscopic metal electrode lithographically patterned onto a silicon chip.

An artist's impression of the on-chip quantum metrology
experiment (making ultraprecise measurements on chip)
Photo by Will Amery, University of Bristol

Read More

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Boost Web Browsing Performance

Source:Maximum PC

We will gladly spend hours trying to nudge a few extra clock cycles out of our CPU’s, but why do so many of us refuse to touch our network settings? The vast majority of users simply plug in their network cables, cross their fingers, and sacrifice an AOL CD to the gods who keep Conficker at bay. Truth be told, without going into too much depth up front, there is a really easy way to boost your surfing speed and it requires very little effort at all. This same tool gives you the ability to customize your internet experience further by creating URL shortcuts, or even filtering content, all without extra software.

The tool we are referring to is Domain Name System, or DNS for short. In a nutshell, DNS is your phone book for the internet. It helps translate a friendly internet domain like www.maximumpc.com, into IP address that our computer needs to find servers on the internet. Each time you visit a new website, a DNS query is issued in the background, and you’re none the wiser. Internet service providers supply DNS to all their customers, but these servers tend to be overpopulated, and certainly aren’t a priority to them because it’s difficult for the average user to measure performance. Power users are intimately familiar with how to benchmark raw connection speeds, but before that even becomes a factor, your machine needs IP address which is supplied by your DNS. Even if your smoking fast Fiber Optic connection can handle 18 Mbps, if your ISP’s DNS server wastes several seconds looking up your favorite website, you connection may be sitting in limbo when you could be surfing instead.

Interested in finding out how to improve the responsiveness of your connection and learning more about your DNS options? Hit the jump to find out more.

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How to Build a Hulu Desktop + Boxee PC

Maximum PC once again strikes hard back with its new concept helping its users to build a Hulu Desktop and a Boxee PC.

Build the ultimate living room PC and watch all the TV & movies the Internet has to offer from the comfort of your couch. We show you how!

Stop surfing the internet for a minute (we know, a tall order) and go get your last cable or satellite TV bill. Back? Good. Now skim to the bottom and look at the total amount of money you paid for TV last month. Do you feel like you got a reasonable amount of entertainment for that $60, $80, or even $100-plus? Are you happy about the money you spend for the privilege of watching TV? We’re not. The vast majority of TV we watch is available for free, over the air. Sure, we’ll occasionally watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords on HBO or a documentary on Discovery, but most of the TV we watch is on one of the big over-the-air networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, the CW, and NBC. So we started looking for alternatives.

It turns out that the vast majority of new TV shows are available online, either as part of an ad-driven website like Hulu or TV.com, or available for sale on iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox service. However, having a PC in the living room has traditionally sucked. After all, you don’t want to hear a big, noisy PC when you’re enjoying a movie or a TV show, and using a mouse and keyboard as the primary interface just doesn’t cut it when you’re kicking back on the couch. But times have changed. These days, it’s easy to build a PC that’s quiet enough to be virtually unheard, yet powerful enough to play all the high-definition video that’s currently available.

And making the proposition even more appealing, there are software frontends like Boxee and the new Hulu Desktop that let you harness all that hardware power in an easy-to-use, remote-friendly interface that combines the massive library of streaming video on the web with the DRM-free content you rip from discs or purchase legally on the web. We’ll introduce you to a couple of the options, then help you configure our favorite. By combining a few hundred bucks’ worth of hardware with a free software app and your broadband connection, you can reduce the money you spend on entertainment from $100 a month to $100 a year.

Picking the Perfect Parts

The ultimate living room PC is a balance between high performance and low power consumption—i.e., it must play high-definition H.264-encoded video while running whisper-quiet

CPU

At the heart of your living room PC should be a CPU that sips power, even during demanding tasks, to minimize heat, and thus fan noise. After testing several contenders, we ended up choosing a low-power Phenom X4 9350e ($185, www.amd.com), which draws just 65W under full load. We considered a dual-core Athlon 64 but decided we’d rather have the extra two cores for transcoding than save 20W. The CPU must be 65W or lower because of the power supply, case, and limited cooling in our system.

