Chris Lanier's Blog

I had a hard time figuring out which number was the serial number on my box. I hope I gave them the right one!

Personally I'm looking forward to Antec's Fusion MAX (www.hexus.net/.../item.php)

because they are trying to resolve the issue of noise and temperature that plague HTPC cases. The Omaura cases suffer by comparison as they lack any real innovation, and just focus on the looks.

Wow - do you have data to back that up?  I can stuff anything I want in a TF11 with no heat issues.  We did not attempt to use a 4U server as the basis of our designs.  Furthermore, our peripheral hardware has native Vista driver support, and I'm sure you don't get that with IRTrans or iMon.

I've got no reason to doubt your anecdotal claims that your product has no problem dealing with heat (I think I even praised your placement of intake fans on the missing remote forum). But then again neither do any of the HTPC cases that I've worked with over the past several years have that problem either. What I'm talking about is a case's ability to deal with heat at the same time as dealing with NOISE, and historically case designs similar to yours have trouble with that. And yes the Antec case may be slightly taller and a bit deeper than yours, but their priority (and acceptance of noise) might be different to yours. If you can provide more empirical data to show how it deals with both heat and noise, then I'll be surprised but also glad to have been proved wrong. But in the absence of any independent verification from reviews I trust, my experience tells me that it won't be quiet enough for some people. What's not in dispute, is how pretty your case is and that will be enough for most people.

BTW, the iMon does have native Vista driver support.