Welcome to topGadget.com
A web resource around digital additions to modern life that make a difference, that is very much in its infancy and proof I am a technology bore

This resource is written by the designer of the icone, a cutting edge carbon fibre ultra cool and silent PC that will finally (4 years in the making) launch in 2008 (?). Also former CEO & Founder of Virtuser, where he pioneered the very first commercial trials of mobile convergence, way before its time in 2001, worked on some of the frist MVNOs since 1999 and most recently worked on mobile applications such as the Nokia Mobile Festival Guides mobile applications. He is presently consulting on pay TV and mobile payments across africa, as well as mobile Voip and mobile TV and mobile VoD services.

posted by Christian Borrman 23:27pm 04/03/08

Automated Home Part 1: the PVR; windows, linux or off-the-shelf appliance
I have been playing with these options for ages, in the pursuit of a device or set-up that allows you to serve, edit, view and enjoy video, music and TV within the home environment and whilst away if the need takes you. You could buy Sky+, a Sling Box, a DVD recorder a Sonos, and Xbox and/or Playstation and an AV mixer, but, well its just a mess, when you have PCs as well. In this pursuit for a PC-and-as-few-other-gadgets as possible set-up I now have:

1. Windows Vista Home Premium in my prototype icone with dual diversity DVB-T
2. Windows Media Centre Edition in my prototype icone mini as a front-end server
3. Windows XP and 3rd Party PVR apps on my "see how small a supercomputer can be" PC
4. Very nice DVD and Hard Disk recorder with built-in DVB
5. Linux MCE running on another
6. MythTV failing to do anything on another (but that is because I am a technologist not a geek)
7. Another PC failing to get satellite working properly but now being turned into CCTV after someone stole my beloved Specialized Rockhopper from the communal area of our flats: Automated home part 4

And a forgone conclusion. Now is all I need is the time to finish this article and the rest below.

posted by Christian Borrman 01:36am 09/10/07

Automated Home Part 2: Firewall and File Serving

Those of you who do not deserve to be called gadget lovers may suffice at the firewall you were given by your ISP or bought off the shelf in PC Galore, however, if you want to:

• share your photos with friends over broadband securely,
• access your network remotely only from your work IP address(s),
• VPN back to your home and between members of your family (and back up off-site between locations),
• have a back-up for all your PCs to a central network location that does not run the OS that could compromise your files in the first place and not a hard disk on a USB cable,
• to allow guests or neighbours to use your wireless broadband without having access to your files...
• or even have a secure PC on your network that has access to everything but not vice-versa and many other things;

then you need to go FreeBSD or at least modified linux firmware... this can be answered in part by hacking a linux based router, such as a Buffalo Wireless WHR54 or a Linksys WRT54G (mind not to turn the wireless power above 56 or you will burn them out as I did a few) or if you want full flexibility and power of industrial grade firewall and vpn then you have to go for M0n0wall or PFSense and some Soekris or WRAP hardware. I am presently running 5 of them... coming soon

posted by Christian Borrman 01:53am 09/03/08

Automated Home Part 3: Silent, small, quiet, Quality; too much to ask of a PC
After designing my own PC in Carbon Fibre I still cannot resist modifying square tin & plastic boxes, so at least they are quiet: The search for PCs you can live with... the most recent is a silent, dust free beast of a shuttle, running overclocked quad core intel core duo and a gorilla graphics card... Coming soon

posted by Christian Borrman 07:14am 03/03/08

Automated Home Part 4: Wireless Networking & Security
Now to stop people invading my digital home and radio space! Hacking your door entry system and hooking it up to your media PC is one way to record entries, as well as send yourself an email/SMS when someone rings the doorbell, will eventually add the howto and pictures

posted by Christian Borrman 23:50am 04/02/08

Tiny XP & Nlite
I am a fan of Windows, well a pragmatic one anyway; if you play around with any OS, it will eventually break, as I have learned with desktop version of Linux that breaks just as easily as windows when you start playing around with hardware, installing this, uninstalling that, etc.

What is more of a problem recently, is bloat; even Internet Explorer now runs at 50Mb of memory under Windows XP sometimes when checking Ctrl + Alt + Delete, so even with 1Gb of memory you may only be good for 5 explorer windows and XP running, which means you invariably use swap space. This is much slower than using the RAM memory, especially if you have a laptop with an "iPod" 1.8" hard disk like my laptop, or you only have 512Mb of Ram.

Let's put this into context; in 2003 I bought the fastest PC available: it was 3Ghz, 512Mb memory and a Radeon 9800 Pro Graphics card. Just the processor, DVD drive and processor were £1200. Nearly 5 years on it is still running; Its 200Gb hard disks are still reasonable, its 3Ghz processor is still fast by single core standards and its graphics card is still playing current titles, albeit at ever decreasing resolutions. However, is memory is no longer enough to run the OS it came with, and a new PC now needs 1Gb of memory just to run Vista, even though the graphics, processor and components are still well up to the job.

