Leadman Electronics has been honored as an Intel Innovation Leader in two categories of Intel’s yearly Desktop Innovation contest. Five semifinalists were chosen as the most pioneering consumer systems from among competitors in five separate categories. Leadman’s entries this year were the Savina and Habanero machines, two newly developed home automation and media appliance offerings.

The Savina was named as an innovator in the Ultra-Small Form Factor category. The Savina is a super-compact desktop media server and home automation system all in one. Its ingenuity lies in its efficiency in size, power and price, while at the same time providing a wide array of features. The Savina’s features include whole house lighting control, high-definition video playback and music streaming, along with real-time surveillance and remote access from any Windows or Linux laptop or desktop, or WinCE PDA. With a user-friendly, straightforward GUI, users are able to access all their audio and video media and control their house, along with browsing the internet. In this green age, the Savina is also energy-conscious. In the Intel competition configuration, equipped with a 1.6Ghz Atom CPU, Toshiba 2.5” 250G hard drive, Slim DVD burner, and 1G of RAM, the Savina consumed only 25 watts when idle and 26 to 27 watts when outputting 720P video playback. 

In the Consumer / Media Desktop category, Leadman scored with the Habanero, an all-in-one portable kitchen pc, media server and home automation control system. The Habanero packs powerful media capabilities into an innovative and portable chassis design.

The Habanero is the Savina’s big brother, offering a full array of home automation and media capabilities, including:

- Lighting control,
- Storing and streaming audio and video,
- Upscaling video to 1080P,
- Innovative follow-me feature – bring your media to any room you move to at the push of a button,
- Security
- Infrared remote programming
- Internet/computing

Leadman designed the Habanero to be highly scalable, to fit a wide range of customer needs. Using Intel’s DG965OT board, the system can be customized as a very cost-effective solution, or a higher-end machine with maximum storage potential – from 1G of memory and one 500GB hard drive, to 8G of memory and 6 terabytes of storage.

The Habanero’s chassis is also unique, specially designed to be self-contained and portable. A 15 to 22 inch monitor may be mounted at the front via VESA mounts, and can be raised, lowered and swiveled. The chassis also rotates 180 degrees to the best viewing angle, and has an endcap to seal in messy cables, for a clean, streamlined home appliance look.

It’s no surprise that Leadman chose Intel’s technology for their newest, most cutting-edge appliance solutions. Intel’s products provide dependability and performance, and also have the benefit of being very Linux friendly. Intel’s stable, well-developed Linux drivers provide the support that these new Linux-based media solutions need to give them an edge in stability and affordability.

For more information, visit http://yourdesktopinnovation.com/contest/showdown/winners/semi-finalists.php