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GMC Noblesse AVC S-7 Home Theatre PC Case
Closer Look:
The AVS S-7 comes with almost everything you need, just supply a Micro ATX board of your choice, hard drive, RAM and operating system. For my test box I added the following components.
- MSI K9VGN Micro ATX Motherboard
- AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core BE-2350
- 1 GB Kingston Memory
- Linksys WMP54G Wireless Card
- Western Digital 80 GB SATA Drive
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Testing the Product:
Installing the hardware was pretty easy and should be easy to accomplish by even the novice system installer. The case is pretty well thought out in terms of layout.YOu have relatively easy access to all major system components and installation was hassle free. In addition to testing the case and iMEDIAN software I wanted to test Windows Media Center features, but without a copy of XP Media Center Edition that left only Vista, which is where I started.
Installing Vista Ultimate on the test machine was a piece of cake, with only one issue. The IrDA remote control has a built in mouse on it. The remote and the accompanying iMON software work as your pointing device and the iMON software includes an on-screen keyboard. Under Vista I had problems with iMON crashing and taking the remote (and mouse) with it. (see screenshot 1) Clicking OK on the Runtime Error causes the remote to stop working until you can restart iMON, but without the remote you can’t restart it. Researching this error on Google produced nothing helpful. Until the people at iMON figure it out and release an update just don’t click OK and you’ll be fine. That or use a regular mouse and keyboard. Gyration makes some great products for media center PCs.
After testing under Vista I wiped the drive and installed XP Professional SP2. iMON works flawlessly under XP Pro and the iMEDIAN software means you don’t have to have XP Media Center Edition. iMEDIAN is intuitive and easy to use. The big icons and wording are great when using your remote as a mouse. (see below screenshot)
Conclusion:
I like this product, especially with the Linksys wireless card. This allowed me to join the AVC S-7 to Small Business Server 2003 domain, access network resources and the internet (YouTube, etc.) from my TV. Throw in the SyncToy software to keep my iTunes Library updated between PCs and I’m set. Anyone up for Jericho Season 1?
Additional Resources:
http://www.gmc.co.kr/language/english/products/avc_s7.html
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