BasicDog

This is the story of how I have managed to build a HD Home Theatre PC (HTPC) for only £135 and in the process managed to make a HTPC that uses an average of around 45w of electricity. Perfect for my living room, my electricity bill and in turn; the planet.

I embarked on my venture to build a media PC for two reasons, the first being to free my gaming system from the living room so I can get some much needed gaming action, and the second was an exercise to see how little money I could use to build a High Def capable PC with a HDMI connection. The components that I used are listed in a moment with their costs; these are mostly bought from ebuyer.com or a market stall in Derby.

I have owned the HANNspree Xv-S 32" TV for around 8 months now and I have been taking it for granted to the extent where I have neglected to mention it on here. This is of course a travesty as it was both very cheap and brilliant.

Employing my usual decision making technique for non PC component products, which involves finding a cheap product with 50+ customer reviews online and reading until I am convinced it is not low quality, I happened upon this TV on ebuyer.com. One of the great things about new companies to the market selling cheap goods is that the sites selling them soon build a substantial collection of customer reviews which in turn builds the company reputation.

A little about HANNspree
HANNspree are a branch-off company of HANNstar who produce the HANNs.G PC monitors; a respected brand and this therefore leads you to expect the same quality from HANNspree TVs.

What is Drupal?
Drupal is the system behind my website and thousands of others accross the internet, it is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which is very easy to use for both website savvy individuals and beginners alike. A CMS can be used to set up all manner of different sites and most are easily customizable to your own preferences for both functionality and appearance.

For those who are not aware of what a CMS is, the Dictionary.com encyclopaedia describes it as:

“A content management system (CMS) is a program used to create a framework for the content of a Web site"

This loosely translates to me and you as software that you can use to make a professional looking website, without needing to know much (if any) web programming languages.

Not one of my most high-tech reviews here on BasicDog.co.uk, but I really feel that it is worth a serious mention...

The V-Fit Mini Bike is a very simple device which can be used in the same way as an excersise bike, only with the lack of seat and handle bars you can use it sitting on pretty much any seat in your house. If you are like me and you find yourself sat infront of a TV or computer on a regular basis for extended periods of time, and you realy wish that you could stay healthy while maintaining your time doing these very important activities, the V-Fit Mini Bike is a fantastic way to carry on without fear of losing that very handy muscle mass.

One of the major selling points of modern phones is that they feature cameras, and following my review of the HTC Touch Dual I hope to detail how it performs when taking pictures. Having a camera on your phone can be very handy and would be sorely missed if there wasn't one, though until recently they were seriously lacking in the features we have become accustomed to with digital cameras. Mobile phone manufacturers keep coming up with more and more innovative ways to make phone cameras a more viable alternative to carrying both a phone and camera, let's see what HTC have done with the Touch Dual...

It all began while I was on holiday for a week and the only way I could keep an eye on my site was to pay £1 an minute for a slot machine-esque internet access point. Anyway, this isn't about those awkward internet machines on holiday, but about how I find myself owning a HTC Touch Dual. The short of it is that I decided to get a PDA-phone, and now find myself wondering how I lived without one.

The PDA-phone I chose was the HTC Touch Dual (as I am sure most noticed from the title of the article) on T-mobile, and I must say that for the money (£25 per month) I don't regret the decision at all.