Desktops forum: Looking for best Vista Home Media Center PC

Thank you for your quick response. Unfortunately I only received the second half of your message. If you could I would be interested in hearing what else you have to say.

its going to ensure a good quality HD tuner, and other features that you'll want (for example, Creative audio cards, bad idea, M-Audio/Turtle Beach audio cards, good idea), and it'll keep the price down

I also don't suggest setting the PC up as the center piece of the HT, let the A/V processor do that, thats its job, set the PC up as one of many inputs to the A/V processor, get a graphics card that won't have issues with 1920x1080 output (I'd suggest a GeForce 8600GT) and a CPU that won't have issues with 1920x1080 playback (quad core Kentsfield shouldn't have a problem) in addition to ~2-3GB of RAM, and a RAID0+1, RAID10, RAID5, or at bare minimum RAID1 HD array, high quality power supply, and GbE network connection (wired)

Dell's "answer" to Apple's bundled software is weak, to say the least, and Brown neglects to mention the very important fact that only Apple's iMac can run all of the software the Dell can, plus its own superior Mac OS X Leopard OS and all of the often best-in-class Mac only software. It'd be a silly mistake to pay way more for this thing from Dell when you can pay far less and get so much more with an Apple iMac. Apple's 20-inch iMac starts at $1199. Add in a Blu-ray drive from FastMac for $999 and you're only at $2198, still $201 less than the Dell's OS-limited, underpowered, overpriced XPS One with Blu-ray.
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