It crossed our minds to use an Atom or other ultra-low-power processor, but we found that the current single-core CPUs simply don’t have the muscle (or enough help from onboard graphics) to play H.264 at 1080p. We had some luck at 720p, but that’s not real high-def as far as we’re concerned. Perhaps Nvidia’s Ion chipset will give Atom a needed lift, but you currently can't build your own Ion-platform machines.

Case

Like our CPU selection, the case must balance two conflicting forces—cooling and noise—all while fitting into a living-room-friendly formfactor. For all those reasons, we chose Silverstone’s LC19 ($200, www.silverstonetek.com). Its svelte profile (only 68mm tall!) fits perfectly into our entertainment center along with our other components, while muffling the noise so as not to disturb us.

We also like the slightly larger, less expensive Antec Veris Remote ($160, www.antec.com), which isn’t as compact or sexy as the LC19, but easier to build in.

Motherboard

After we selected our CPU, we went shopping for a Mini-ITX Socket AM2 motherboard that featured decent integrated graphics. Since we’re not playing games, we really just wanted a GPU that would pull a little of the heavy lifting for video decodes off the CPU. The Jetway JNC62K ($140, www.jetway.com.tw) features Nvidia’s GeForce 8200 chipset, which is more than sufficient for our needs. It offers analog VGA and DVI/ HDMI (using an adapter), it has a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and its onboard audio features both analog and optical S/PDIF outputs.

Honestly, though, any Micro-ATX or smaller board that supports your CPU, includes integrated sound with an S/PDIF output, and sports integrated graphics from Nvidia or ATI will do the job.

Storage

Your entertainment PC doesn’t need a ton of storage—just a few gigs for the OS and the streaming software. (You’ll access the content you’ve ripped or purchased from your desktop PC or server over a network share.) We used a Western Digital Green terabyte drive we had in the Lab ($90, www.wdc.com), more because of its low rpm than its capacity, which is admittedly overkill for this purpose. You could just as well drop a 2.5-inch notebook drive into this rig. We initially considered running the OS on a CompactFlash card or a USB thumb drive, but having some storage in the box is preferable—if you connect your living room rig using a slow wireless link, you can copy movies to the hard drive before playing them. It adds a few more minutes of prep, but the playback will be buttery smooth despite your hoopty network.

Memory

The Jetway motherboard we're using is an AM2 motherboard with only one DIMM slot, so any generic 2GB module will do. We went with a single 2GB stick of PNY DDR2 memory, which you can find on Newegg for $25.

Cables

For very tiny PCs, it’s a good idea to have access to short SATA cables with one right-angle connector. Since the cables have a direction, you’ll need to get the type of cable that angles down, or you’ll have to mount your hard drives upside down. You can find right-angle SATA connectors at pretty much any screwdriver shop or on Amazon, but to find cables shorter than 18 inches, we had to go to Newegg.

Missing in Action: Why No TV Tuner?

We skipped the TV tuner in our living room rig for one simple reason: We don’t need it. While it would be nice to add over-the-air capture to our rig, we’d rather let this machine fall into its sleep mode when it’s not being used, rather than running 24/7 to pull all our TV shows from the ether. Combine that with the fact that most HD tuner cards can’t pull content from your cable or satellite service, and you’d be spending money just to get the same content you can pull from Hulu.

If you insist on hooking your cable box up to your PC, the best way to get HD content into your PC is to use the FireWire interface on your cable box. This will give you high-quality HD video for the content that isn’t marked as protected by your cable provider (typically only HBO, Starz, Showtime, and other paid channels are “protected”). Unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to configure, and it requires special drivers and a ton of hacking. Check out http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/ for the full scoop.

Mouse and Keyboard vs Remote

There are a multitude of possible input devices you can use for your living room PC, ranging from a traditional remote control to a keyboard/mouse combo. The keyboard/mouse is the easiest to set up and lets you fully tap into the massive flexibility of the PC—after all, you can fire up a web browser or iTunes and play any content you can download using a mouse and keyboard. We’re especially fond of the DiNovo Media Keyboard from Logitech ($160, www.logitech.com). It’s a full-size board, but it has a handy touch pad in the lower right corner, which makes mousing possible.

On the other hand, a more traditional remote control can be mighty handy, especially when you’re sitting on the couch. Hulu Desktop works with any Windows Media Center remote, which means you can use a cheap one like Anyware Computer's GV-IR01WT IR remote ($30, www.anywareus.com).

