LincolnBlogs

(sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song)
Oh, this is a story ’bout a man named Joe.
He sent me an OSD a couple years ago.

An’ just the other day he said “You really should review…”
Then he boxed up and sent me a Neuros Link too…

OK, OK I know, but it was playing on continuous loop in my brain all last night. Don’t judge me! 🙂

Seriously though, Joe from http://www.neurostechnology.com sent me out a Neuros Link (snappy name a?) and I thought it only fair I talk about how great it is.

For some reason I don’t quite understand, most companies are not like Neuros. Neuros “just gets it”. They have this mystical power which clues them in on what kinds of stuff we really want. They understand that we want “our media, our way” and they set out to make that possible with their fantastic line of products.

The Neuros Link (still love that name) is just such a gizmo. This is MORE than just a set-top pc, it’s the convergence of tv, computer and internet. What they have done is to take a very decently spec’d computer, remove most of the breakables (moving/spinning media), add the ability to display to your tv set, and throw in a robust OS, with some customizations that let you easily find video content you can play/watch for free, all for $300. Yes, really, I am serious.

I got this Link delivered yesterday and pulling it out of the box I noticed, first of all, how good looking it was. It’s smaller than I had pictured and has a sleek looking black pc case which would go well in any entertainment-center equipment stack. Included with this is the Neuros KeyMote, which is the wireless keyboard/tackball combo. I have to say I really like it. Nice tactile feel and it works quite well (apart from that nagging windows key).

Setup was a breeze. They include a little one page setup document and if you follow it you should be going in no time. Just make sure to pay attention to the “configuring your keyboard” section. Once the machine was running and my keyboard was connected, I configured my wireless connection (also in the setup docs). Once that was up and running, I had to make a quick adjustment to X. You see, in the docs, they say that the only “supported” video configuration is hdmi and if you use something else you may have to tweak your config. Well, unfortunately I don’t have anything with hdmi, and my other choices on the back of the machine were dvi and vga, so I pulled out my spare lcd monitor and used that. After booting the X config was stuck in some 16:9 setting which would be wonderful for hdmi, but looks a bit odd on vga, so I moved the xorg.conf file to another name, restarted and I was in business at 1280×1024, perfect for my monitor.

With everything set, you are left in the Link’s customized browser, which is pointing to Neuros TV, a page where the folks at Neuros aggregate and manage (and index) video content across the web for you. This was seriously fun and is where I spent the remainder of my evening. I watched some “A Team” and a bit of “Adam 12” too. No, I am not that old, just a child of the 70’s and was reliving some great TV moments of the past. I also noted that there is plenty of new content too like Fringe, Eleventh Hour, Heroes and the list goes on forever practically.

The rest of the computer runs a fairly standard, full featured Ubuntu, which means that you can do on there what you need to do. Things like IM, Email, Web surfing, etc., are all right there at your fingertips. In fact, the only thing I think this Neuros Link is missing is an internal Neuros OSD 🙂

Go and BUY ONE NOW! You’ll regret it if you don’t. And as I get more time to play on this one I will put more information here for you all to drool over.