Windows Experience Blog : AMD

Behold the Dell Inspiron Zino HD

Brandon LeBlanc — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:38:42 GMT

Yesterday, Dell officially announced availability of the Dell Inspiron Zino HD.

The Inspiron Zino HD is a small PC that packs quite a punch in an 8” by 8” square. Hip to be square, right? Ok – enough Huey Lewis, let’s talk about what this PC comes (and can be configured) with:

It comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit or Windows 7 Professional 64-bit*.
You can customize the PC with 7 solid colors.
You can customize the PC with 3 designs.
The Inspiron Zino HD uses AMD’s Athlon processor (single or dual core).
The base configuration is 3GB of RAM, but can be configured with 4, 6, and 8GB of RAM with 8GB being the max.
Storage shouldn’t be a problem with your choice of 500GB, 640GB, 750GB, or 1TB 7200rpm SATA hard drives.
You can choose either a DVD +/- RW drive or Blu-ray drive.
For graphics, you can choose either an integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 or discrete ATI Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB of dedicated memory.
It has HDMI and VGA ports.
A 4-in-1 media card reader and integrated gigabit Ethernet are both standard.
It has integrated 2.1 High Definition audio with the choice of going with a Sound Blaster X-Fi High Definition audio from Creative.
For your wireless needs, you can choose either a Dell 1397 802.11 b/g wireless card or Dell 1520 802.11 b/g/n wireless card.

This little PC starts at just $229 and can be customized to support a variety of configurations depending on your needs.

Matter a fact, Dell’s Lionel Menchaca talks about a perfect use for the Inspiron Zino HD – a Windows Media Center “hub” with Windows 7. You can connect this PC up to your HDTV via HDMI and play HD Blu-ray movies. You can buy a USB TV tuner to watch and record live TV in Windows Media Center and also stream video content via Internet TV and Netflix.

For a powerful Windows Media Center setup with Windows 7, it is recommended when ordering your Inspiron Zino HD you choose the discrete graphics option (the ATI Radeon HD 4330) for the best experience. With with the storage options you get with the Inspiron Zino HD, you can literally make this PC the centralized “hub” on your network for all your digital media. And of course HomeGroup in Windows 7 makes it easier than ever to share that content with the rest of your PCs on your network too.

In the coming months I’m hoping to pick one of these up and deploy it in my home as my own Windows Media Center hub.

* Base model comes with Windows Vista Home Basic SP1 32-bit.

Photos credit: Dell. See the full set of Inspiron Zino HD photos from Dell’s official Flickr page.

Watching TV in Windows Vista with the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB

Brandon LeBlanc — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 07:02:00 GMT

Windows Media Center makes it really easy to watch TV on Windows Vista (Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate) with a built in Guide that lets you browse TV shows and movies and schedule recordings of your favorite ones. Many PCs today come with TV functionality built in via TV cards. But not all Windows Vista PCs come equipped with TV capability. Unlike a few years ago - adding TV functionality to your PC is very easy. Let me share my experience in adding TV functionality to one of my PCs.

AMD brings TV capability to your PC through their ATI TV Wonder products. Some of their products are PC cards that must be installed inside the actual PC - and others are USB devices that can simply be plugged in to a USB port. I picked up AMD's ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner - which is Certified for Windows Vista. This small USB device lets you plug in a coaxial cable for TV capability or use an antenna for free over-the-air television - including over-the-air HDTV.

The ATI TV Wonder 600 USB has the following features:

USB 2.0
Hybrid TV Tuner Stick for:

Over-the-air Digital TV / HDTV1 (ATSC)
Over-the-air / Cable Analog TV (NTSC)

Remote control
Telescopic antenna to receive free-to-air TV channels
Capture from VCRs, camcorders with the included audio/video input cable

I took some unboxing shots to share with you:

Setting up TV functionality in Windows Media Center is really easy. If you have not used Windows Media Center before, when you launch Windows Media Center for the first time it will take you through a series of steps to set everything up.

If you have used Windows Media Center before and already did Windows Media Center's initial setup - to set up TV all you need to do is go to Settings and TV and click on "Set Up TV Signal". Windows Media Center will take you through a series of screens with options to set up everything you need for watching TV.

Picking up the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner allowed me to easily add TV functionality to my main desktop PC. I had TV functionality in a matter of just a few minutes. Since the ATI TV Wonder 600 is a USB device, I can pack the device up and take it with me and use it on my laptop as well.

Hauppauge also offers products for bringing TV onto your PC and Windows Media Center.

I plan to dive deeper in several upcoming posts in using Windows Media Center and TV functionality.

The era of Quad-Core is upon us!

Brandon LeBlanc — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:48:00 GMT

On Monday, Nick and I flew out to San Francisco to attend AMD's Premiere Event announcing their quad-core Opteron processor. With Intel's quad-core hardware and now AMD moving full speed ahead - the era of quad-core processing is here!

Prior to the event, we met up with Featured Community members Michael Reyes, John Obeto, and Carlos Echenique to attend a blogger meet-up with some folks from AMD. Michael is from the website HardwareGeeks , John owns and runs the website SmallBizVista, and Carlos runs the website PlanetAMD64. I also had the huge pleasure of meeting Alessandro Perilli from the website Virtualization.info. Alessandro is one of the leading bloggers in blogging on virtualization technology on the web.

At the blogger meet-up, we were all surprised by a visit from AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz.

At the Herbst International Exhibit Hall, AMD had several demo stations set up for folks to play with quad-core PCs. Nick had a chance to play Midway's upcoming game Stranglehold powered by AMD's Phenom quad-core processor. AMD had several different demo stations including one demoing some very impressive video-editing capabilities.

Later, we were all bused over to the Letterman Digital Arts Center for the launch event. The Letterman Digital Arts Center was created by George Lucas and LucasFilm on the grounds of the Presidio. The Letterman Digital Arts Center houses many of the LucasFilm divisions (such as ILM) and is a state-of-the-art digital entertainment facility. When arriving, we knew right away we were at a LucasFilm facility as we were greeted by some familiar faces:

We then made our way into the Letterman Digital Arts Center where we were directed into their 298-seat, state-of-the-art, THX-certified screening room equipped for digital projection. It was a very impressive theater room. The event kicked off with AMD's Hector Ruiz announcing the Opteron quad-core processor and then introducing LucasFilm producer Rick McCallum to talk about LucasFilm's partnership with AMD.

Rick showcased a really neat video of the special effects ILM did for the movie Transformers. Take a look at the video:

Video: AMD Barcelona Launch: ILM Video

Overall, I shot over 9GB of HD video footage from the event. Using Windows Movie Maker, I spliced the video into segments and uploaded the special effects video above to Soapbox. If I had a quad-core processor, editing and rendering video such as my HD footage would be quite a bit faster and more efficient. Quad-core processors will offer quite a bit of advantage to Windows Vista users as they hit the market as they will enable the user to do much more with digital video, sound, and even games.

Special thanks to AMD for having us out for the event.