Looking at my builds, I've built a new PC every year since 2003 except for 2007 when I went travelling. Well, it's 2010 and I've built a new machine for my kids. I've written about it here.

It's based around a Core i5-750 and an Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Made the move to a 64bit OS. I built the last kids computer in 2006 so this should last them until they want their own laptops. I'm happy to see gaming move over to a console.

Looking at my builds, I've built a new PC every year since 2003 except for 2007 when I went travelling. Well, it's 2010 and I've built a new machine for my kids. I've written about it here.

It's based around a Core i5-750 and an Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Made the move to a 64bit OS. I built the last kids computer in 2006 so this should last them until they want their own laptops. I'm happy to see gaming move over to a console.

My wife finally bought a new laptop, a Dell Studio 15. It was very painful helping her decide which machine to buy as she basically wanted everything: speed, long battery life, great tactile keyboard, connectivity, minimal weight, good screen resolution, low price and style! These are all things that get compromised. I suggested she get a desktop plus a netbook but she also doesn't like wires and ugly bulky pc cases. I dissuaded her from all-in-ones as being expensive and not upgradeable. So it was going to be a laptop.

I did suggest she could buy a Apple MacBook Pro as long as she didn't ask me to support it :-) And I proved to her how much a premium you pay for a Mac compared to an equivalent Windows PC. But they do look nice.

In the end, we agreed she didn't really need great portability. Her iPhone provides mobile Internet access and is good as a read-only device. Instead, she just needed a small powerful laptop and a high quality external monitor at home.

So with that in mind, we decided the Dell Studio 15 was a very good bargain: a Core i7-720QM CPU, 4GB of fast DDR3 RAM, 802.11n WiFi, integrated webcam, ATI Mobility HD 4570 graphics card and Windows 7 Professional all for about £800. At the time we shopped around, other laptops with that CPU were much more expensive. And you can customize the finish too; hers is purple.

The main alternative we considered was the HP Envy 15, a much more stylish machine with a few better specs but costs another £380. For that extra money, you can get a netbook!

This isn't mean to be a review but here's the downsides of the Studio 15. The screen resolution is low at 1366x768 but that doesn't matter if you plug it into an external monitor. It also doesn't have enough USB ports but we can hook it up to a USB hub integrated with a monitor. It's also bulky, a little bit noisy and can only last 2-3 hours on batteries but it's not meant to be a properly portable laptop. It's a desktop replacement that's easy to move.

Finally, since it doesn't costs so much, it's reasonable to upgrade to a new laptop sooner and pass this on to our kids than try to hang on to it as long as possible. Her old laptop was an Acer TraveMate 800 with a 1.3MHz Pentium M. Certainly got all the value from that!

My wife finally bought a new laptop, a Dell Studio 15. It was very painful helping her decide which machine to buy as she basically wanted everything: speed, long battery life, great tactile keyboard, connectivity, minimal weight, good screen resolution, low price and style! These are all things that get compromised. I suggested she get a desktop plus a netbook but she also doesn't like wires and ugly bulky pc cases. I dissuaded her from all-in-ones as being expensive and not upgradeable. So it was going to be a laptop.

I did suggest she could buy a Apple MacBook Pro as long as she didn't ask me to support it :-) And I proved to her how much a premium you pay for a Mac compared to an equivalent Windows PC. But they do look nice.

In the end, we agreed she didn't really need great portability. Her iPhone provides mobile Internet access and is good as a read-only device. Instead, she just needed a small powerful laptop and a high quality external monitor at home.

So with that in mind, we decided the Dell Studio 15 was a very good bargain: a Core i7-720QM CPU, 4GB of fast DDR3 RAM, 802.11n WiFi, integrated webcam, ATI Mobility HD 4570 graphics card and Windows 7 Professional all for about £800. At the time we shopped around, other laptops with that CPU were much more expensive. And you can customize the finish too; hers is purple.

The main alternative we considered was the HP Envy 15, a much more stylish machine with a few better specs but costs another £380. For that extra money, you can get a netbook!