Boxee will work with pretty much any input device, but we tested a couple of Windows Media Center–compatible remotes and found them to work well. You can find a wide variety of Media Center–compatible remotes at Newegg and Amazon; they’re usually around $50. Alternately, the Logitech DiNovo Mini ($150, www.logitech.com) is a remote-size clamshell device that includes a mouse and keyboard in a smaller package. It’s a little spendy but worth the bucks.

Assembling the PC

Building a living room PC is the same as building any other PC, just in an itsy-bitsy case

1. Prep Case

Before you get started, you’ll need to open your case (image A), remove the peripherals that the vendor ships inside the case, and clear any cables. Depending on the case you use, you may need to remove the power supply and drive caddy in order to mount the motherboard. This is also a great time to mount the I/O shield in the case (image B). Line it up with the opening at the bottom of the case, then gently tap it into place using a screwdriver handle or your fingers. Make sure the holes on the shield line up with the ports on the mobo’s backplane!

Image A

Image B

2. Install the CPU and RAM

Before you mount the motherboard in your case, you’ll want to mount the CPU. For our AM2-based system, all you need to do is lift the socket’s locking lever, line up the key pins on the CPU with the appropriate corner of the socket, drop it into place, then lower the lever again.

Next, you’ll want to mount the CPU cooler on the CPU. For the living room, the stock cooler that came with your CPU should be sufficient; although, if you’re using a low-profile case, it’s preferable to use the cooler designed for that specific case. Make sure you use a pea-size amount of thermal grease, or the thermal pad that’s pre-applied to your stock cooler, and don’t forget to connect the fan’s power lead to the CPU fan header on the motherboard.

With just a single memory slot, there’s no worry that you’ll accidentally misconfigure your dual-channel motherboard. With that in mind, release the retention clips, line up the DIMM, and slide it into place. As with all motherboards, mounting the memory will take more pressure than any other part of the install.

3. Mount the Motherboard

It’s time to mount the motherboard in the case. You should have already snapped the I/O shield into place, so make sure the motherboard standoffs are lined up properly for your motherboard. If you’re putting a Mini-ITX board into an ATX case, you’ll probably need to move or remove at least one or two standoffs. Once the board is in place, start one screw without tightening it all the way. Once you’ve started the rest of the screws, you can tighten them all down.

Now is a good time to plug in your power supply and test-boot the rig. While the test-boot isn’t necessary for full towers, building inside these tiny home theater cases is such a pain in the ass that we recommend making sure everything works before you go any further. To get started, plug the two power leads into the motherboard, connect the power switch to the power headers on the board, plug in a monitor, and plug in the PSU. Don’t worry about connecting drives or a keyboard to the device—we just want to make sure the machine will post. If it doesn’t, remove the board, make sure there aren’t any extra standoffs grounding the mobo, and reseat your memory before trying again. When your rig boots, move on to the next step.

4. Connect the Wire

The Jetway motherboard we used has a pair of power connectors. You’ll need to connect both the 4-pin ATX 12V connector and the main 20-pin ATX power connector.

The front panel connectors on the Jetway are the same as on any other mobo. As always, watch the polarity on the LED connectors (connect the colored wire to the positive pole on the connector); however, the switches work either way.

Make sure you get the HD Audio connector and your USB headers connected before you put any more hardware in the case. As you start to run cables, it gets really tough to work around the motherboard.

Finally, connect your SATA cables to the motherboard. The Silverstone case gives good access to the SATA ports, even if all the other components are installed, but that’s not always the case.

5. Mount the Drives

Next, it’s time to mount the drives. The LC19 case supports either a 2.5-inch notebook drive or a standard 3.5-inch drive; however, it won’t mount like in a typical case. Instead of screwing your drive into a cage, you’ll actually screw it into the bottom of the case. The LC19 includes a rubber gasket around the holes, which will help isolate vibration and keep noise from leaving the case. It’s a little tricky to mount the drive, though; the best way we found was to flip the case up on its side and hold the drive in place with one hand while starting the screws from the other side (image A). Once you’ve run all four screws into place, you can put the case back down, and connect the power and the SATA cable.

