Road Kill on the Convergence Highway: Three months with Windows Media Center
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The first secret is that you need to scam your way into getting a copy of Windows XP Media Edition 2005, which is only sold to OEMs. Usually, OEMs are companies like Dell and HP. You too can be an OEM by buying some OEM computer parts to use with the OEM software. Most of ‘em want you to buy a carload of cases and power supplies and motherboards to qualify as an OEM. Directron.com wants to sell you a mouse. I buy the mouse and snare a shrink wrap Windows MCE 2005, plus the snazzy Microsoft remote control. $125 for the OS, $35 for the remote, $2.99 for the mouse. ( rampy note: fyi you can also get MCE 2005 from PC Alchemy or New Egg similiar hardware bundling requirements still apply)
In the great tradition of “gadgets beget gadgets” the mouse comes with an IR receiver on a long USB wire so you can hide the humming beast in a closet.
I made sure that I had the best of any of them. More disks, faster AMD Athlon 64 CPU, Zalman Cooler, Gigs of memory, DVD readers & writers, video in, DVI out. The pile of packages alone was a nerd badge of courage.
I can follow instructions as well as the next middle-aged geek, so I stuffed it into the “world’s quietest computer case” (an Antec Sonata) wired it all together and booted it up.
Oh boy. Right there on the monitor was the product of a zillion bucks worth of Microsoft Research, the “Ten Foot Interface”. This is supposed to let you use a remote control instead of keyboard & mouse to navigate around ten-foot interface “My Problem” PC applications.
It actually worked. I could record two TV shows and watch a third at the same time. I was majorly converged. Whipping stuff off cable TV and mixing in stuff from the Web. I could see the movie posters, casts and reviews for 200 channels for the next two weeks.