This isn't mean to be a review but here's the downsides of the Studio 15. The screen resolution is low at 1366x768 but that doesn't matter if you plug it into an external monitor. It also doesn't have enough USB ports but we can hook it up to a USB hub integrated with a monitor. It's also bulky, a little bit noisy and can only last 2-3 hours on batteries but it's not meant to be a properly portable laptop. It's a desktop replacement that's easy to move.

Finally, since it doesn't costs so much, it's reasonable to upgrade to a new laptop sooner and pass this on to our kids than try to hang on to it as long as possible. Her old laptop was an Acer TraveMate 800 with a 1.3MHz Pentium M. Certainly got all the value from that!

I finally ran out of hard disk space on my server and had to buy some new hard disks.

I generally stick to Samsung, Western Digital, Hitachi or Seagate as reliable brands with my preference for the first two. At the time of writing, 1.5TB hard disks offer the best space/cost tradeoff and that is usually my first criteria for selecting a drive if other factors are all equal. For big drives, I've started buying eco drives that run at 5400rpm and consume less energy. They're fast enough for serving media. So I quickly narrowed down the choice to either the Samsung or Western Digital 1.5TB offerings.

I then discovered Western Digital's Advanced Format which is described well on Anandtech. Interesting stuff so I paid a little premium and got two WD Caviar Green 1.5TB drives with 64Mb cache (WD15EARS). My hope was that they would format with a little higher capacity but in fact, they don't! Capacity is 1430797Mb which is exactly the same as my Samsung 1.5TB drive. So at this point, the user gets no benefit from the 4K sectors and the OS still accesses the disk using a 512K sector emulated interface.

Furthermore, the current Western Digital Diagnostic Utility (DLGDIAG 1.17) doesn't support these new drives (cable test, write sector error?).

The hard disks work fine but I'm annoyed there's no discernible benefit to this advanced format and they lack diagnostic support. Save a bit of money and buy the Samsung 1.5TB hard disk instead.

I finally ran out of hard disk space on my server and had to buy some new hard disks.

I generally stick to Samsung, Western Digital, Hitachi or Seagate as reliable brands with my preference for the first two. At the time of writing, 1.5TB hard disks offer the best space/cost tradeoff and that is usually my first criteria for selecting a drive if other factors are all equal. For big drives, I've started buying eco drives that run at 5400rpm and consume less energy. They're fast enough for serving media. So I quickly narrowed down the choice to either the Samsung or Western Digital 1.5TB offerings.

I then discovered Western Digital's Advanced Format which is described well on Anandtech. Interesting stuff so I paid a little premium and got two WD Caviar Green 1.5TB drives with 64Mb cache (WD15EARS). My hope was that they would format with a little higher capacity but in fact, they don't! Capacity is 1430797Mb which is exactly the same as my Samsung 1.5TB drive. So at this point, the user gets no benefit from the 4K sectors and the OS still accesses the disk using a 512K sector emulated interface.

Furthermore, the current Western Digital Diagnostic Utility (DLGDIAG 1.17) doesn't support these new drives (cable test, write sector error?).

The hard disks work fine but I'm annoyed there's no discernible benefit to this advanced format and they lack diagnostic support. Save a bit of money and buy the Samsung 1.5TB hard disk instead.

I recently discovered an iPhone application called MonkeyTunes by Melloware. It's excellent.

It's a plugin for MediaMonkey that implements the Digital Audio Control Protocol (DACP). This allows MediaMonkey to masquerade as iTunes! In turn this allows the Apple Remote application to control MediaMonkey.

It works really well. I can now sit on my sofa rating the tracks in my music collection with my iPod Touch and my wife can control the stereo with her iPhone. Very cool.

This got me wondering whether I could control Windows Media Center with the iPod Touch which led me to discover HippoRemote! It has two components: a VNC server and a VNC iPhone application. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing and is a proven open standard for remote computer control. Once installed, you can use the iPod Touch as a multi-touch trackpad which allows you to use it for gestures with Windows 7. The application has profiles for specific applications and the one for Media Center worked really well. You can also use it to launch apps and I soon worked out how to launch MediaMonkey. Very impressed with it.