Image A

Next up is the optical drive, although this is a strictly optional feature. The LC19 is designed to work with a notebook optical drive. We picked up a generic slot-fed DVD-RW drive from our local hardware shop, but any one will work. You should be able to find a slim DVD burner at Newegg or Amazon for less than $50. If you’re using a PATA drive, you’ll also need an adapter (the LC19 comes with one). You can mount the adapter on the drive before or after you put it in the case. It doesn’t matter. Slide the drive into the machine, line up the front bezel of the drive with the case, then use the tiny screws that come with the case to lock the drive into place (image B). Connect the PATA cable and power to the adapter, making sure you line up the keyed portion of the ribbon cable.

Image B

6. Close the Case

Before you close the case, it’s a good idea to test-boot the PC once more. Everything should be hooked up and ready to go now, so connect the power brick and power up the PC the first time. Everything works? Great! Close the case and you’re ready to connect your living room PC to your TV.

7. Connect Your TV

There are different ways to connect your entertainment PC to a TV. The best option is HDMI, which carries both a 1080p signal and a high-quality audio signal to your TV and home theater setup. You’ll need a dual-link DVI-to-HDMI adapter—if your board didn’t come with one, you can purchase it at MonoPrice.com for a few bucks.

Secondary options are DVI for video and Toslink S/PDIF for audio. Most modern TVs include DVI ports, but you’ll need a Toslink-to-mini-DIN connector to hook up optical audio to the set. You can purchase one for about $0.75 at MonoPrice as well—search for part number 2671.

Hulu Desktop

On May 28th, Hulu announced its own desktop client, aptly named Hulu Desktop. This stand-alone program has all the features of Hulu's website -- stream channels, user profiles, full screen capability -- but lets you watch videos without a browser. Its bare-bones frontend makes it ideal for a living room PC, and support for keyboard, mouse, and Windows Media Center remotes gives you plenty of control options.

Let's run down Hulu Desktop's notable features.

The install is only 2.2MB, since Hulu Desktop is essentially an Adobe Air application. Adobe Flash must be installed for it to work and the installer will prompt you to install Flash if you don't have it. When Hulu Desktop is running at full screen, Windows Task Manager showed it using up about 350MB of system memory. Also, since the window is just running a flash program, it's completely rescalable to any resolution.

Every time the program launches, you're shown a video frame with three options at the bottom. This isn't the default menu; the video is Hulu's flavor of the week -- a sponsored video that automatically plays to introduce you to new shows. At the time of this writing, the default video was the pilot episode of Fox's new Glee series. Clicking the "Menu" button takes you to the show browser.

Here's the video playback interface, which offers features similar to Hulu's web playback interface. You can skip around to different parts of the video (with thumbnail previews at time intervals), add a video to your queue, and give it a rating. Advertisements appear at the same spots on the Desktop app as they do on the Hulu website, but we haven't seen any ads on the menu screens yet.

Clicking the Menu button at any time during video playback will shrink the video to the top lefthand corner of the window, but continue playback. Here, you can browse content by network, type, popularity or your queue/subscription. The interface is actually very reminiscent of Boxee's UI, and optimized for navigating with the directional pad on a remote control. Mouse clicks and the mouse wheel work just fine, of course.

Search works as expected -- you can search by show or episode name, but not actors. Results show up in real-time on the right of the screen, and an on-screen keyboard lets you search without a keyboard.

The Preferences sub-menu is pretty scarce, offering few customization options. The most important setting is Video Quality, which lets you scale bitrates ranging from 480Kbps to 1Mbps ("high-def" video). Full screen video looks best at 1Mbps, of course, but is even the HD feeds are a far cry from true 720p or 1080i video from digital cable, satellite, or even broadcast television.

Boxee for Windows

Boxee brings web video playback and social networking to a TV-connected PC. Awesome!

According to their company blog, the Windows alpha of Boxee (free, www.boxee.tv) should be public sometime in June (it's been in an Alpha testing period for several months). Boxee is a variant of XBMC—the media streaming and playback software originally designed for the Xbox 1 that now runs on all major platforms—designed with social networking in mind. In addition to many of the streaming and media management features that XBMC has, Boxee includes a friends list and the ability to pull web video from sites like CBS.com, Netflix.com, and CNN.com into the app’s sexy 10-foot interface, which makes it easy to browse with a remote control.In its current alpha state, Boxee can be a touch unstable; however, it’s so powerful and awesome that we’re willing to tolerate an occasional crash to use it.