So with this in mind, and the fact that I have accumulated a silly amount of hardware over the years (no I cannot throw away that Nokia 2110 or that Cobalt Cube), I have got a bit fed up with Windows and other OS's bloat. M0Nowall's cut-to-the-threads version of the latest FreeBSD boots in seconds on a 133Mhz 3 generations old processor and 64Mb of memory. So on to Windows:

TinyXP (if it is still called that, I have seen "UltimateXP" and other names) is a windows distribution that has been stripped bare (and then modified) by some mysterious character(s) that only upload these creations to Torrents and P2P networks. For this reason I only installed this on anonymous test rigs with no personal information; the creator could install anything on these distributions. While I found no malware on the TinyXP I installed, there is no guarantee someone else will not put a version called TinyXP that does have malware, so you are warned. However, these distributions use an open source software called nLite, to strip away the parts of Windows you may not need, and obtain a version of XP that only occupies 300Mb to 600Mb of disk space. Moreover, it only uses around 100Mb of memory at idle. Rather than playing with nLite until you pull your hair out, you can use the TinyXP example to see what you can (and by installing a full version not connected to the internet with all the software you usually use, what you cannot trim away)

You can then take your Windows Recovery CD and let nLite create a custom, stripped down version, and even add the drivers from the applications CD/DVD. You can also integrate Service Packs which makes for a much quicker install, Additionally, you can add every possible freeware you can imagine. This is by no means quick to set-up, however, if you are someone who spends a large amount of your waking hours behind a PC, or as I do behind a more restricted laptop, then this time is more than made up for in terms of a device that boots in 30 seconds and runs like Its just had a memory upgrade again. Even when you re-install, having wireless network drivers automatically installed (why does Windows have 7 million printer drivers, every SCSI drive under the sun that nobody uses, yet fails to incorporate even Intel Wi-Fi card drivers, I will never know) means you can ensure that the chipset, graphics and other drivers are the most up to date from the outset.

Which brings me full circle, when I bought my uber computer in 2003, I had a Toshiba portege with 192Mb Ram and a Pentium3 336 processor and a 6Gb hard disk. It worked fine in Windows 2000, but XP had its little fan running full time and the mouse cursor converted to a full-time virtual hour glass. In short, this little laptop was brought back to life with a reduced XP. When I say reduced, I mean down to the bare threads, but its 400Mb install uses a meager 60Mb of memory, which is less than Windows 2000 did. This is now being used by my father, who has not had "one of those annoying blue screens" since.

I have not decided whether to upgrade my laptop to an ultraportable Vaio TZ series or to go with a more powerful Dell XPS 1330 (to break a Samsung hat trick), but whichever one it is, I will be breaking out the nLite for a few weeks to tweak its recovery CD, until I have a mean, lean XP machine. Unless the Vista version is fully functional by then.

One note of caution; before you go an blitz your existing installation; when I installed the trimmed down version on my existing laptop, I partitioned the hard drive and installed it on its own clean partition, I suggest you do the same. The next step is to see if I can install the OS and boot it from a solid state drive in the PC Card slot; this way you get the performance of a Sold State Disk, with all the storage of a magnetic hard disk.

posted by Christian Borrman 00:22am 13/10/07

Silent computing
Silent computing became such an obsession I even designed my own PC case and chassis and could only find carbon fibre and laser cut/CNC metal parts to make it work (the icone). It is still an obsession, even as the icone is nearing commercial outing, I still enjoy making the existing devices as quiet as possible.

The first step is to create a lighter version of XP if this is what you are running (see article above): memory uses power, which creates heat. In turn, this extra memory needs managing; enter more processing power. Finally when under load, the PC uses Hard disk space for virtual memory, which, yes, uses more power, more waste heat... you get the picture: If you want a silent PC, trim the lard.

The second step is sometimes easy; get a better fan(s) and cooler. There was a great article in Custom PC on this where they even do a test to see how quickly a fan fills a black bag (I assume they mean plastic rubbish bag). This test is also useful to test how many real CFM are being pumped out of your PC by the extractor fan: If this in nowhere near the free spinning CFM of your fan, then you maybe need more air intakes on your PC or a fan that has less pressure drop to keep your PC cool and quiet.

The next steps require more cunning and guile, as well as increased complexity and chin stroking:

Component and intake placement (simple positioning) Coming soon

Component and intake placement (get your dremel out) Coming soon

Dust free computing... coming soon

posted by Christian Borrman 00:34am 13/10/07

AtC2K

The combination of mountain biking, radio controlled devices and technology is one that is hard to resist. The ATC2K is one of the most fascinating gadgets I have bought... will post some video shortly, at the moment it is just restricted to jaunts around richmond park on the Rochopper, but the prompt arrival of a Kona Stinky will change that!

posted by Christian Borrman 04:09am 09/10/07, updated 13/10/08 23:36pm

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