The only down-side is that using a touch screen as a remote means you lose any haptic feedback compared to the solid buttons of a real remote control. It's easier to make mistakes if the remote tries to put too many functions on the screen.

I imagine this might all work really well on the Apple iPad that was just announced this week.

I recently discovered an iPhone application called MonkeyTunes by Melloware. It's excellent.

It's a plugin for MediaMonkey that implements the Digital Audio Control Protocol (DACP). This allows MediaMonkey to masquerade as iTunes! In turn this allows the Apple Remote application to control MediaMonkey.

It works really well. I can now sit on my sofa rating the tracks in my music collection with my iPod Touch and my wife can control the stereo with her iPhone. Very cool.

This got me wondering whether I could control Windows Media Center with the iPod Touch which led me to discover HippoRemote! It has two components: a VNC server and a VNC iPhone application. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing and is a proven open standard for remote computer control. Once installed, you can use the iPod Touch as a multi-touch trackpad which allows you to use it for gestures with Windows 7. The application has profiles for specific applications and the one for Media Center worked really well. You can also use it to launch apps and I soon worked out how to launch MediaMonkey. Very impressed with it.

The only down-side is that using a touch screen as a remote means you lose any haptic feedback compared to the solid buttons of a real remote control. It's easier to make mistakes if the remote tries to put too many functions on the screen.

I imagine this might all work really well on the Apple iPad that was just announced this week.

I struggle when I look to buy a new monitor because I find there are so many things to consider. After quite a bit of research, I bought a Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA for the kids home computer to replace an old 4:3 17" monitor.

One review called it a near perfect 22" monitor. There's a thorough review of it over on Prad.de

It uses an e-IPS panel which provides a wide viewing angle with minimal colour shifts; good when more than one person crowds around the computer. The colour gamut only covers sRGB; not a wide-gamut but that's good enough for a family computer as it's the most common colour model in use on the 'net. Being part of the Ultrasharp range, it's covered by Dell's generous bright pixel policy which is a real bonus.

On the downside, it's only 1680x1050 where I would have prefered 1920x1200. However, an IPS monitor of that size is almost double the price so the trade-off is between an e-IPS panel at this size or a larger TN film monitor at a similiar price. I'm happy that 1680x1050 is good enough for what the kids do. When playing games, it also means the graphics card doesn't struggle as much as it would for a higher resolution. The monitor has a 6ms response time which is fine for gaming.

The design and ergonomics of the monitor is superb. No complaints at all. It looks good and the stand adjusts well. In fact, it's particularly good in portrait mode. A 24" is just a bit too big in portrait but the 22" works quite well. One day, I can see put to use as an excellent second monitor.

Two more drawbacks. It doesn't have an HDMI port but that's not too bad since you can just use an HDMI to DVI-D adapter. The second drawback is more serious; it doesn't have a flexible 1:1 pixel mapping ability. All it can do is is allow a 4:3 non-stretch mode.

So the important point is that it's a great 22" computer monitor but it's not a flexible multimedia monitor. It won't be any good for hooking up a console or a media player. However, if you're just going to hook it up to a computer, I would recommend it.

I also got the Dell Soundbar for it and while it's convenient, the sound is pretty rubbish. I would recommend sticking to seperate speakers. In fact, I doubt you could ever find a monitor that has decent sound from integrated speakers.

I struggle when I look to buy a new monitor because I find there are so many things to consider. After quite a bit of research, I bought a Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA for the kids home computer to replace an old 4:3 17" monitor.

One review called it a near perfect 22" monitor. There's a thorough review of it over on Prad.de

It uses an e-IPS panel which provides a wide viewing angle with minimal colour shifts; good when more than one person crowds around the computer. The colour gamut only covers sRGB; not a wide-gamut but that's good enough for a family computer as it's the most common colour model in use on the 'net. Being part of the Ultrasharp range, it's covered by Dell's generous bright pixel policy which is a real bonus.

