Eee PC 701SD with a Touchscreen

A few months ago, I picked up an Eee PC 701SD from mwave.com for a scant $120 shipped. Yeah, it only has a 900 MHz CPU and a 8GB SSD, but it runs XP well. The price is not a bad deal for ANY complete PC, I'd say. But what to do with it? I already have a customized Eee PC 901 that I love. I take the 901 with me wherever and whenever I need to compute away from home. Since my mobile needs are already being met, I decided that this 701SD will be my project machine. The first mod I'd try would be a touchscreen. I found a nice one on DealExtreme.com for $35 with free shipping. The catch is that most items from this site ship from Hong Kong. That means that it took 3 1/2 weeks to arrive to me on the east coast of the US. A bit long for my liking, but oh well. What arrived was a 7" touchscreen and a combo USB hub and touch controller, along with various cables. No instructions or drivers were provided, but they were easy enough took look up on the net. It took me about 2 hours of total labor to install and configure. Basically plug and play.

I have to say that I'm rather impressed with what I recieved for $35. The touchscreen works as advertised, and the driver software has a nice config tool. It just works. A machine like this would cost hundreds if I bought it in a store. I built it for $155. The only cosmetic issue is that the bezel bulges slightly around the screen and on the side. No big deal. Also, using a stylus is better than your finger for precision computing. Having said that, this machine would do very well in any number of applications in home or workplace scenarios. Overall, I'm happy with it.

Review: Verizon FiOS HD-DVR

In an attempt to find the perfect HDTV recording solution, I bit the bullet recently and ordered Verizon's HD-DVR solution for FiOS, the Motorola QIP6416-2. This is basically a standard set top box with a hard drive inside. It will record 80 hours SD or 20 hours HD, on top of the standard FiOS set top functions, like On Demand, etc. I had been using an HTPC running Windows XP Media Center Edition for recording purposes. I really loved Media Center, but my configuration only did SDTV recording, so a new solution was in order for HDTV. A comparable Windows 7 HDTV recording solution would cost $500-600. No dice. We're in a recession.

Compared to MCE, the Motorola box matches up well. It records in slightly better quality, and the scheduling is much the same. The new box has 2 tuners, so I can watch one show and record another, which I couldn't do with Windows unless I bought another tuner and rented another cable box or cablecard. The only thing that MCE has on the new box is the scheduling and searching menus are a little easier to use in Windows. FiOS' interface I find a little clunky, but not unusable.

One area definitly improved upon is power consumption. I no longer have to leave my HTPC, battery backup, and my FiOS modem on all the time, so the monthly energy cost savings should be significant. It may even pay for the extra monthly cost of the FiOS box. We'll see.

The QIP6416-2 replaced the QIP7100-1 that I had been using for quite a while. The QIP7100-1 was faster in the areas of channel changing and Program Guide navigation. The IR receiving in general was better on the 7100. Oh well.

Bottom Line: If you have FiOS and an HDTV, and are on the fence about getting the DVR, get it. This box is the only truly cost effective way to record HDTV, and probably will be for a while.

Recording HDTV: What are the options?

I currently have an HTPC that records my SD content, but I'd like to be able to record HD content. I pay handsomely for it, in both hardware and content subscriptions, so why not record it? TV is now on our schedules, right? So, there are many ways of accomplishing this. They could be cheap or expensive, easy or difficult, so let's run through them.

OTA vs. Pay

If you don't wanna pay for television content, you can receive and record over-the-air digital SD and HDTV content cheaply and easily. This content is not encrypted, and there are several hardware manufacturers like Hauppauge that make ATSC tuners that record in HD. Simply build or buy a cheap PC that is capable of playing back 1080i smoothly, add a tuner/capture card, and you're all set. there are also stand-alone set-top boxes that can do this without a PC. If you pay for cable/satellite/fiber though, the solution is not so easy. In order to record your pay channels in HD, you have to use one of the methods discussed below.

