New Toys

Last weekend I went out and bought an Iwill XP4. I've been wanting to add a PC to my home enteratinment system for quite a while. I have speakers built into many of the rooms around my house and I regularly pump music through my AudioTron Ethernet Digital Music Player for Home Networks .

I like the Audiotron a lot; I have my CD collection ripped and on a Linux Samba server and the Audiotron encourages me to play music I've forgotten about. I also have become an Internet Radio addict and have even gotten into the habit of listening to local Seattle radio stations over the net instead of through a tuner.

I was also an early adopter of PressPlay which has recently been bought out by the new Napster. This is a great service. For $9.99 per month I have unlimited streaming access to zillions of songs. It's a great legal way to hear new music without having to buy the CDs. But the only problem is that it only works on a PC, I can't play the Napster streaming audio through my Audiotron. The hope of fixing this sent me on my journey to buy a new PC. What I wanted was a small, good looking machine.

It always bothers me that the PC industry only seems to be able to build ugly boxes. Say what you will about Macintoshes, Apple does kick-ass industrial design. I've always wondered why there weren't more form factors available in the PC world. You'd think that in a market which sells tens of millions of units there would be plenty of niche players building pcs in every size and type of industrial design imaginable. All I wanted was a nice little PC that would fit into my audio rack. That led me to the IWill XP4.

The XP4 is what they call a barebones system. You buy the box which includes a power supply and motherboard then add your own processor, memory, and disk drives. I've never done this before, and it was a lot of fun. I bought everything at the new Seattle Fry's Electronics and as you would expect, they had everything I needed under one roof. (What you might not expect is that I got good customer service at a Fry's -- those of you who have been to one know how amazing that is.)

One thing that really annoyed me with the system was the loud CPU fan. The Vantec GSN-7015 I bought with the box made a nasty, loud, high-pitched whine. I did some searching around the net and found the Nexus PHT-3600 which I bought from EndPCNoise.com and had on my doorstep two days later. It made a world of a difference; the system was quiet enough to put in my AV room.

One more modification I made was to add a video card which supports S-Video. I chose the ATI Technologies 100-711041 All-In-Wonder VE Radeon 7500 64MB DDR PCI Graphics Card because it was relatively cheap and seemed to have decent support for recroding as well. I've got it hooked up to my big 70" Sony rear-projection TV and it's working just fine. DVDs especially look surprisingly good. And playing streaming video over RealPlayer or with Windows Media Player works better than expected as well.

After I was done with this adventure, I stumbled upon the Hush computer. This thing is GREAT! This is the first company I've seen building an attractive looking PC. The mini-ITX they have available today is interesting, but it won't run a P4 processor. Hush's new system, the ATX, which will be available in January looks like just what I had hoped to find for my AV room. Sleek good-looks, quiet, and plenty of features.

I suspect that when the ATX starts shipping, I'll buy one and move the Iwill XP4 to my computer room and possibly use it as my Linux box. Regardless, the Hush is headed for my audio stack.