On the downside, it's only 1680x1050 where I would have prefered 1920x1200. However, an IPS monitor of that size is almost double the price so the trade-off is between an e-IPS panel at this size or a larger TN film monitor at a similiar price. I'm happy that 1680x1050 is good enough for what the kids do. When playing games, it also means the graphics card doesn't struggle as much as it would for a higher resolution. The monitor has a 6ms response time which is fine for gaming.

The design and ergonomics of the monitor is superb. No complaints at all. It looks good and the stand adjusts well. In fact, it's particularly good in portrait mode. A 24" is just a bit too big in portrait but the 22" works quite well. One day, I can see put to use as an excellent second monitor.

Two more drawbacks. It doesn't have an HDMI port but that's not too bad since you can just use an HDMI to DVI-D adapter. The second drawback is more serious; it doesn't have a flexible 1:1 pixel mapping ability. All it can do is is allow a 4:3 non-stretch mode.

So the important point is that it's a great 22" computer monitor but it's not a flexible multimedia monitor. It won't be any good for hooking up a console or a media player. However, if you're just going to hook it up to a computer, I would recommend it.

I also got the Dell Soundbar for it and while it's convenient, the sound is pretty rubbish. I would recommend sticking to seperate speakers. In fact, I doubt you could ever find a monitor that has decent sound from integrated speakers.

I recently bought a copy of Windows 7 and installed it on my Media Center PC. I'm still runing Windows Vista SP1 on my main machine and Windows XP for my game partition. I've been asked by friends whether they should upgrade which made me ponder this post.

Is Windows 7 worth it?

Your choices are Home Premium (upgrade £65, full £100) or Professional (upgrade £140, full £157) or Ultimate (upgrade £150, full £165). Prices are from Amazon UK. A quick check of the edition comparison table makes it clear very few need Ultimate and you only need Professional if you want to join a domain. For the majority, Home Premium will suffice. A full version is handy if you ever need to do a hard disk wipe and reinstall the O/S but you can save £35 just buying the upgrade. So we're talking about £65.

I'm not going to go through a feature by feature comparison of Windows versions but here's my impression so far.

Windows 7 is nice - no doubt. There's no need to wait for service pack 1. It's solid and ready to go.

However, I'm perfectly happy with Windows Vista with service pack 1. I know it earned a poor reputation on release but with the service pack and all the updates, it's solid and easy to use.

I've read that Windows 7 is supposed to feel more responsive but I haven't noticed it. It's not a vast improvement on Vista in terms of performance. A bit better here and there. Better file copying for example. It won't make you go wow though. I know there's some huge improvement under the hood especially with multiple processors but it doesn't mean much to the average user. Really, it's a refined version of Vista.

So here's my advice.

If you're running Windows XP, then it's time you upgraded to Windows 7. If your computer is old and slow, you're probably best off buying a new computer with a full version of Windows 7 bundled with it. If you're happy with your computers current performance, then just buy the upgrade to Windows 7 and be prepared to install all your applications again from original disks.

Before you upgrade, make sure there are drivers for any old peripherals you want to keep - especially printers and scanners. Also be prepared for spending some time figuring out where they moved everything in Windows 7. There's a lot of changes compared to Windows XP.

If you're running Windows Vista and your computer is performing well, the choice is much harder. Unless you see something in Windows 7 that you think is a must-have feature, then just stick to Vista until a compelling reason comes along. No hurry. Wait for a great discount on the version of Windows 7 you want or wait until you buy a new computer. The upgrade from Vista is very easy when you need to do it.

But you know what, I'll still run Windows XP on my game machine as I really just need the OS to launch applications and it works perfectly well for that.

I recently bought a copy of Windows 7 and installed it on my Media Center PC. I'm still runing Windows Vista SP1 on my main machine and Windows XP for my game partition. I've been asked by friends whether they should upgrade which made me ponder this post.

Is Windows 7 worth it?

