MSI Wind still here… OSX, Crunchbang, & Windows 7
SO… I did not take back the MSI Wind. My friend Jed and my wife talked me out of it. Jed’s argument was “Why?”. Then my wife said, “It’s only 350 bux”.
I decided to play with it some more and install some OS’s on it….. Read more
MSI Wind gets returned and my issues with “netbooks”
I picked up an MSI Wind yesterday. These are one of those sub $500 “netbooks”. It’s going back this morning. I just don’t think these devices are ready for my regular use. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great little device. I can see where for some people that it will be useful.
Let me start by talking about what I want a “netbook” or a smaller form factor portable computer. My main computer is a Macbook Pro 17″ and while for the size of it, it’s fairly light and quick to turn on and set up, at times, I don’t like pulling out such a beast for quick and dirty things I want to do. I am looking for a device that I can take with me almost anywhere, be fairly non-obtrusive, and be my quick window to the net. The MSI Wind was to be this device for me, NOT!
Again, spec wise it’s fair, I would go so far to say even better than fair. However, for me, it’s missing two key elements, touch screen capabilities and at least 1280×720 (or 800) resolution. For the technology we have today, these two elements MUST be in a small form factor PC or “netbook” for me.
The MSI Wind has a decent screen with 1024×600 resolution. I thought I could deal with this. With so many laptops with 1280×800+ screen resolutions, I do not believe GUI designers have set things up to accommodate the 600 pixel high space. It gets really frustrating when you can’t hit a dialog in something you are trying to do quickly. (remember, one of the purposes of having the machine)
The second thing is touch screen. It lacks one. It should have one. All “netbooks” should have some sort of touch capability on the screen. Again, for speed and ease of use. If there are kits showing up on e-bay for touch screen kits for these devices from $50 to $150, it should not be difficult to include one in the manufacturing process.
Sure, I know I can tweak the device to work with the resolution and add a touch screen. My point is, we have the technology and the ability to make devices at low cost that we don’t have to settle for. With my myriad of life projects going on and other hobbies, I don’t have time to mess with a machine to get these things in it. I want to buy an off the shelf product and just go. (well, maybe some minor mods, like putting OSX on it LOL)
The deal breaker on the Wind and most “netbooks” for me at the moment is the screen resolution. If this thing just had 1280×720/800 minimum, I’d be all over it.
Where oh where can I get one of these: Gigabyte M912V
Picked up MSI Wind More to come
I picked up an MSI Wind today. I needed a more portable solution than my Macbook Pro 17″. (I still plan to get the unibody one when it comes out) I still plan to get a Vaio P-Series at some point, you just can’t beat the screen res and size of that thing.
I started playing around with it, am working on putting OSX on it. I was going to go the MSIWindOSX86.iso method but I like clean installs. So, I am working on methodology that allows me to do full vanilla updates etc.
If it doesn’t frustrate the hell out of me, I’ll do a write up and video on what I did 
If it doesn’t work well enough, linux baby!
HowTo – Install Boxee XBMC on Apple TV
This video and write up will explain how to install Boxee and XBMC on to your Apple TV for Mac/OSX users. We may do a video at some point on how to do this from a Windows or Linux based operating system. But at this time, we are mainly Mac and will show you how to do this.
Hardware used in this HowTo:
Computer and OS: Macbook Pro 17″ running Mac OSX 10.5.6
Apple TV: 40GB with version 2.3
USB Drive: PNY 2GB Attache “High-Speed”
Plug in the USB Drive you will use into a free USB port. Read more
Home Media center 2007/2008
In late 2007 and early 2008 we decided we were going to build a home media center and blog it. We got about 90% through the project when we decided to look at the OSX (Mac) platform and scrubbed the “Windows” based MCE.
I wanted to share with you what we did blog. Some of it is silly… (We were playing with various time-lapse stuff to stay within YouTube’s length limitations)
This first video gives a quick tour of our place in Las Vegas and what we had then:
This next video shows us putting all of the parts we got together: (We did another speed up and added some music to make it interesting – LOL)
This was about as far as we got with this project.