Hardware: CableCard vs. HD-PVR

There are 2 ways one can record pay HD content. The first is to record from a set-top box over component cables into a device like the Hauppauge HD-PVR. This method makes use of what's called the Analog Hole. Pretty straightforward. GB-PVR, BeyondTV, SageTV support this. Windows Media Center does only through a 3rd party plugin. Content owners hate this, but oh well. We paid for the content, right? The other method is recording via a set-top box or PC containing a CableCard. This is a card fits into the back of a set-top or PC and acts as a cable box to decode channels. Windows Media Center plays well with this, as does TiVo. Providers chage a fee of a few dollars a month for this, usually the same or less than the cost of an actual box. Either option is costly for the hardware, usually > $600 plus possible monthly fees.

Box Options: TiVo vs. Provider DVR

If you chose CableCard, then you have another choice to make. You need a box. A TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD would do the trick. The hardware is a bit high, as is the monthly fee, but it's a great solution. There are other set-top and HTPC makers that sell this type of equipment. Shop around. You could conversely rent your TV provider's DVR solution. This is a good relatively cheap solution, because you don't have to buy the box. Don't expect a lot in the way of features or reliablity though, as these devices are in their infancy.

Software: WMC vs. Other

Windows Media Center (formerly XP Media Center Edition) is probably the most popular and best DVR suite available, along with TiVo. It's got a great UI, free program guide, and just works. Windows 7 specifically has the killer version of this, with support for h264 recording. If you don't wanna go this route, get a 3rd party app like GB-PVR, BeyondTV, SageTV. You might have to pay a subscription fee for the program guide, depending on who you go with.

Conclusion

Since I have Verizon FiOS, I'm going to wait for the next firmware update for the current generation of FiOS DVRs, which currently seem buggy and unreliable, before I take the plunge. This seems to be the cheapest and easiest, although not the best, way of recording my HD content.

My New Toy: Asus Eee PC 701SD

I got this from mwave.com for $120 shipped. Not bad, eh? Yeah, it's only 900MHz, but I did upgrade the RAM to 1GB. The 8GB SSD is slow for writes but not bad for reads. I can always upgrade it if necessary. I'm running some benchmarks on it now. I'm trying to find decent jukebox software so that I can possibly turn this thing into a touchscreen jukebox. If not, I'll probably sell it on ebay or something. It's a decent computing experience overall. Flash runs smooth in full screen. The internal speakers are ok. The screen is obviously small, but I don't think it's annoying. I might try and run Windows 7 on it. Stay tuned for the benchmarks.

XP vs. Windows 7 RTM on the Eee PC 901

In a previous installment, I posted some preliminary benchmarks for Windows 7 RC vs. XP. Based on the feedback I received, it seems that people are interested in this sort of thing, so I thought I'd continue with it. I recently got a hold of the RTM (release to manufacturing) build of Windows 7 Ultimate, so here goes.

As previous, I'm dual booting XP and 7 across a Runcore 32GB SSD (PATA) on the 901 for ease of comparison, and because I wasn't ready to stop using XP altogether on my 901 because it runs really well and I'm very happy with it. This 901 has 2GB RAM (up from 1GB stock). Installed is the 2103 BIOS (official) that fixes the black screen video issue in Windows 7. Windows 7 RTM default drivers are installed except for ACPI (from Asus) and Aero is enabled. SuperHybridEngine is installed and set to Super High Performance mode for both. XP has all the latest official drivers running. Both have all Windows Updates installed. PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0 was used for the PassMark scoring.











Conclusion

Windows 7 RTM seems to have closed the performance gap quite a bit on XP in the latest build, especially in the areas of CPU and Memory benchmarks. My results last round did not have SHE enabled in the Windows 7 side, so that might explain it. Plus I'm using a different PassMark version. SSD performace is still great on Win7, which is very good to hear. What I take away from this is that XP is overall going to give a user the better Windows Experience of the two, but Windows 7 is now a viable netbook OS.

Coming up next... XP vs. Windows 7 on the Eee PC 701SD.