Monthly Archives: November 2010

My new NAS External Hard Drive

Technology

In another fantastic purchase, I have now got a new 1 TB External Hard Drive:

Let me tell you how I’m using it! 

First, I set up the External Hard drive.  It’s another low power device that sits directly on the network via ethernet.

Next, I set up our 2 primary computers to automatically back up all of our important data.  It checks and backs up every day.  I do nothing now that it’s all set up.  so, the nice thing is that when iTunes downloads my podcasts, or when I download my new pictures onto the computer, or when I download new videos of the kids, the backup program runs in the background and sends them to the External hard drive.

Now, all of our pics, podcasts, movies, and cookbooks, etc are on the hard drive.  So if a computer goes down, I have it backed up.  And more importantly, I can easily access all of my data from any computer on my network, or even better from a secure website that allows me to log into the hard drive.

What I’m using it for is to stream video, pics, and music to any computer in the house.  Pretty cool!  I’m at least having fun with it!

My Nettop

Uncategorized

In October, I purchased a lenovo nettop for our entertainment center:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130719035307if_/http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=kunzeman-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=B003SCAYIA

It is actually a Christmas present for later, but it’s up and running today… :-)

So, you might think, why would someone go out and buy a nettop instead of just using an old desktop?  Well, for me, I didn’t have an old desktop to use, although prior to the nettop I was using my laptop to do the same functions, but in using my laptop as our media center, I lost the use of my laptop for myself, it wasn’t always the best picture, I had to replace a battery once already ($80), and it sucked more power than I would have liked.

With the nettop, it plays netflix, hulu, and I can do skype pretty well.  I can’t get the Windows Media Center to work well.  With every patch or update, I have to reload hulu and netflix to get them to work without skipping again, so I only use the browser versions of hulu and netflix.  But, it’s a lower powered computer, it goes into power save mode automatically and can restart in the the time it takes me to push the on/off button, find my remotes, sit down, and turn on my TV.  It also came with a pretty neat (and small) wireless keyboard and mouse.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the nettop, but I wish that Windows Media Center would work better with it, so I could use 1 application to run everything.