Lately I’ve started using an iPOD for listening to music at work and in my car. I was shocked to learn that my device that was previously used with a MAC cannot be managed by a PC without reformatting! I thought we were beyond that and I was definitely expecting Apple to hide the file format mess from the iPOD users – I’m very disappointed, Apple! My Sony walkman never demanded to use only tapes recorded on a Sony tape deck or otherwise reformat them …
Category Archives: computer
XBox 360 + Netflix + Big Screen = I’ve seen the future
When MS came out with their new user interface on November 19th 2008 I was first reluctant to upgrade the XBox software. But you don’t really get an option with MS and after a couple of raving reviews by some friends of mine I took the leap and upgraded 2 days later. MS has partnered up with Netflix and has added a plugin to stream movies out of the Netflix Instant queue. Although the selection is currently limited to 5000+ older movies or TV series it was an interesting offering, especially because I already had a netflix subscription. When I watched the instant movies on a PC I was already impressed by how stable and mature the netflix player was. It got even better on the XBox. On the big screen (I’m projecting with a 80″ diagonal) I was scared of visible artefacts from the compressed stream. Also at the PC I had problems keeping periodic interrupts from disturbing the frame rate. No such thing on the XBox though. As long as the bandwidth of the Internet service provider (ISP) holds up the movie quality is first grade (I have a suspicion that netflix is throtteling its bandwidth, too, though when too many people access the same stream). TV series are even streamed in HD quality (720p I believe). They look crisp and vivid on the big screen. A delight to watch! How far have we come from the 486 days, when I saw the first movie streamed in a Saturn Media markt, just 15 years ago…
After the first viewing of a “Heros” show I went: Wow, I just saw the future. Sorry cable providers, you better come up with a good plan, ’cause I ain’t payin for your service any more…
Yieeeha!
My new Apple (clone)
Did I tell you about my new toy? I’ve built a macPro. Only that it is 1.98x faster than the machine you can buy from Apple. EFI-X is selling a USB dongle that makes an almost generic PC look like Apple hardware to the OS-X disk. So after having a top of the line Quad-Core Extreme Edition PC sitting in the corner collecting dust, I was ready to throw in another $200 to try if this would really work. And it did. This machine is absolutely amazing. I can add as many cheap hard-drives as I want, add memory to my liking and tune (even overclock) the hardware as I want. I’m totally amazed by this product and it has enabled me to use the PC the way it was meant to be used. This machine is now even part of our living room, playing iTunes and MrsM loves it for editing photos on it.