Hardware Geeks

This past Friday I had a chance to get an in person demo on Antecs Veris Multimedia stations, there are four versions of the Multimedia stations, the Basic, the E-Z, the Elite and the Premier. Each of the four comes with a remote, ir-blaster and work seamlessly with Windows Media Center or you can use it with the included iMon software.

All four are easy to install, but with the Basic, Elite and Premier you will need to know the ins and outs of cracking open a computer case to install them.

Today we bring you a quick how to guide on how to add a new hard drive two your HP Media Smart server. Some of you may think it is as easy as taking out the old hard drive if there one and stick in the new one, and yes it is that simple but there are always those who like a visual explanation and we hope this guide will help them.

Or HP MediaSmart Sever already had all of it’s hard drive bays full, so we removed out of our 500 GB drives and replaced it with a 1.5 GB Barracuda drive from Seagate.

Well it pretty much looks like any other hard drive. But this post is more to tell you about the 1.5 TB drive I received and not show you what it looks like.

Yesterday UPS dropped off the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB Hard drive from Seagate (Codename Cuba), the first 1.5 TB hard drive ever available. While the 1.5 TB is amazing in it self the drive is energy efficient 43% less energy than other drives.

So how much stuff can you fit on a 1.5 TB drive? 24,984 hours of digital music, 480,000 digital photos, 1,500 hours of digital video, 375 two-hour DVD-quality movies, or 750 games on a Barracuda desktop drive. That is according to Seagate.

Yesterday I received the HP dv-1001xx from HP for review, and while the original dv series didn’t appeal to me much the new improved dv series gives you goose bumps, because the systems are absolutely gorgeous.

The HP Pavilion dv is powered by Intels Centrino 2 processors, comes loaded with up to 4 gigs of ram, 300 Gigs of storage expandable to 532 with the additional hotswappable hard drive that goes in the expansion bay, cd/dvd or optional blu-ray drive, finger print reader and a beautiful 14.1 inch high definition screen.

The dv4 has a similar look and feel to the HDX16 and HDX18, but not loaded with as much power. Enjoy the unboxing pictures.

A little less than two years maybe, Microsoft announced Windows Home Server an Operating System designed to give consumers the ability to have a server in their home that was dedicated to the backing up of their personal computers and sharing of files.

When Microsoft introduced Windows Home Server during the 2007 CES Keynote they also introduced the HP MediaSmart Server and in November of 2007the HP MediaSmart Server hit the Market with a lot of fan fare. So much fan fare that in one day it climed to the top of the charts at Amazon.com.

Since then HP is the only major OEM to have released a Home Server and they are reaping the benefits. 

A little over a month ago, Mike was telling me about how cool a new product from HP was, the product being the HP Touchsmart, he raved and raved about how great it was, and that I should review it and I said sure why not.

About a week later FedEx knocked at my door with this huge yellow boxs. The following day I had a conference call with HP about TouchSmar, and I learned a lot of things that I probably would have overlooked if they hadn’t mentioned them. Since I didn’t want to miss a thing I took notes on all the features and specs.

Today Antech launched the Skeleton PC Case, the first ever open air case for the consumer market.

The Skeleton’s open structure design and flexibility bring a high level of cooling, ease-of-use and stylish appearance to any PC.

Customizable and offering unprecedented levels of cooling, the Skeleton features an open frame and a top mounted, three-speed, 250mm TriCool multi-color LED fan, allowing users to adjust fan speed, as well as case illumination. Specially designed layered trays allow for efficient cable routing that prevents wires from impeding airflow and an additional dedicated 92mm fan cools the hard drives. With a 0.8mm cold rolled steel-reinforced plastic frame and rackmount quality side rails, this enclosure emphasizes durability. The 13’’(H) x 14.8’’(W) x 16.5’’(D) sized enclosure fits Mini ITX, MicroATX and Standard ATX motherboards.

I personally have never been excited about a printer, but when I was first introduced to the Artisan 800 by Epson this past July I immediately fell in love with it and when Epson finally announced it I knew I wanted one.

So when Epson told me they were sending me one for review, I was extremely excited in fact for the past 17 hours all I have done is play with the Artisan 800 non stop and I feel as if I know this Printer, Copier, Fax better than I know myself. The last time I was so excited about a product was when I bough my iBook 4 years ago, and I never would of thought I would get so excited about a printer.

Yesterday Best Buy introduced the Blue Label line of consumer products. The products were created with consumer feedback and with the help of companies like HP and Toshiba. The first products for the Blue Label line are two consumer notebooks one developed by HP and the other by Toshiba.

“As the leading consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy has millions of interactions with consumers each year. We listened to our customers and learned that they wanted more from the feature set on available laptops so we went directly to manufacturers to fix that,” said Wendy Fritz, senior vice president of computing, Best Buy. “Through the Blue Label process, we’re addressing customer pain points in a way that no retailer has done before and we’re giving manufacturers valuable insight to make products that address customer needs.”