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Playing around with my new HP TouchSmart IQ532
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...I recently got very sick of having one of those bulky computers sitting next to my table, sucking in air all day and making a lot of noice with it. Yes as you may have guesst I don’t have the latest version of a PC. Well any way since a few weeks I was looking for a all in one PC. Which to me means no seperate monitor, no computer and if possible no mouse or keyboard. Wtf, you may think does such a thing exists!
You are not alone. I wasn’t even sure if such a thing exists either. Well the first part of the quest was very easy, find a computer that does not have a seperate casing for the actual computer. So an all in one system. Well these things actually exists, I mean look at the iMac. So I know they are out there, I just don’t want an iMac because non of the software I use is available for it. And I’m not a big fan of the Apple company, but that’s a completely different story all together.
It was only a couple of days later that by accident I came accross a small poor quality video of the HP TouchSmart series. Which appearantly has been out ever since early 2007. These computers have everything build into the monitor, not just that but they are touch enabled. And I say touch enabled because they don’t have a touch screen in the traditional sense. The HP TouchSmart series has a shit load of LED’s build into the screen that detect where you press on the screen (and no you don’t even have to touch the screen for the LED’s to detect the touch).
Initially I was considering either a late model of the IQ500 series, which was brought out in 2008 or the IQ800 series which was brought out in 2009. The trouble with my little quest was that the 800 series is currently very hard to get. When I called several shops they could not get any computers in that series at all! So I ended up going for the IQ532, which was the best out of the IQ500 series currently available. And I can honestly say I like it, no more wires. And best of all you can choose to not use the mouse or keyboard. The touch part works pretty damn good, even with the onscreen keyboard that HP made for us as you can see in the screenshot below.
So I really like it, I mean the HP Touch application that is provided is pretty useless to me. But the idea of not needing anything and only having a single cable for your entire computer. Having bluetooth, WiFi and even a TV Tuner integrated is perfect for me. So just for you I have included some YouTube movies on the HP TouchSmart Series.
Corel WinDVD 9 Blue-Ray error =38
I love playing DVD’s on my MediaCenter. Well until very recently I used WinDVD to do so, which worked out perfect. Supporting HD-DVD / BlueRay and normal DVD. Recently I got the error =38 every single time when I started out the WinDVD application.
At first you might think that you may have to restart or that something went wrong during the loading of the application. But the problem kept occurring even after rebooting several times. Just to make sure that it had nothing to do with the computer I re-installed. But allas the problem remained.
So the internet became my best friend. I started searching for the error, unfortunately I found nothing exactly describing what is going wrong. But I did found some obscure reference to a new authentication and license service that Corel is including in it’s newest products.
Damn the windows services
Then I rememberd something. A little while back I optimized the computer to perform better. One of the usuall things I do is disable programs to startup and services to start. Mostly those that I do not recognize. One of the services I disabled was the ‘Protexis Licensing V2′ service. I now that I read something about this on the Internet in relation to the Corel Applications.
So just for fun I enabled the services and started it up. And sure as hell, no more errors when I started WinDVD 9. Problem solved 
As to why Corel opted to such obscure error messages is beyond me. Just give me a clear error stating that the Licensing service is not running. At least then I know what to do! 
New Toy: The Roland HPD 15
Some time ago I ordered a Roland HPD 15 percursion instrument. And today after almost three weeks waiting it was delivered. So I thought it was a good time to write a short piece about my latest ‘gadget’.
I’ve been playing instruments for a very long time now. First starting on the Keyboard (for which I have a Yamaha PSR S900) and now expanding my horizon to the Roland HPD 15. This beautiful instrument is an electronic percursion instrument. Able to emulate any drum kit available.
Like the name hints the instrument has got 15 ‘pads’ that you can play on. As well as dual ribbon control and D Beam. Which means two long pads on the sides of the device for rolling sounds and two leds on the top to measure the hand position.
I’ve only been able to play on it for a short while today, but so far I like it. You can even simulate the slapping on the drums. When I’ve played on it some more I’ll post an update. See the Youtube movies below:
Gadget Time: iRiver Clix 2
Every time I get a new gadget or some new piece of software I will write something about it. Well this time round it’s the iRiver Clix gen 2.
I’ve been looking into getting a new MP3 player for some time and I looked over the Creative, iPod, Philips and Sony series. But finally I choose for the iRiver Clix gen 2. Why, well I’ll try and explain below.