Your choices are Home Premium (upgrade £65, full £100) or Professional (upgrade £140, full £157) or Ultimate (upgrade £150, full £165). Prices are from Amazon UK. A quick check of the edition comparison table makes it clear very few need Ultimate and you only need Professional if you want to join a domain. For the majority, Home Premium will suffice. A full version is handy if you ever need to do a hard disk wipe and reinstall the O/S but you can save £35 just buying the upgrade. So we're talking about £65.

I'm not going to go through a feature by feature comparison of Windows versions but here's my impression so far.

Windows 7 is nice - no doubt. There's no need to wait for service pack 1. It's solid and ready to go.

However, I'm perfectly happy with Windows Vista with service pack 1. I know it earned a poor reputation on release but with the service pack and all the updates, it's solid and easy to use.

I've read that Windows 7 is supposed to feel more responsive but I haven't noticed it. It's not a vast improvement on Vista in terms of performance. A bit better here and there. Better file copying for example. It won't make you go wow though. I know there's some huge improvement under the hood especially with multiple processors but it doesn't mean much to the average user. Really, it's a refined version of Vista.

So here's my advice.

If you're running Windows XP, then it's time you upgraded to Windows 7. If your computer is old and slow, you're probably best off buying a new computer with a full version of Windows 7 bundled with it. If you're happy with your computers current performance, then just buy the upgrade to Windows 7 and be prepared to install all your applications again from original disks.

Before you upgrade, make sure there are drivers for any old peripherals you want to keep - especially printers and scanners. Also be prepared for spending some time figuring out where they moved everything in Windows 7. There's a lot of changes compared to Windows XP.

If you're running Windows Vista and your computer is performing well, the choice is much harder. Unless you see something in Windows 7 that you think is a must-have feature, then just stick to Vista until a compelling reason comes along. No hurry. Wait for a great discount on the version of Windows 7 you want or wait until you buy a new computer. The upgrade from Vista is very easy when you need to do it.

But you know what, I'll still run Windows XP on my game machine as I really just need the OS to launch applications and it works perfectly well for that.

No, not really.

My conclusion is that if you have a TV that has a diagonal smaller than 46 inches and you watch from about 10 feet away, it really doesn't make a difference to your viewing experience compared to a upscaling DVD player.

This is just based on my experience watching Blu-ray on a 1080p 42 inch upscaling Samsung TV. Yes, you can tell there's some more detail there but my point is you soon forget about it and it doesn't change how you enjoy the film. Without upscaling, I suspect there might be a bigger difference between DVD and Blu-ray on 40+ inch TVs.

I'm guessing that at 46 inches, Blu-ray starts having a bigger impact and I'm fairly sure once you get bigger than 50 inches, then Blu-ray comes into it's own. Where Blu-ray must really shine is with projectors and big screens.

I've also found that with rented Blu-ray disks, they're quite susceptible to damage which shows up as horrendous bands of colour artifacts. They're not as robust as I had hoped.

No, not really.

My conclusion is that if you have a TV that has a diagonal smaller than 46 inches and you watch from about 10 feet away, it really doesn't make a difference to your viewing experience compared to a upscaling DVD player.

This is just based on my experience watching Blu-ray on a 1080p 42 inch upscaling Samsung TV. Yes, you can tell there's some more detail there but my point is you soon forget about it and it doesn't change how you enjoy the film. Without upscaling, I suspect there might be a bigger difference between DVD and Blu-ray on 40+ inch TVs.

I'm guessing that at 46 inches, Blu-ray starts having a bigger impact and I'm fairly sure once you get bigger than 50 inches, then Blu-ray comes into it's own. Where Blu-ray must really shine is with projectors and big screens.

I've also found that with rented Blu-ray disks, they're quite susceptible to damage which shows up as horrendous bands of colour artifacts. They're not as robust as I had hoped.

Up until now I haven't been rating my music tracks but I recently decided I have to do it in order to sync only tracks I really like on my iPod Touch.

I currently play music by selecting genre or album but you wind up listening to songs you don't really like. I definitely don't want to manually maintain playlists. A better approach is automatic playlists which selects tracks on criteria you set. The best criteria for this is genre, year, mood and rating.

