Only in America – surely?

Re: Only in America – surely?

Actually you’d be amazed at the penetration of the PC in the US compared to here. It’s a few years since I’ve been in Silicon Valley (no time, short of cash ;)) but even a year or so before UKW was born, when I was htere, there were billboards and TV adverts for websites. Only inthe past year or so have I started to notice such advertising here fro the likes of Ebay, Lycos and some others.

I’ve no idea if that applies to the entire US but certainly anywhere I’ve been there in recent times internet access was no problem at all, unlike the UK. You can log on all over the place and it’s nice to be doing a bit of work while enjoying a coffee in Starbucks.

What was shown in that article is communication with Media Centre Edition, a version of XP that I run on an HTPC in the house. If I so desired I could have it talking to the house lighting system, heating system and allsorts to control my environment. It hooks up to the net and gives me the news, other content, plays movies from my network, music from my network, records TV for me automatically, allows me to time-shift TV and a host of other things besides. In short it’s handy to have it all in one nice little aluminum box.

One of the next logical steps is to allow it to talk to other devices around the home, appliances are only one example.

Anyway, don’t be complaining as it adds value to the appliance and makes people a little more nervous about poking about inside them I should think, so it’s a “good thing” (TM). 🙂

Now, if we can only get training on networking, a manual and a fault code list we’re laughing… 😉

K.