Thoughts
As configured the T2.e/MCE2005, with the optional WiFi card, is around £970 inc VAT and delivery. I'm not convinced that's value for money, for a few reasons. Firstly, some positives for Tranquil and their customers to focus on. The unit is excellently integrated and even beautifully so in places. Tranquil's T2 chassis is a great home for a media center PC and I'd love it if they sold the chassis separately without any internals like an EPIA. Thankfully, the red paint was a review sample quirk, shipping versions available in only black or silver. The black one would look particularly good in my opinion, for those with a black TV stand or AV rack.But the negatives in presentation, operation of MCE2005 and performance stop me from recommending it, until such time as the issues can be ironed out. I REALLY must stress that the majority of problems with the system stem from the operating system, something which is largely out of Tranquil's control and are issues you'd find elsewhere too. Certain things can be engineered out by Tranquil and I'm extremely confident they'll do so. We're going to work with Tranquil on those issues and update you as they fix each of the larger sticking points. If they're able to do so, the T2.e/MCE2005 will become much more appealing.
It really needs a higher performance processor for playback of high-definition video content, and to that end Tranquil have a Pentium-M version of the unit in the works which we'll review in due course.
It's a beautifully integrated device with some problems that stop me from recommending it outright. Tranquil are working on things though, and as a company in the market as it stands, given their levels of support and enthusiasm for creating a great product, I'd be more than happy to become a customer of theirs; I'd just steer clear of spending close to £1000 on the T2.e/MCE2005 at the time of writing. Therefore, as soon as Tranquil iron out the major flaws, it'll get my seal of approval. I'll keep you posted, the T2.e/MCE2005 has definite promise. Notably, there's a dual tuner option in the works for recording and watching different channels at the same time.
To sum up, going back to my opening assertions, Tranquil can't quite change my notions, but they're close to getting there. Stay tuned.
To Buy
Buy the T2.e/MCE2005 here.HEXUS Right2Reply
Following my review of the Tranquil PC T2.e/MCE2005, Tranquil's Sue Thompson had this to say. I'd like to thank Sue for taking the time out to read the article and respond in such a timely fashion.Dear Ryszard,From my point of view Tranquil have been brilliant to work with (hi, Ed!) and if they continue to listen and accept feedback on their products in the manner they've done so with the T2.e/MCE2005, I wouldn't be surprised to see them continue to do very well indeed. To that end, we'll be working with Tranquil wherever possible and I've got a sneaky peek of something of theirs which I'll show you in due course. A company to watch with products to keep an eye on.
Thanks for taking time to review the Tranquil T2e.MCE2005, and for allowing us to provide feedback.
You have summed up the product well; it is a low profile, fanless (near silent) stylish and well engineered unit – thank you for those comments. We aimed to create a platform that would provide a solution to the issues (noisy, large, unsightly, hardware units) that are stopping the sale of the MCE interface, as you have said, perhaps the best polished Media Centre GUI available today. Of course the experience as a whole is primarily dependant on the software, but we aimed to address the hardware issues – and on the whole, it seemed you agreed.
We have taken on board all of your comments, and where appropriate and possible, any items requiring ironing out, will be done, some of which we’d already identified and remedied. We agree that users need far more support, and we certainly will focus on better pre-sale, and post-sale documents, including a more detailed user manual, which is always helpful.
Unfortunately this hardware platform will never cope with HDTV, it wasn’t designed to do so. We do have three additional platforms, based on the same chassis, some of which may deal with HDTV, more news on this as we can release it.
We believe that today, a client should be highly valued, and supported - not dealt with by a call centre, somewhere distant. To this end, we have worked hard to develop a product from scratch that we know inside out. We are not re-sellers, importers, or just system builders, we own the T2e unit, its CPU cooling systems, anti-vibration - cooled HDD carriers, and peripheral electronics etc – so we know what we are talking about. The positive comments that you have made, are appreciated and we feel are worth their weight in gold, in todays aggressive and often distant technical support environment.
Tranquil PC, a British company, provide solutions based on slim, stylish, sexy, reliable and silent platforms. The T2e.MCE is one such product, marrying up the distinctive T2e hardware with the MCE software. We hope that the team at HEXUS will continue to provide feedback and honest reviews of our products in the future.
Regards,
Sue Thompson
Director
To reiterate my conclusion, the T2.e/MCE2005's flaws lie mainly in the software it runs, the hardware well integrated and the chassis attractive and simple to work with.