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.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc1PYc0pIzw

 httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CStZZrkc7Ck

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!

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BVTu9gbpw

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.

The main features

Just like all the other players the iRiver Clix 2 is a basic MP3 player that most people will use just for that. So for most the added features aren’t that important. But as it may help you choose I think it is worth to list all of them:

• Supporting audio formats: MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, WMA, ASF, WMV9 SP
• Video support: MPEG-4 SP, Macromedia Flash Lite 2.1, TXT, non-progressive JPEG
• Display: 2.2″ AMOLED (262K Color, 320×240)
• Sizes: 2GB. 4GB, 8GB (red ribon edition)
• FM radio
• Flash game support
• Theme support
• Voice & FM recording (like you’re ever going to use it)

So far for the boring feature list. Lets get into some pictures and talk about what is so great about it.

The looks

First lets get started with some great pictures of the device. Below you can see some pictures that give you an idea what the device looks like. The menu’s and themes I will get into a bit later.

As you can see of all of the MP3 players it’s one of the better looking. And it is very small, not a lot bigger then a creditcard. Though it is a bit bigger in depth .

But the main thing that attracted me to the iRiver Clix 2 was the possibility to change themes, and thus change almost the entire interface of the device. The themes range from popular movies & shows to fantasy. So there is always something to your liking. You can get some themes from the ClixHere website, registration required for downloading. A video on the various themes is included below.

Content of the pack

The Clix 2 comes in a tiny nice box with a lot of stuff. The pack includes the following stuff, all for free

• A basic head set, producing pretty good quality sound
• A USB cable to hook it up to the PC
• Some leaflets and pamflets, I still haven’t read
• The Clix 2

Once unpacked and after loading the battery you are ready to go and play some music. iRiver has put some movies, music, themes and games on it so you can play with it directly. Below is an image of the box content.

Sound and FM

Unlike some MP3 players the sound quality of the iRiver series has always been very good. And I’ve had a iPod, PDA and SanDisk Sansa to compare it to. The headset that comes with the Clix 2 is pretty good, but just like all head phones it’s best to get the big studio head phones for the best sound quality.

One thing that truly surprised me was the quality of the FM radio. I travel a lot which means that I listen FM radio a lot. And unfortunately this also means swapping the channel every so often because the radio frequency is lost. I was pleasantly surprised that the Clix 2 has a very stable and good radio receiver build in. A whole lot better then the SanDisk Sansa player I used before.

Though the sound is very good the recorder is very poor. And with this I mean that in order to stop recording you need to hit the buttons. But hitting the buttons makes a very loud sound in the recording. Something you don’t want. But to be honest why would you buy a MP3 player as a voice recorder .

Ease of use

Another thing that struck me straight away is the how easy it is to use the Clix 2. The four main navigation buttons are integrated in the screen. By pressing the left, right, top or bottom of the device you navigate through the various menus.

To make it even easier the volume, lock, power and quick access have seperate buttons on the side of the device. Let me explain something about the quick access button. You may want to jump to a specific menu instantly. Well this is something you can set the quick access button to do.

Syncing with the PC

One of the most important things of any good MP3 players is easy synchronizing between the PC and the device. Well the Clix 2 is no exception. You can use Windows Media Player 10/11, iTunes or Winamp to put music and movies on the device.

You could also choose to do it using the windows explorer, but then the ID3 tag information isn’t used to build a library. This means you can only use folder browsing to play files. So I don’t advice this method of putting music files on the Clix 2.

The good thing is you don’t need any drivers and the computer will automatically detect and setup the device in Windows once you connect. That is if you have a working cable, because the one I got with the Clix 2 wasn’t working. But that wasn’t to big of a problem since they use a standard USB to mini USB cable.

It is even possible to synchronize the Clix 2 with Rhapsody or other DRM protected songs, but you do need to install a different firmware on the device. You can download this from the iRiver website.