When you think of extremely powerful PCs for gaming – people usually think of really big desktop towers (yup, I have one…). However, to fight that “stereotype” of gaming PCs, Dell has unveiled the Alienware X51. The Alienware X51 is pretty much one of the smallest gaming desktop PCs to hit the market. From front to back, it measures 12.52”. From top to bottom (from the front), it is just 13.5” tall. And it is 3.74” wide! The idea behind the Alienware X51 was to give gamers the opportunity to do all the awesome gaming but accommodate for flexibility to be used in almost any living space with such a small chassis.
While small in size, the Alienware X51 comes packing quite a punch for such a small desktop PC. It features Intel’s second-generation Core processors (either a Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7) with Intel’s H61 Express Chipset. For awesome high definition gaming and video – the Alienware X51 comes standard with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 545 discrete GPU with 1GB GDDR5 onboard memory. However, you can also get an optional NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555 discrete GPU also with 1GB GDDR5 if you want more graphics power. These GPUs also allow for the Alienware X51 to support 3D – which includes 3D gaming and 3D Blu-ray video. With HDMI 1.4, you can connect this PC to a HDTV and if the HDTV supports 3D – do 3D awesomeness.
Here are the full specs for the Alienware X51:
One of the other things that stood out for me with regard to the Alienware X51 is that with the design of the chassis, Dell made sure to accommodate for “future upgrades”. With the Alienware X51, you’ll be able to perform your own hard-drive, graphics, and memory upgrades quickly and easily.
Not only is the Alienware X51 small and super powerful, it also comes at an affordable price starting at $699. Alienware X51 is available now on Dell.com and Alienware.com.
I also suggest reading this most excellent blog post from John Blain and Frank Azor who is a Product Lead at Alienware on the Direct2Dell blog.
I’ll be blogging more about this PC in a few weeks as I’ve got one coming to me!
It’s that time of year again and I’ve seen plenty of holiday lights go up. I’ve also seen some news stories about the extensive animated light displays people put together which got me wondering about the software and hardware they are using. I didn’t have to look far as I found a great example right here in Seattle. For 3 years Jim Winder, a friend of the Helmstetler Family, has helped them put together a display of lights officially called “West Seattle Lights presents The Helmstetler Family Christmas Spectacular.” The light show starts at 5PM each night and is set to music which is broadcast via a low powered FM transmitter. This is a really impressive display and just one example of the crazy things that people do that are powered by Windows 7.
This kind of project really looks like geek nirvana to me: Hardware, software, electricity, music and even a low power radio transmitter all in need of custom assembly! The lights blink, flash and animate to music exactly has Jim has programmed them. The key to making this all work is hardware controllers that can illuminate strings of lights when commanded by software. Jim is using equipment from Light-O-Rama which I have to tell you, looks like really cool stuff. The software is configured in advance by Jim to construct a sequence of precisely timed commands which are sent to the controllers throughout each song. Each controller can variably light the individual strings that are plugged into it and create special effects like fading up or down, shimmering or blinking.
His display has over 68,000 lights this year on over 700 separate strings and has 560 different channels that can be controlled. While this is an amazing amount of illumination Jim made an investment up front in using all LED lights to keep operating costs low and avoid the other challenges posed by the power consumption of incandescent bulbs. In fact because all the twinkling and flashing keeps the duty cycle very low he figures the additional cost on the power bill is about $30 for the month.
I can imagine the nights and weekends stringing lights, building trees and plugging in extension cords as well as all the troubleshooting that goes with it though I had not considered that the music sequencing would be the most labor intensive part of the process. To get everything just how he wants it Jim estimates it takes him about 6 hours per 30 seconds of song! With a week of work per song this clearly isn’t something that you throw together at the last minute which is why he described it to me as a “year round hobby.” Why does he do it? He says he’s always loved Christmas lights and it’s fun to watch the holiday smiles from kids and adults alike. You can find videos of the 2010 display here and the ‘kickoff’ lighting for the 2011 display here.
This really does seem like it could be a blast so I asked for some advice if I or anyone else wanted to just try it out. Here are his pointers:
I usually do a ton of lights at the holidays but I’ve never tried anything beyond using an X10 system to easily turn them on and off each day but I’m actually considering giving this a shot next year on a very small scale. If you’ve recently tried your hand at this or another DIY lighting automation project let me know what you’re up to and what your experience has been in this thread in the Windows Experts Community.
I’ve been using IE9 since the beta was released and while there is a lot I like I have really come to appreciate a few things in particular. I still run into people that haven’t heard about them or tried them out personally so thought I’d post about them here.
1. Pinning and Jump Lists. Given I’ve used desktop shortcuts and IE favorites for years I was a bit skeptical when I first heard of the pinning feature. What I found was that after I tried it I quickly got to the point where I can’t imagine NOT having it. Really. If you haven’t tried this out, you really should and once you do you should show your friends too. It’s that good.