But first you’ll need to install Windows. We’ve tested the Boxee Alpha with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 Beta 1. Boxee works great with XP and Vista (including 64-bit Vista) but has problems with Win7 due to the nascent OS’s poor OpenGL support. That may change by the time you read this, but for the time being, we don’t recommend Win7 for Boxee users.

After you’ve installed Windows, updated the OS, installed the Nvidia chipset drivers and AMD CPU drivers, changed your display settings to the native resolution for your monitor, and installed the Realtek drivers to enable sound, you should install Boxee. The installer is very straightforward, but there’s quite a bit you can do to optimize your experience after the initial install.

Once Boxee is installed, you’ll want to point it to your network shares. The easiest way to do that is to map a network drive, but you can also use Boxee’s built-in Samba client, as shown here.

First, you’ll want to calibrate Boxee’s video displays. From the home screen, go left and navigate down to Settings. Go to Appearance, then Screen. Make sure the resolution is set to your TV’s native resolution (1920x1080 for a 1080p set, 1280x720 for a 720p set), then click the Video Calibration option. This will walk you through a series of configuration options that will ensure your video is displayed at the proper aspect ratio for your set.

If you have media stored on your machine or network, you can add that content to the Boxee interface as well. In the Settings menu, go to Media Sources. While you can have Boxee connect directly to an SMB share, we recommend mapping a network drive in Windows, then accessing the media through that, as it seems more reliable. Drill down the menus in the Media Sources share and add your content. Boxee will begin indexing it and add it to your machine’s library.

And then there’s Hulu. Boxee was forced to pull Hulu from its service in February, and various workarounds have popped up since then to get Hulu streams working on Boxee. The latest update brings Hulu back to Boxee through enhanced RSS feeds, and the release of Hulu Desktop has given Boxee's creators hope that Hulu will come back to the program for good. For now, we still recommend watching your Hulu shows with Hulu's own desktop application.

OS Alternative: What about Ubuntu?

We tested Boxee with Ubuntu as well and were pleasantly surprised. We had a bit of trouble getting audio configured properly on the Linux OS, but once that hurdle was passed, we had Boxee up and running in no time. The only caveat is that some online sources don’t work with the Linux edition of Boxee, so check our handy chart below to see what does and does not work.

A Boxee Tour

Boxee’s 10-foot interface is simple to understand, once you know the basic rules

• We love that Boxee includes the ability to play content direct from websites—support for individual sites varies by platform, but there’s a ton of great content available already, and more being added all the time.
• Although you can use a mouse with Boxee, the app is designed for navigation with a remote control. To navigate to the main system menu, where you can adjust settings or browse to any of the content accessible to the machine, just browse to the left side of any screen.
• Boxee, like XBMC, will pull down the relevant metadata for your TV shows and movies from the Internet so that you can browse your videos by genre, actor, director, and more.
• Want to view video that’s not supported by one of the default services? Does the site have an RSS feed? If so, plug it into My Feeds, and odds are you’ll be watching streamed video in no time.
• If you navigate beyond the right side of the screen, you’ll find Boxee’s context-sensitive menus (not pictured), where you can adjust things like view options and thumbnail size.
• If you ever find yourself losing touch with the real world, Boxee will even keep you updated on the current time and local weather. Now that’s convenience!

XBMC: An Entertainment Alternative

If you’re not as interested in streaming web video, XBMC delivers a kick-ass network streaming experience

While XBMC lacks the nifty web-based video playback and friends list that Boxee offers, it has a much more advanced streaming platform, especially if you have a large video library. It also offers support for a few streaming sites using plugins, but support for sites like Hulu is nowhere near as polished as it is was in Boxee. If you’re not looking to cut your cable, then XBMC is probably a superior choice for in-home streaming.

