A continued experiment in progress, I installed a 750gb drive into the HP, as well as 4gig of RAM. A fresh load of Windows 7, and Media Monkey was downloaded. This works very well, with a few things different from JRiver. Autorip of CD does not appear to be supported, but it's a matter of inserting a CD, waiting about 20 seconds while MM accesses the CD database, and gets track info and artwork. It actually does this function very well, even finding a collection of Classical offerings, and obscure titles like an MCA classical sampler, and Eric Darken's "A Love Like Ours". Then a click of "rip CD to hard drive" and off it goes. FLAC files are made to a chosen directory.I still have the Win8/JRiver load and may decide to go there before it's over, but I'm very impressed with MediaMonkey so far. Very fluid, nice display.
I also downloaded Windows SyncToy, a neat little utility that allows individual folder backups on demand. I plugged a 1TB usb drive into the HP, and setup SyncToy to look at the MyMusic folder, and the contents of the backup drive, and push whatever was different to the backup. So far,so good: all the software is playing nicely together, and the platform is pretty quick. TightVNC is a very quick, down and dirty remote desktop app that outperforms MS built in remote desktop in every way. I downloaded it to my laptop, and the HP. It works flawlessly and remote control from my laptop works great. I'll try the Winbook at some point, but expect success there, and TightVNC has an Android app that should work with those tablets as well to remote into a windows box. So I'm only waiting on the final piece of the puzzle now. I ordered a Schiit Modi USBDAC. The website says they ship within a couple days after ordering, so late this week, early next before I can give that a go between the PC and the Kenwood.
