To go with my recently purchased and built Zalman HD160 HTPC I decided I wanted a wireless keyboard, and I came across a great little keyboard called the Microsoft Arc. It’s small and very light, and was perfect for the occasional use that I wanted it for.
It’s a fabulous little keyboard which I can tuck away when not needed. It has all the functionality that you need, although some of it has to be accessed via a function key but it’s all there. My only minor annoyance with it has been that there is no Caps Lock indicator on it which has caught me out a couple of times, but apart from that it’s great!
I recently decided to (finally) jump on the HTPC and acquired a Zalman HD160 HTPC. This is a slightly older model of what has now been replaced by the Zalman HD160xt Plus, which boasts a much larger 7″colour touch-screen display.
The Zalman HD160 shown above is my first foray into HTPC’s and it has been relatively simple. It takes a standard sized ATX motherboard which fits snugly into place around all of the other components. The motherboard sits raised, so there is room to slide cables underneath, or tuck them around the back and side of the hard disk holder to keep them out of the way.
Installing drives is relatively simple albeit a bit more time consuming than it could be due to the number of screws involved. It’s not really any different to a standard PC and I had Windows 7 64bit up and running in no time.
The VFD
The VFD is really there for show. It has no practical use and unless you sit 3ft away from the HD160, then you aren’t going to be able to see what is on there. I still wanted it to be working properly though (even if I couldn’t see it) instead of it constantly saying “Welcome to HTPC”, it’s default message.
The setup application on the CD provided didn’t quite install everything, and I had to manually run the VFD driver setup to get it working. I subsequently install iMon which works much better and has ironed out all of the problems I had.
The Remote
When I first started using the remote control provided with the Zalmand HD160, it was turning on my Xbox! This was a bit of a shock, and I eventually found that you need to disable all remote types on the Xbox itself and it will no longer happen.
Noise Level
The noise level of the case is very good. The two fans provided are nice and quiet, and even with a stock Intel CPU cooler, and an nVidia 8800 GTS with stock cooler, they can barely be heard.
Overall I’m very pleased with my first HTPC. It’s a nice simple case without the fancy VFDs that now come on the more recent versions such as the Zalman HD160xt Plus.
