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Awhile back I purchased an HTC Hero. It was my first Android handst, and I was thoroughly satisfied by the Android experience. Inevitably, I ended up returning the phone, for several reasons:
1) The Hero’s SenseUI was custom built on top of Android. There was no set date that the Hero would be getting OS updates (like Android 2.0). Until recently, neither HTC nor Sprint would say whether or not they would be pushing the update at all.
2) It was a very solid phone and fluid user experience, but the internally, the phone was running last-gen hardware. It’s not that big of a deal, but I want to be able to purchase something top of the line that will be sufficient for most of the 2-year contract period.

With that being said, here are what I believe to be the main advantages of the N1. It is running the latest version of Android of any phone on the market (Android 2.1). The hardware is the best of it’s kind on the market (snapdragon).

The touchscreen is slightly larger than the iPhone, and it’s still a very slim phone. It has one of the best cameras of cell phones (5 megapixel), and out of the box supports standard things like picture messaging, copy+paste, stereo bluetooth, gps, and video which first gen iPhone users can’t even do. The GPS Navigation software is standard on Android phones, unlike the iPhone whose software for turn-by-turn is added to monthly service or the TomTom software’s initial costs are about $100.

Overall, I think that the N1 is the first all-around Android phone that rivals side-by-side any other smartphone out right now. The only Android disadvantage is the lack of quality apps, which should hopefully change over time, remember, the iPhone has a headstart by a few years.

As I had posted last month, I built my first computer from scratch.  So far it has performed exceptionally well for media playback.  As soon as I had all of my media players configured and codecs installed, my computer handled 1080P HD Playback flawlessly.  The next phase of my testing was to determine the gaming capabilities of a relatively current game.

I purchased Dragon Age about a month ago.  I won’t go into too much detail about the game itself, but it’s a great game.  Initially I setup the game on it’s highest settings which would be 1080P resolution, high texture, anti-aliasing, and high graphics.  The game was playable, but it lagged quite a bit which was a major pain.  Inevitably I gradually lowered the settings to see how much my system could handle where I could play the game comfortably.  I’ve lowered the resolution to 720P, textures to low, anti-aliasing off, and graphics details to low.

Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in how poorly my system handles games, but at the same time I’m not surprised.  Nowhere has atom/ion been advertised as a gaming processor.  So I still say my system does well in what it was intended to do, which was be my HTPC.  It functions perfectly running Windows Media Center, and I can still game at low settings if I choose.

Still, I might have my family inherit this computer once I start my next build sometime next year.  I’m looking to go Quad Core i7 this time around.

I’m loving it!  Fired up my HTPC for the first time, so far I have already installed Windows 7, the hardware drivers, and some updates, now to get it all setup for playing movies.

This is a thing of beauty.  The performance is amazing, and it makes almost no sound at all.  I can’t wait to test out it’s gaming capabilities even though that’s not going to be a major focus of this build.  Mostly I’m going to use this for HD playback.

Once I get everything setup I’ll post pictures of the build and specifics on the hardware and software.

I have everything now except for the optical drive and the RAM. The project is almost complete, and I can’t wait to fire this baby up. I hope everything starts off without a hitch, but I have this weird feeling that I’m going to face some obstacle.

So far, everything together, the case is really cramped. Everything just barely fits, I hope the optical drive doesn’t add too much to that…

So I finally decided to fund my first, fully from scratch, computer.  This project is particularly special, because I’m specifically building an HTPC.

I made a list of features that I wanted it to have:

• Supports 1080p without any lag since it will be connected to my big screen LCD TV.
• Able to play games relatively well.
• Needs to be small (mini-ITX)
• Consumes very low power since I will have it on all the time.
• Generates very little heat (which is pretty much the same as low power)

Based on all of this, I ended up choosing the following hardware:

• Zotac Motherboard, Atom330 Processor, and Nvidia Ion GPU
• 4GB RAM 800 Mhz – Corsair
• 1TB HDD – Western Digital
• USB TV Tuner
• Thermaltake Mini-ITX HTPC Case

It will be running Windows 7, and it’s primary function will be Windows Media Center; however, I will also use it as my primary computer in my room.  I already have a wireless keyboard and mouse that I will continue to use with it, and I’ll use my ipod touch as a wireless media remote.

So far I have received the Motherboard, TV Tuner and RAM, and I’m expecting the HDD tomorrow and the case next week sometimes.  More on this after it all comes together!