There’s been an influx of technology and gadgetry into the Soulliere house hold over the past few weeks. Some personally investments, some work related, but few things are as fun as setting up and playing with some new technology.

On the personal entertainment front, I broke down and finally stepped into the iPod lifestyle with a new black 80 gig iPod. (The sad thing is that it is full already – and that’s with me not syncing my entire collection of John Denver CDs!) It’s really kinda fun. I got a black iHome for the office and I’m in music heaven. While I haven’t an ounce of musical ability (vocally or with instruments), I love having tunes with me all the time and this makes that possible. Plus the new iTunes 7.0 has a lot of the features I was complaining about a while ago when I discussed iTunes vs. Music Match. Music Match still comes out ahead on some features, but iTunes is a heck of a lot slicker.

To go along with the iPod, I decided that it’s time I dip my toes in the mac waters (you know what they say, “once you go mac…”). I want to make sure I have the knowledge and experience I need to best advise the University on various projects. I’ve always hated macs, but like most hate, that was born on a platform of ignorance. All that having been said, by Tuesday I should have my new 13” black macbook. I had thought about just going with a 17” macbook pro, but I’m not ready for that kind of experience. Instead I settled for the 23” Apple HD display…. (you can see some pictures as that’s already arrived). MMMMmmmm HD goodness. Another little add on for the iPod is that we got the media connection center so we can plug the iPod into the TV. It’s actually awesome and looks great (we took a snap shot of that as well).

The other little toy add to the house was actually prompted by my wife. We are now proud owners of an XBOX 360. I know, about a year late, and a few days before the PS3 and Wii hit the stores, but honestly, with 4 of them showing up at your local Walmart, how soon do you think you’ll actually have you hands on one. Michelle thought it would be cool to kill zombies in Dead Rising, but for me, I was interested in the streaming media aspects and its connectivity to Windows Media Center and eventually Vista. I’m tired of plugging a laptop into the TV to watch some streamed content. I know that if I hacked an XBOX I could do a lot of that already, but we’re trying hard to be honest folks and do things within the legal limits, and with a hacked xbox, it’s too easy to download games and what now and not pay the piper his due.

So with that in mind, I have a new computer coming this week as well. I’m gonna need a Media Center PC, and since The Beast has passed from the desk into the box, it was getting time to replace it. So this is what’s on its way:

Intel Core2 Extreme processor X6800 (2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB cache)
4 Gigs of ram PC5300 (choke on that Adobe Photoshop!)
Terabyte of Space
ATI Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition with 512MB, Dual DVI
2 21” HD LCDs

So that should be enough to keep me busy for a little while.

In any case, if you’re xbox living and you’re looking to school me in a variety of games (we have like a dozen, so we might have some overlap), look for “Don Quixote1974”

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