Giada Ultra MiniPC i50

The Giada Ultra MiniPC i50 is a nettop that will serve to store your digital media, files, and data. The MiniPC i50's Core i5 CPU doesn't quite have the gusto for multimedia creation tasks like Photoshop CS5 editing, but it will gladly serve up your Netflix videos, Web pages, and an assortment of media for you to consume.

Design and Features
The Giada i50 is only slightly smaller than the WiebeTech ToughTech Secure Q external hard drive, and its form factor is more along those design lines than the usual fat square nettops you see, like the Dell Inspiron Zino HD.  Its 7.48 by 5.9 by 0.98 inch (HWD) plastic chassis is framed by a silver band, and the sides have a black glossy finish with off-white geometric shapes accenting its corners. The Giada i50 can be situated one of several ways: upright on the provided stand, mounted onto the back of an HDTV or monitor via the VESA kit, or laid flat on its side. Whatever your favorite position is for your hardware, you can easily fit it into even the most cramped home entertainment system.

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On top of the system, there's a little door that conceals the USB 3.0 port, card reader (SD, MMC,MS,MSPro), and a headphone and mic jack. The back of the unit provides an HDMI and VGA video connection, as well as four USB 2.0 ports to input mice, keyboard, external hard drives, and other peripherals. There is integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi and Ethernet jack to connect to the Internet, and Bluetooth to pair with compatible wireless devices. There's no optical drive included, but this feature is a slippery slope within the nettop category—the Acer Revo RL100-UR20P has a Blu-ray drive, yet it's absent on the Apple Mac mini (Thunderbolt). Some would say that with services like Netflix Instant and iTune, having an optical drive is just an unnecessary cost. So while you're still mulling over the Giada i50, think about how much you use your drive. The 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive should provide plenty of space to store your media, but if you're looking for something bigger, the Acer Revo comes with 750GB of space.

The Giada Ultra MiniPC i50 comes equipped with 32-bit version of Windows 7 (as opposed to the full 64-bit). The 32-bit version is limited in how much memory, or RAM, it can support and what programs/ drivers it can support. Most of the time when downloading something as basic as say a mouse driver, you will be prompted whether you want the 32-bit or 64-bit version—it's the higher-end programs like 3D games that you'll likely have trouble with. Then again, this system was not intended for gaming.
Specifications

Type
    Mainstream, Multimedia, Digital Entertainment System
Processor Family
    Intel Core i5
RAM
    4 GB
Storage Capacity (as Tested)
    500 GB
Graphics Card
    Intel GMA HD
Operating System
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

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Performance
Giada Ultra MiniPC i50 The Giada Ultra MiniPC i50's 1.2GHz Intel Core i5-430UM processor, an ULV (ultra-low voltage) laptop CPU, and 4GB of DDR3-1066MHz of RAM are not optimized to handle creative multimedia tasks like video encoding, as we learned in our Handbrake test. It took the Giada i50 5 minutes 51 seconds to encode the video and scored 0.96 points on our Cinebench R11.5 test. These scores are to be expected from home entertainment systems that are more for media consumption and browsing the Web. The Acer Revo scored a time of 5 minutes 43 seconds on our Photoshop CS5 test. What really matters is the features and how well it can digest online browsing and video.

Unfortunately for the Giada, the Acer Revo RL100-UR20P has the Giada i50 beat on features and price. Its wireless remote/touchpad/keyboard combo device not only comes with the system, but has a hold slot. On top of that it comes with a Blu-ray player and 64-bit Windows 7. The performance between the two systems is very similar—only a few points or seconds difference, but not enough to say one is superior to the other. But one key point that I'm sure is at the forefront of every consumer's mind is the price: the Acer Revo is $90 less than the Giada i50, which is why for this reason and others it remains our Editors' Choice for nettop PCs.

