Linux Media Center for all available

[Alpine]

THE NEWS ABOUT TOYS keeps coming in, there is a lot of good stuff out there. The first thing up in the second part of the third update for this week is Shuttle with their new SB775G5 XPC. This one is in the new G5 case, very nice, I have one here, and it supports Intel LGA775 chips. It is based on the i875P chipset, and sports AGP8X, ECC DDR400 and SATA RAID. For I/O it has about everything you could ever care about, from USB to SPDIF. Slick toy.


What can you do with it? Put Linux on it, and run the new Cyberlink PowerCinema suite. Please note, I said Linux and Cyberlink. If you want a full featured media center PC running something other than Windows, you can now do it, legally. This version looks and feels like the Windows version, has an OpenGL media center GUI interface, supports remote controls, and plays DVDs. It will even do widescreen output and supports instant on. While it is currently OEM only, how long will it be before you can buy it retail? Linux users, your software has arrived.

Moving on to a more intellectual exercise, we come to two books by O'Reilly, Degunking Your Email, Spam and Viruses, and Spam Kings. Degunking is about what you would expect it to be, setting up the software you use correctly, best practices on avoiding infection, and how to remove the little critters if you do get hit. While many of you probably understand all of this, you might want to get a copy to lend to your friends instead of fixing their machines every week. That or you could just give them Firefox and Thunderbird.

Spam Kings is about the world of the people who send spam, and profit from the above critters that infest your systems. Come to think of it, the critter term applies equally to the perpetrators and their products. It talks about the spammers, their foes, and interviews a good number of both. Not just the 'human' side of this plague, it also looks at the technical aspects of spamming. Yay?

The last two of the bunch are from OCZ. The first is the new 600 Watt PowerStream Power Supply. I have a 520W version of this thing here, and I can say several things about it that apply to the 600W version. It is really quiet, has nice long braided cables, and lots of plugs. The case itself is this silvery black color that people tend to stare at and rub a lot. I will be writing it up in full soon, and this 600W one is simply more of a good thing. Last up is a new entry in OCZ's Platinum line of DDR products. This one is the PC-4200 EL Platinum and it comes in 2.5-3-3-8 timings, which should be good enough for almost anyone short of Fugger. It comes in 512MB and 1GB dual channel kits of matched DIMMs. All are in a shiny platinum finish, and if their copper ones are a guide, look pretty damn nice.

Source:

The INQ!