Wish list for next Christmas

It's never too early to think ahead.

One of the new purchases I would like to add to our entertainment center is a media server. Ideally, this media server would be able to work for audio and video. However, if we are to talk about audio only, the Sonos Digital Music System is pretty close to the ideal system.

• All music can be centrally stored
• Music can be streamed to any part of the house, independently (different streams to different areas of the house) or in sync (same stream to different parts of the house).
• Nice remote for controlling the music

At the moment, with all our music centrally stored, we can use Windows Media Player (or any other software) to access it. We have a computer hooked up to our entertainment system in the family room, but to listen to our music repository in the bedroom, we would have to carry a computer in there. Not quite convenient. This is where a system like Sonos would be handy. Of course there are other systems as well, but Sonos provides the best integrated system (with the ability to play the same stream in different rooms, having a simple interface, and so on).

A similar system for movies and other video we have would be ideal. Since many of our shows are still on ReplayTV units, then a central video repository for all recorded shows would be difficult. We have almost 2 TB capacity on our ReplayTV units and one PC with over 1 TB capacity.

The plans for this coming year's computer purchase is an ultra-small IBM, I mean Lenovo, desktop. This will replace the computer in the media room, and the one in the media room will become my work computer. This way, I can fit the small PC on the shelf along with the other AV equipment instead of on the floor. In addition, with the one I'll use as my work computer, I can easily swap hard drives, so I can boot up with a Linux computer and whatever.

The second purchase is the X41 tablet PC. I would prefer the tablet PC to be less than 3 pounds, but at 3.5 pounds and the fact it is a "convertible" with keyboard included and that there have been some very positive reviews about how it feels to "write" on the surface, I think this is a good choice. However, including the x4 base, it would be over $1800 (over $1500 for the computer alone). However, in Japan, even for IBM employees, it is over 22,000 yen (over $2000) just for the computer alone. Ideally, I would want to get one for Kyoko, too, although she'll say she doesn't need a new computer. What does need have to do with buying anything?

One obvious use of the tablet is to place on the kitchen counter and stream video to it, such as TV video. Another use of the tablet is to allow it to be easily carried to another room for playing music from the music repository. Hey, if I can do that, then why not just use bluetooth speakers to play music in the bedroom and not carry the tablet PC around? There have to be bluetooth speakers somewhere, right?

For the desktop, I noticed IBM, I mean Lenovo, was offering free CRT monitor or $99 for flat-panel monitor. However, since we don't really need a new monitor (especially not CRT), I thought I would wait to see what the next offer was... The monitor offer expired on December 27... And so far, no new offer! Sigh!

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Regarding other items, one interesting item I saw which hasn't even been advertised much anywhere is an hard drive enclosure for an external drive which also has video playback capabilities and a remote control from ByteCC. What this means is that you can hook up this enclosure to your TV and play videos from the external hard drive. This would be ideal for business trips, especially to Vienna where most of the channels are in German, so I can watch movies and other shows I record. I already do this, but this means I have to watch the shows on my ThinkPad. I would need to check though that the TVs allow external input. There are some limitations with this enclosure though. The big limitation is that it supports only FAT32 and not NTFS format. FAT32 has a limit of 4GB file sizes. Some golf recordings could be over 4GB. To be ideal, the remote should come with 30-second skip feature to help skip through commercials. Anyway, with these limitations, I'll stick with my ThinkPad, but it is an interesting concept.