When I started using it I realized that there are some sites that I use way more often than apps that I have pinned. Pinning them lets me treat these sites like an app. My favorite example of this is Hotmail. From the Jump List I can start composing an email in exactly two clicks. Being able to see the number of new messages in my inbox is just a bonus. I actually respond to my Hotmail email much quicker than I used to when I had it saved in my IE favorites.
All that you have to do is drag the tab at the top of the IE window to your taskbar and let go. You can pin any site to the taskbar but if the site has made a few simple additions you’ll get the full experience of Jump Lists, notifications (like how many new messages in my inbox) and more. There are tons of sites that have done this and you can find many of them listed in the IE Gallery.
If you’ve got a site of your own it’s now easier than ever to enable the full pinning experience for your visitors. Just visit http://buildmypinnedsite.com and follow the instructions.
2. Lower power consumption. This might seem like a small thing but it helps wring the most power out of my ‘always too small’ laptop battery and contributes to reducing overall energy use on any system. Sure I use sleep mode and make my screen dim quicker to save battery but those only work when I’m NOT doing something. Using IE9 as my browser saves some energy while I AM doing something.
Measuring this energy savings goes well beyond my efforts to use a Kill-A-Watt to get my PC’s power consumption down. The IE team has a great blog post on the specifics of how they measured this and the results.
3. Hardware acceleration. This one doesn’t get old but I have started to take it for granted. I’ve found myself using a PC that belongs to someone else and having it feel slightly ‘off’ as I browse the web until I realize it’s not running IE9. The full acceleration really contributes to the overall web experience besides creating truly amazing experiences in some specific scenarios. There are a couple great posts on the IE blog about this including a breakdown of the HTML blizzard demo and a rundown on the hardware acceleration architecture.
If you haven’t taken the time to install IE9 you really should check it out. Once you have it installed try out the pinning on your favorite sites. It’s truly one of those things that’s hard to be without after you experience it.
One of my favorite features of Windows 7 is Windows Media Center. For several years now it’s been the main way my family records and watches TV as well as watches Netflix and DVD’s. To add to some of the cool things I can do with it though I’ve been eagerly awaiting the first network attached CableCARD tuner, the HDHomeRun Prime from SiliconDust. The benefits of networked tuners has been covered in previous posts here but the inclusion of CableCARD support in a networked tuner makes for a deluxe solution for getting TV on your PC anywhere in your home.
The HDHomeRun Prime is a small standalone device that connects directly to your home network by plugging into an Ethernet port on your router or a network hub. It also takes a coax connection from your cable company and accepts a CableCARD that they can provide for you. Once connected you have three separate tuners that can be used to watch or record from. Windows 7 PCs on your home network can then use these tuners to watch and record live TV with Windows Media Center.
I’ve been using one for a few weeks now and I have to say that my favorite thing is being able to get TV to my laptop without having to plug into anything. I was surprised how well it worked over my wireless actually. I’ve got an 802.11n network at home and it just simply worked. Once connected over Wi-Fi I was able to use Media Center to watch a live show from anywhere in my house. A quick look at Resource Monitor showed a stream between about 6 to 10Mbps on average while I was watching Pawn Stars.
The tuners are ‘pooled’ when you configure several PC’s to use them which allows me to do things like record two shows using the desktop PC in the playroom while watching another channel live on my laptop. I can do any combination of watching and recording from various PCs across the three tuners provided.
It gives me tuners on my main Media Center machine but since I don’t have to dedicate a tuner to any one PC it makes it easy to get TV to places in the house where I have a PC and might only occasionally want to watch TV. This is the case with the first PC I configured, the one in our kitchen. It’s pretty slick as of course you don’t need to run any coax to the PC, install a card or even connect a USB device. You just install the software and configure Media Center on a PC that is digital cable ready and you are set to go.
The initial HDHomeRun configuration was easy and took only a few minutes including a quick call to my cable company to enable the CableCARD. I used the ‘Device Webpage’ link from the configuration utility to check the status menu to see when it had received the signal from them and was ready to go. I’ve made the mistake in the past of hanging up before I had time to confirm a successful activation. Watching this screen helps avoid that problem entirely.
Once the device itself is setup I just went to the PC’s I wanted to enable and ran the HDHomeRun setup program and then Windows Media Center Live TV setup. I had already run the Digital Cable Advisor prior to this to confirm my PC was digital cable ready. No additional calls or authorization from the cable company are necessary.
After setting up a few systems I could do something I’ve wanted to be able to do with digital cable for a long, long time. Easily get premium digital cable content to all the Windows 7 PC’s in my house. If three tuners aren’t enough SiliconDust has a dual CableCARD version available that provides six separate tuners.