Microsoft looking into Xbox TV service

Microsoft is said to be planning a Web-based pay-TV service that it can build onto its Xbox Live platform.
The software company is in talks with two dozen content companies, as well as Comcast and Verizon Communications, according to a Bloomberg report. The menu of programming will include music, movies, sports, and TV shows.
Last week, the blog Digiday, citing anonymous sources, reported that Microsoft was nearing a deal with Comcast that would allow Xbox 360 owners to sign up for the cable provider's service and watch its programming from the game console. Don Reisinger wrote, "Microsoft unveiled its live-television service at the E3 gaming expo in June. Although the company provided few details on the service at the time, Microsoft said that it would 'partner with TV providers' for its offering."
The Hollywood studios have long tried to persuade Microsoft to use Xbox Live and the company's successful Xbox video game console into taking a larger role in distributing content. Xbox Live already offers movies and TV shows for rent and purchase.
Bloomberg wrote that Microsoft also expects to sign licensing deals with Time Warner's HBO cable channel, Sony Pictures' Crackle streaming service, and NBC Universal's Bravo network.
Add Microsoft to the group of companies trying to cut into Netflix's large early lead in online-video distribution. Netflix's decision to raise prices and spin off DVD operations has many customers canceling their service and many investors selling off shares. The stock hit a new 52-week low today, at $112.
Microsoft is expected to make its live-TV service available this fall.

Robot Soldiers

There are more than 2,000 ground robots fighting alongside flesh-and-blood forces in Afghanistan, according to Lt. Col. Dave Thompson, the Marine Corps’ top robot-handler. If his figures are right, it means one in 50 U.S. troops in Afghanistan isn’t even a human being. And America’s swelling ranks of groundbot warriors are being used in new, unexpected, life-saving ways.

But there’s one small problem: however numerous, these rolling and crawling robots are still pretty stupid. And there’s not much hope they’ll get any smarter anytime soon.

Groundbots first made inroads among bomb-disposal units. The human bomb-techs could take cover and steer in a remote-controlled Talon or PackBot to disable a dangerous explosive device. But a third of the 1,400 fresh ground bots deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010 weren’t for EOD, Thompson pointed out during a presentation at a Washington, D.C. trade show “Robots are not just for explosive ordnance disposal teams anymore … They [ground troops] are using them in ways we never expected.”

For instance, at least one unit sent its four-wheeler-size M-160 — a tracked vehicle fitted with a “flail” for detonating buried mines — to scout ahead of a (manned) Husky bomb-detecting vehicle. Route-clearing for the route-clearer, if you will. Thompson played a video that “showed a powerful roadside bomb destroying the M160,” National Defense reported. “That would have otherwise been the Husky and its occupants,” the magazine helpfully pointed out.

Bots are also being used to inspect vehicles approaching checkpoints, Thompson explained. Many other uses for unmanned ground vehicles are classified, he added.

Thompson seems bullish about groundbots’ prospects, but other military robotics engineers have expressed their disappointment. For all the growing popularity and utility of America’s robot soldiers, they’re still way too dumb to do much of anything on their own. Demonstrations of groundbot technology “have abounded,” Dr. Scott Fish, the Army’s chief scientist, said at the same D.C. event. But military researchers still “don’t know when it is we can deliver … serious autonomy.”


And about 2,000-robot figure. We don’t doubt that 2,000 robots have been delivered to the war zone, but how many of those are sitting on a shelf in the battalion supply room because they’re too flimsy for combat, too dumb to contribute to the fight or simply unneeded?

In other words, for the foreseeable future groundbots will be limited to missions where human operators can closely supervise them — unlike airbots, some of which can already fly many missions with very little human guidance. We won’t be seeing totally robotic ground convoys or robot snipers any time soon.

That’s because on the ground, “even a twig in the road is an obstacle,” one Army researcher explained for my 2008 book War Bots. Whereas, in the air, robots can usually move fairly freely without colliding with anything. It’s fair to say this “sense and avoid” problem is now the major focus of military groundbot developers. Despite some promising results at a major Marine Corps test last year, the Pentagon still doesn’t know how to train its terrestrial bots to be truly independent.

But that just limits the breadth of ground bots’ potential, not the depth. For the missions they’re good at — bomb-disposal, checkpoint duty, scouting in close cooperation with human troops — ground bots are really, really good. And there’s still plenty of room for more supervised bots to handle more of these particular duties.