So far I've avoided ratings because ratings shouldn't be stored with the track itself. A rating is a users personal evaluation and as our music collection is shared across everyone in the family, not everyone would agree on a tracks rating. However, I don't want to store the ratings in a seperate database tied to a particular media player. As far as I can tell, there's no alternative like a sidecar XML file.

So I've given in to need and started rating music tracks and storing it as part of the metadata. Maybe in the future, there will be a better solution. I use MediaMonkey and it supports a commonly used five star rating system. Here's my scheme:

One Star *

There's something appealling but you have no committment to listening to it. It's ok if someone skips to the next track. It's music on the edge of your normal listening. You wouldn't say you like it but it tickles your ears in some way and in the right mood, you might want to hear it again. Give it one star so you remember to play it again one day.

Two Star **

You will listen to the track. It might not make your toe tap but it's pleasant enough. Background kind of music or it's something you think might grow on you with repeated listenings. Music in the jury dock that's worth another listen soon.

Three Star ***

You will publicly declare that you like this track and would be a little miffed if someone hit the next button. You enjoy it and it starts to involve you. Head nodding or toe tapping.

Four Stars ****

An excellent song and worth paying for it. You want the volume turned up. Makes you want to sing, dance or listen. You would be annoyed if the next button was hit. If you were at a party, you would want it played.

Five Stars *****

This is a classic track in it's genre and worthy of a place in a list of top tracks. The problem with a five star track is you don't want it played to death even though you really like it.

In the above scheme, the main listening is 3 stars to 4.5 stars. Add in 2 star tracks if you want a broader selection of music. Play 4 to 5 star tracks for a great classic selection of music. Visit 1 star tracks when you're in the mood for something new.

Note that there's a natural life cycle where you increase or decrease the rating of a track as it's appeal grows or shrinks. It should take time for a track to make it to five stars.

Up until now I haven't been rating my music tracks but I recently decided I have to do it in order to sync only tracks I really like on my iPod Touch.

I currently play music by selecting genre or album but you wind up listening to songs you don't really like. I definitely don't want to manually maintain playlists. A better approach is automatic playlists which selects tracks on criteria you set. The best criteria for this is genre, year, mood and rating.

So far I've avoided ratings because ratings shouldn't be stored with the track itself. A rating is a users personal evaluation and as our music collection is shared across everyone in the family, not everyone would agree on a tracks rating. However, I don't want to store the ratings in a seperate database tied to a particular media player. As far as I can tell, there's no alternative like a sidecar XML file.

So I've given in to need and started rating music tracks and storing it as part of the metadata. Maybe in the future, there will be a better solution. I use MediaMonkey and it supports a commonly used five star rating system. Here's my scheme:

One Star *

There's something appealling but you have no committment to listening to it. It's ok if someone skips to the next track. It's music on the edge of your normal listening. You wouldn't say you like it but it tickles your ears in some way and in the right mood, you might want to hear it again. Give it one star so you remember to play it again one day.

Two Star **

You will listen to the track. It might not make your toe tap but it's pleasant enough. Background kind of music or it's something you think might grow on you with repeated listenings. Music in the jury dock that's worth another listen soon.

Three Star ***

You will publicly declare that you like this track and would be a little miffed if someone hit the next button. You enjoy it and it starts to involve you. Head nodding or toe tapping.

Four Stars ****

An excellent song and worth paying for it. You want the volume turned up. Makes you want to sing, dance or listen. You would be annoyed if the next button was hit. If you were at a party, you would want it played.

Five Stars *****

This is a classic track in it's genre and worthy of a place in a list of top tracks. The problem with a five star track is you don't want it played to death even though you really like it.

In the above scheme, the main listening is 3 stars to 4.5 stars. Add in 2 star tracks if you want a broader selection of music. Play 4 to 5 star tracks for a great classic selection of music. Visit 1 star tracks when you're in the mood for something new.

Note that there's a natural life cycle where you increase or decrease the rating of a track as it's appeal grows or shrinks. It should take time for a track to make it to five stars.

