Research by Design

I am a bit of a techno-geek and as such I have amassed a small collection of gear and devices that make my life both more entertaining, and at times more difficult. Some of the products I recommend, and some of the products I own I would not wish on my worst enemies. I’ll make the difference clear below.

Computers:

1. Primary Laptop (Günther)

A picture of a Dell E1505 model. Mine is a little mmore beaten up than this.

Günther is my three year old Dell Inspiron E1505 workhorse. It is a pretty standard laptop and has served me well over the years. I am still running XP Home MediaCenter edition, but have recently made it into a dual boot machine running Ubuntu 9.0.4.

2. Portable Laptop (Uncle Jalapeno)

Uncle Jalapeno is my Asus EeePC 901. This is the best computing purchase I have made to date. I take this computer with me back and forth to school every day, or whenever I go out. It has outstanding battery life, it is small, portable, and light. It is a little underpowered for some applications, but I only use it for e-mailing, word processing, and surfing the internet while I am on the go, so that is fine with me. It runs Windows XP Home, and Office 2007 which is perfect for me.

And yes, it is pink. As I tell everyone who remarks–it was $50 cheaper that way, and besides, it makes it stand out in a crowd.

Home Theater:

Television: Samsung 32″ Series 3 LCD

DVD/Blu-Ray/Gaming: Playstation3 (Yoda)

This is my Playstation 3--the centerpiece of my home entertainment rig.

The Playstation 3 is simply an amazing device. When I bought it I thought I wanted to get back into computer gaming and that was what I thought it would do, but since then I have found that I use it for so much more. I use it to watch movies from my NAS, show pictures to my friends, watch Blu-Ray movies in hi-def and surround sound, and game online with friends. It is easy to use and just flat out works. It has impressive capabilities, and I recently installed a second OS on it to boot into linux and use it as a web browsing and retro-game playing device. Playing old school Super Nintendo games from my couch with a wireless controller can be a great way to relax.

Surround Sound: Sony 5.1 Channel System

Home Network:

1) Router

Netgear WPN6411. This is a MiMo wireless router from Netgear. It has great range, but lacks stability and does not have a high-speed thoroughput throughout the network. I have had a particularly bad experience with thoroughput from my router to my PS3 at times, which makes streaming video both from the internet and the network particularly difficult.

2) NAS

Buffalo LS-CHL 500. This is about the cheapest and least complicated NAS a person can buy, but I have not had it long enough to really evaluate the performance. I bought it primarily to act as a DLNA server for all of my multimedia–music, films, etc., and to backup my hard drive and important photos and documents.