Clint sends me an email. He’s asking for an HTPC review. And I just KNOW it is coming my way. The upside? It is an all-in-one box. Amps, fanless design, interesting form factor… Nope, I’m not letting myself get excited. I’m not going to get my hopes up. It is a long shot that they’ll send me one anyways and even then, it’s running Vista (never a good sign). We’ll see if it is worth a damn. I keep hoping that someone will do it right. Someone will load up all the right drivers, make sure everything works well together, and then lock everything down tight. No more updates, no user “tweaking”… just lock it down tight. But that’s not the way it works is it? They’ll have to allow security updates, driver updates, player updates… and then the problems will creep in. Not to mention that there hasn’t been a stable PC since… um… ever. When was the last time your DVD player crashed? Receiver? TV? OK my TV “crashed” a couple of times in the last few months but everything else has been pretty stable. What they need is the ability to strip Vista/Windows/whatever of all that unnecessary code. An HTPC version if you will. That will be the only way that I can see this really working. But if they can’t get the base OS working right, what hope do they really have? Still, we can’t all switch to Macs can we? That’d be admitting those Mac-heads have been right all along and I don’t think the ecosystem can take that many swelling heads all at once.

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