Up until now I haven't been rating my music tracks but I recently decided I have to do it in order to sync only tracks I really like on my iPod Touch.

I currently play music by selecting genre or album but you wind up listening to songs you don't really like. I definitely don't want to manually maintain playlists. A better approach is automatic playlists which selects tracks on criteria you set. The best criteria for this is genre, year, mood and rating.

So far I've avoided ratings because ratings shouldn't be stored with the track itself. A rating is a users personal evaluation and as our music collection is shared across everyone in the family, not everyone would agree on a tracks rating. However, I don't want to store the ratings in a seperate database tied to a particular media player. As far as I can tell, there's no alternative like a sidecar XML file.

So I've given in to need and started rating music tracks and storing it as part of the metadata. Maybe in the future, there will be a better solution. I use MediaMonkey and it supports a commonly used five star rating system. Here's my scheme:

One Star *

There's something appealling but you have no committment to listening to it. It's ok if someone skips to the next track. It's music on the edge of your normal listening. You wouldn't say you like it but it tickles your ears in some way and in the right mood, you might want to hear it again. Give it one star so you remember to play it again one day.

Two Star **

You will listen to the track. It might not make your toe tap but it's pleasant enough. Background kind of music or it's something you think might grow on you with repeated listenings. Music in the jury dock that's worth another listen soon.

Three Star ***

You will publicly declare that you like this track and would be a little miffed if someone hit the next button. You enjoy it and it starts to involve you. Head nodding or toe tapping.

Four Stars ****

An excellent song and worth paying for it. You want the volume turned up. Makes you want to sing, dance or listen. You would be annoyed if the next button was hit. If you were at a party, you would want it played.

Five Stars *****

This is a classic track in it's genre and worthy of a place in a list of top tracks. The problem with a five star track is you don't want it played to death even though you really like it.

In the above scheme, the main listening is 3 stars to 4.5 stars. Add in 2 star tracks if you want a broader selection of music. Play 4 to 5 star tracks for a great classic selection of music. Visit 1 star tracks when you're in the mood for something new.

Note that there's a natural life cycle where you increase or decrease the rating of a track as it's appeal grows or shrinks. It should take time for a track to make it to five stars.

I've owned an Xbox since it first came out in 2002 but last month I finally bought an Xbox 360 and retired the old console. Yeah, I know that's a long time.

Didn't buy a Wii as I'm not impressed with the graphics and the kinds of games on it. Fine for kids but I want to play too. I like the PS/3 and some of the exclusive games on it but I think it's too expensive for now. With the Xbox 360, the bundle price has fallen below £200 (Amazon). There's lots of cheap games around. The high def graphics look fab and it's backwards compatible with the games we already have. A no brainer really.

Another factor was that my kids are now getting old enough to play more of the teenager-oriented games on Xbox. My rule is that they can play up to the age level rating above their current age. My 10 year old son is allowed to play 12 rated games. My 14 year old daughter can play 15/16 rated games. I try to avoid them playing games with realistic violence with lots of blood and gore. It's better to kill aliens than humans or zombies.

My wife and I have played through Halo 3 in co-op mode and I'm working on Half-Life 2. The kids are playing Forza Motorsport, Lego Batman and Assasin's Creed (which is a bit too violent so my son can't play it). I'm not one for paying over £20 just for a game. I'm happy to wait for the price of new games to drop as there's a stupidly huge choice of older games to play. I would like to see more games with 2 player co-op modes.

I tried Xbox live. It's good for playing against others on the 'net but was surprised and disappointed how expensive the arcade style games were. These are disposable casual games and the pricing should be more like for iPhone games.

While the Xbox 360 really could use a motion controller, I'm  hopeful Project Natal will go commercial. Even if it does, the Xbox 360 could still use a handheld motion controller for things like guns and swords.

There doesn't seem to be a replacement for the Xbox 360 coming anytime soon but I doubt this one will last 7 years.

I've owned an Xbox since it first came out in 2002 but last month I finally bought an Xbox 360 and retired the old console. Yeah, I know that's a long time.