Links:
Network Tuners are Chock Full of Win – Great blog post with more details on network tuners
Digital Cable Advisor – Tips on verifying compatibility and enabling your Windows 7 PC for digital cable.
Windows Experts Community Forums – Get advice and talk with other enthusiasts about network tuners and or anything related to Windows.
HDHomeRun Prime – SliconDust’s product page for the HDHomeRun Prime.
I’m sure as a knowledgeable Windows user you regularly back up your data. You are backing up your data, right? If not, then please remember that Windows 7 includes Backup and Restore which you can find off the Start Menu in the Maintenance folder. There is some great information on using Windows Backup and Restore on the Windows website.
As a techie I don’t need to extoll the virtues to you of creating regular backups. But backups are only useful if you can restore what you want when you want to. Over the years I’ve learned some tips and techniques (the hard way in some cases) to help make sure my backup system comes through when I need it. As I was backing up my systems at home to prepare for a move it occurred to me to that I should post about my approach to safeguarding my data and making recovery simple if I need to do it.
None of these tips do any good if you don’t backup regularly though so please do that. None of them apply exclusively to the backup features included in Windows either so you can use them no matter what your preference is for backup software.
Testing
If at all possible, test whatever method you use. I’ve heard stories from people about going back to a backup only to discover they hadn’t really prepared as well as they thought. Quite often this is because they were not backing up all their data. Perhaps they had added a new drive at some point or moved where they were storing files but the point is the data they needed wasn’t there. Another situation that I’ve experienced personally is where I thought that the backup would be easy to restore to a ‘bare metal’ or ‘clean’ system if I had a major failure which turned out not to be the case.
You can reduce the chances of a surprise like this by testing your backup system. Not everyone will have what is needed for a full blown test of all scenarios but if you are like me you build and upgrade systems often enough that you occasionally have some ‘spare’ hardware on hand. If you’ve got the hardware you might want to test recovering from a hardware failure such as a disk drive. With a ‘spare’ drive you can carefully disconnect the working one from your system, attach the empty one and practice restoring the whole system. Can you find your system repair disk to get the system booted to access the backup? Did the backup restore properly?
For more simple scenarios you don’t need anything special at all. Simply grab your backup and try to restore a file or two as if you overwrote or deleted it. Did it work? Was it easy?
Covering your bases
Take a few minutes to think about what scenarios you might need to recover from. We all know that backups are important if you need to restore a deleted file or a failed disk but what other scenarios might you want to cover? For instance what about theft or complete loss from flood or fire? What if it wasn’t that your drive failed but that someone stole your laptop? What if someone broke into your home and took your system? Do you use a portable backup disk that is normally connected to the system? What if they took that too? Do you backup to Windows Home Server? What if it was stolen along with your PC?
Certainly covering every possible case is not realistic but I’d say it’s worth it to at least consider which ones you’d want to be prepared for. Keeping the portable backup disk somewhere separate from your other equipment, in a safe or at least well hidden place may help protect against the theft scenario. Backups are insurance and like buying insurance it’s all about what you wish to protect yourself against and what it’s worth to you.
A little help from your friends
Enterprises rely on offsite backups for critical data and it’s actually easier than you think for us ‘non-enterprise’ types to do this too. One of my favorite ways to cover this is with a friend or relative. If you consider it worthwhile you can invest in a portable USB or eSATA backup disk and occasionally relocate it to a secure ‘undisclosed location’ which in my case is commonly known as ‘my mother’s house’. Just take your spare backup drive to a relative’s house when you visit for thanksgiving and leave it there. A few times a year simply bring your latest backup and exchange drives. As an added bonus you can do the same for your relatives by taking theirs home with you. If you are like me you’ll be checking on mom’s system to make sure it’s backed up properly when you visit for the holidays anyway.
You can do this just as easily with other types of media. Instead of an external drive you could occasionally burn critical files to DVD or Blu-Ray and store them at a friends or relatives house. This is a reasonably simple way to cover for theft and fire. I should note that there are backup services that allow you to store data in the cloud that cover this scenario very conveniently. The most common reason I hear for not using them for offsite backups is size. For example a sizable music collection is something you might want to protect that represents a big investment, takes a lot of space and doesn’t change frequently. This is exactly the type of data well suited to archiving remotely.
To wrap this up I’d say that just putting a bit of thought and time in up front can pay off in the end as it always seems like things fail at the worst possible time. I have had hardware failures that could have induced a heart attack but since I was confident that the backups were there and worked properly they were rather stress free and as expected, were easy to recover from.
I’ve captured the tips covered here in a Wiki entry in the Windows Experts Community. If you’ve got more tips or tricks for protecting your data please consider adding them by signing in and editing the page.