Review Horizon

I use my HTPC every day to watch movies, but I don’t like to wait until it boots. To be honest, it was never that slow to boot, I have a AMD Phenom II X4 Deneb at 3.0Ghz on a Asus M4A785-M motherboard, and the system is pretty nimble as it is. However, there is always room to grow, so after a long wait I got myself the Intel X25-M SSD.

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At 80GB, the size is perfect for a HTPC, a Windows 7 installation plus various 7MC  plug-ins only takes about 25GB with enough to spare for additional media-related applications.

Installation:

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I am lucky, really really lucky. I received a new laptop at work. Like many other people around, I have a long commute. Fortunately I can take the train, but even so, I am more than 3 hours a day on the road (or railroad to be precise). A notebook is mandatory.

Now, I mentioned I am lucky and the reason is that I can decide of what hardware I buy at work. So I looked around really hard and noticed that HP launched their new HP TouchSmart tm2 Convertible Tablet PC, so I bought it. I really like it, so here are the details:

HP TouchSmart tm2 is HP’s first convertible laptop for consumers featuring multitouch technology. This model also adds a stylus to use when the laptop is folded in tablet mode. It uses a 12.1″ LED display with a resolution of 1280×800. The touch-pad is fairly large and the mouse buttons are embedded in it. That means you can also navigate on the mouse buttons surface, as they are part of the touch-pad, but I find myself missing the touch feel of the real buttons.

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I built myself a really nice Home Theater System around my LG 60PS80 Plasma TV, VSX82-TXS Pioneer Receiver and a custom build HTPC. I will add more details in the following days, when I’ll begin a new series related to Windows 7 Media Center (7MC) and various available plug-ins. Stay tuned. Meantime, enjoy these pictures.

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