One less Media Center PC option

I’ve waxed pseudo-poetically on the joys of having a media center PC, having gone through several configurations before settling on the combination of Mac Mini and Plex Media Center as the best solution for me. Sadly, digital media aficionados like me may soon have one less option when building the living room system of their dreams.

Engadget reported recently that Windows 8 will apparently lack the mostly overlooked Media Center software included in Windows 7. The latest preview release of Win8 lacks some key components of the software, a bad sign for what seemed like the spiritual inspiration for the Metro interface. While losing (at least partially) an option for media center PCs, hardware solutions are growing with the upcoming revision to Google TV, improvements to the Roku lineup, expansions to standalone DVRs like Tivo, and the long-rumored Apple television.

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Keep safe when using public WiFi

Mobility is one of the primary focuses in the development of new computers. A quick glance at the numbers of iOS devices Apple alone has put into the hands of consumers over the past five years supports this assertion. The trend becomes even more apparent when you factor in other devices designed with portability in mind- competing Android and Windows 8 tablets, the MacBook Air and competing ultraportables, all the way to the new MacBook Pro Retina Display (clocking in at less than an inch thick closed and weighing just under four and a half pounds- less than some textbooks I’ve had to lug around).

Plenty has been done to make your portable computing experience possible, but with that portability comes risk. All of those portable devices need a network connection to be fully functional, and that connection is often of the free public wifi version. While handy, that free wifi can leave you vulnerable to snooping, and depending on what transaction you’re conducting that snooping could lead to far worse repercussions. 

Lifehacker has some helpful information on how to better safeguard your communication when using public wifi. The article covers both Windows and OSX tips, and covers factors that you might not consider when out and about like turning off filesharing.

If you use your device for both home and mobile tasks, the article is a worthy read. Some tips are obvious to most tech-savvy users, but due diligence in computer security is everyone’s responsibility.

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Is the new Windows Metro look really new?

Microsoft has been lauded for being able to do what Google couldn’t with Android- create an interface that is fundamentally different from iOS. While I haven’t had the opportunity to use it, the Metro interface for the soon-to-be-released Windows 8 has been touted as a welcome evolution to the venerable Windows OS and the foundation for the merger of mobile and desktop systems much as Apple has begun to do with iOS and OSX.

One of the main talking points about the Metro interface is its originality, but after seeing some of the initial images and animations, I had the strange feeling I had seen it before. While my memory isn’t always the best, this feeling has been at least partially confirmed with a cursory image search.

Metro does away with the traditional Windows desktop and program shortcuts in favor of brightly colored tiles acting as both widgets and launch icons. The tiles can display some realtime information and a click on the tile launches the full app much like the traditional desktop shortcut icons Windows users have used since the days of Win95:

But this layout has graced Windows before. It wasn’t that long ago that I had been looking for the best option for building a Windows-based media center PC (before deciding the Mac Mini was the best option). My first attempt was to use the built-in Windows Media Center in Windows 7. At first glance the clean, nicely animated app looked like a good option- it did a better job than the updated Windows Media Center at organizing my music collection, had DVR functionality, could play DVDs, and touted access to streaming online video. Ultimately, I abandoned WMC because it didn’t live up to its billing; the streaming options didn’t offer the sources I wanted, the DVR never worked for me, and the process of playing a DVD through WMC was more cumbersome than either playing it in a dedicated DVD player or using VLC/Win DVD/Windows Media Player on the PC.

This is a sample of the interface that sparked my memory when I first saw Metro:

The album listing was even more similar:

although not as polished as Metro’s album selection:

From the perspective of functionality, Metro bears less in common with Windows 7′s Media Center but the legacy is still apparent. From the layout to the font and animation, the foundation of Metro had been with Microsoft for at least a couple of years before it was given center stage. This isn’t a bad thing; the polished look of the media center in Win7 was its best feature. It does make me wonder if Microsoft had bigger plans for the interface. Easing Windows users into this new interface would have been an easier effort that the more drastic Metro-with-a-hidden-Windows-emulator setup of Win8. Windows Media Center’s layout could have been a sign of an attempt to implement something that would have been more of a factor in touchscreen-based computing but Microsoft either lacked the vision to pursue it or had issues that limited its deployment. Like Google Wave, what seemed like a good idea withered from a lack of use, publicity, and development.

Regardless of its origins, Windows 8 and Metro stand to be the first real challenger to the combined offering of OSX and iOS. I for one think this is a very good thing; competition drives innovation, and even a company that has built it’s fortune through vision and innovation needs a push occasionally.

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