Didn't buy a Wii as I'm not impressed with the graphics and the kinds of games on it. Fine for kids but I want to play too. I like the PS/3 and some of the exclusive games on it but I think it's too expensive for now. With the Xbox 360, the bundle price has fallen below £200 (Amazon). There's lots of cheap games around. The high def graphics look fab and it's backwards compatible with the games we already have. A no brainer really.

Another factor was that my kids are now getting old enough to play more of the teenager-oriented games on Xbox. My rule is that they can play up to the age level rating above their current age. My 10 year old son is allowed to play 12 rated games. My 14 year old daughter can play 15/16 rated games. I try to avoid them playing games with realistic violence with lots of blood and gore. It's better to kill aliens than humans or zombies.

My wife and I have played through Halo 3 in co-op mode and I'm working on Half-Life 2. The kids are playing Forza Motorsport, Lego Batman and Assasin's Creed (which is a bit too violent so my son can't play it). I'm not one for paying over £20 just for a game. I'm happy to wait for the price of new games to drop as there's a stupidly huge choice of older games to play. I would like to see more games with 2 player co-op modes.

I tried Xbox live. It's good for playing against others on the 'net but was surprised and disappointed how expensive the arcade style games were. These are disposable casual games and the pricing should be more like for iPhone games.

While the Xbox 360 really could use a motion controller, I'm  hopeful Project Natal will go commercial. Even if it does, the Xbox 360 could still use a handheld motion controller for things like guns and swords.

There doesn't seem to be a replacement for the Xbox 360 coming anytime soon but I doubt this one will last 7 years.

Well after years of on again, off again research into my next stereo upgrade, I finally shelled out and bought a digital preamp, the Benchmark DAC1 PRE USB.

I had a few problems with my entertainment system that this box solves.

First, my Red Wine Audio modified Squeezebox couldn't drive my power amp through a passive attenuator properly so it lost a lot of bass and dynamics. Found this out by A/B ing with my CD player through a mixer.

Second, all my sources were digital but most have their own cheap crappy DACs. These include my Media PC, the Samsung TV and the Xbox 360. Most of the time, I'm using the Media PC as the source.

Third, just buying an external DAC doesn't help since you need to share it between multiple sources.

So the DAC1 PRE solves this as it can take 5 digital sourcse (1 USB, 1 optical toslink, 3 coaxial) and 1 analogue source. All these devices can then send their digital output via spdif to the superb electronics in the DAC1. There are loads of reviews around the 'net. I trusted them and bought it without listening first.

The output is via balanced XLRs or unbalanced RCAs. I need balanced XLRs to my power amp which reduced candidate DAC products dramatically as I didn't want an analogue preamp. There are very few DACS with a volume knob and XLR outputs and hardly any that support switching between multiple digital sources.

I now have my subwoofer attached in parallel via the unbalanced RCA output connection. This is great because it's a relatively dinky subwoofer and not any serious audiophile kit. I can leave it off for serious listening or put it on, if I want some thump or better explosions when watching a movie.

On top of this, I now have two headphone outputs. Handy when you get sick and tired of hearing sound effects from the kids playing on the Xbox 360! And the DAC1 can handle 24/96 sources so I'm ready for the next step in high fidelity like the new 24bit Beatles catalogue release.

Downsides?

For all that money, you think you might get a remote control volume? No! You need to pay another $300 for the DAC1 HDR. Fairly annoying but I'll live with getting up off the couch or digital muting to kill the TV ads.

Is it really worth it?

Well, I have done a preliminary A/B comparison again the Squeezebox built-in DAC and I must admit the difference is subtle - not a chorus of angels kind of revelation. Yes, it's better and more revealing but only if you really seriously listen to the details of the music. I haven't A/B'd all the sources.

I made my purchase through ebay with studioxchange. Their ebay prices are better plus I used a PayPal promotional discount to get it down to £1179 which was the best deal I could find.

I'm happy because now I'm sure that the weakest part of my stereo is the speakers. Would be nice to replace them with something from the Bowers & Wilkins 800 series...