‌After you install the app (free, www.xbmc.org), you’ll need to configure your video settings using a procedure that’s very similar to Boxee’s. Simply go to Settings, then Appearance, then Screen, and run through the screen calibration process. Once that’s done, you should hit the audio settings and make sure the proper output is configured. The last thing you should do in your options menu is tell XBMC where your media is stored. As with Boxee, XBMC works better with network sources if you map your network path to a drive letter, then point XBMC to that drive rather than just using the integrated SMB client. You can also add RSS feeds for podcasts or pictures, or UPNP shares if you already have a streaming server set up on your network.

Once you have everything configured, XBMC will scan your content and download metadata associated with your videos. It can take a couple of hours if you have a large collection, but once it’s done, you can enable Library mode (using the default skin, it’s a left-column option in the Music and Video views). Library mode lets you browse your movie collection by genre, director, actor, year, or a number of other options. Library mode also works for your music collection and lets you browse by the contents of your ID3 tags. It’s very handy if you have a lot of movies and music.

Once you’ve got your media configured, you can also add other streaming sources for sites like Hulu. There are tons of plugins available, and the best place for streaming info is at the XBMC forums. Enjoy!

• When XBMC misidentifies a file, you can manually change it using the context menu. Don’t fret, though; in our 600-plus file collection, it managed to detect more than 90 percent of the files correctly.
• When you mouse over a file, you’ll see a small pop-up containing more info about the file. Click it, and you’ll see more-detailed info, including release date, actors involved, director, and a basic plot summary.
• Library mode is awesome; it lets you browse your movies and TV shows based on metadata, rather than title alone. Best of all, the app automatically downloads art for your films and TV shows!
• The only trick to automatic metadata collection is that you store different types of content in different folders. When you add a new folder, you can tell XBMC what type of content it contains (TV show, movie, music, photo, etc.), so it’s important that you connect the correct data sources to the correct types of content.

The Final Touches

The machine is built, the software’s installed. So what’s left to do on our tiny living room PC?

Now that your machine is built and everything’s working properly, it’s time to put the finishing touches on it. First, you’ll want to give a quick tweak to your power management settings. How you configure your machine is really up to you, but we like to set the machine to suspend after an hour or so of inactivity, turn the hard drives off after 20 minutes, and blank the monitor after 20 minutes. It’s all optional, but you don’t want your PC running when you’re not using it. That’s just wasteful!

Next, you’ll want to make some adjustments to your fan speeds. There are a number of ways to do this, but the easiest is to go into the BIOS’s CPU Thermal Throttling menu. Set the CPU full-speed temp to around 70 C, and the idle temp around 55 C. That will run the fan at around 60 percent speed when the CPU temp is below 70 C and crank up only when the CPU temperature goes above that mark. Combined with the Cool ‘n’ Quiet feature of the AMD CPU, this should help you reduce fan noise in your rig. If you need it to run still quieter, you can always purchase a replacement cooler. We haven’t tested many low-profile AM2 coolers, but any AM2 cooler should work with this motherboard.

The last thing you’ll want to do is set up Windows to load Boxee (or XBMC, if that’s your preference automatically). First, configure Windows to load without prompting for a password. You can do that by following the instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231. It’s not the most secure way to do things, so we recommend using an account that has low privileges on the rest of your network. Once that’s done, all you need to do is drag your Boxee shortcut into the Startup folder on your Start Menu and you should be good to go!

That’s all there is to it. Just enjoy!

What Services Work with Boxee on Each Platform?

	Netflix	Hulu*	CBS	ABC	CNN	Comedy Central	The WB	Joost	MTV	BBC
Windows	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ubuntu	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
OS X	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Apple TV	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

* No support via official Hulu plugin. Third-party plugins are available for all platforms.

Hardware Alternatives for Streaming TV

Asus Eeebox PC

While the current models are a tad underpowered for 1080p video, they work great for 720p, and newer models promise support for higher-resolution video. However, Flash video like Hulu or Youtube just didn't run well, which we suspect is a codec problem.

AppleTV

Installing Boxee on an AppleTV takes a few minutes and requires only a specially modified USB thumb drive. Once it’s installed, you get all the streaming goodness. The AppleTV lacks the hardware chops to play all high-resolution video, however.

Nano-ITX

Developments in Nano-ITX formfactors mean that in the future, you’ll be able to build a hardback book–size rig that will do everything our pizza box PC can do. We’re not quite there yet, but we’ll keep you updated as new hardware becomes available.

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