Buying and Off-the-Shelf Computer for a Media Center

Before I decided to stick my desktop in my living room, I was looking at buying a cheap PC from Best Buy and throwing that in my living room.  There are a lot of nice computers for under $500 that are in pretty tiny cases.

If you don't have any computer equipment that you can dedicate to this purpose, in my mind, this is the best way to go.  While building a machine might be another great option, I often find that with low price equipment, you can't always beat the major manufactures.

So here is what I think you should look for in an off the shelf computer.

• Running Vista Home Premium - You wouldn't want to get it home to find it running Vista Home Basic and not being able to use Windows Media Canter. *Bonus Points if it has Vista Ultimate Edition*
• One Free PCI Express Slot - This will be used to hook up an optional TV Tuner Card.  While the older PCI standard will work with some of the older TV Tuners, I would strongly suggest PCIe.  *Bonus Points if it also has a PCI Express 16x slot*
• The Proper Video Connection - This one is a little ambiguous, it really depends on what your TV has.  If your set is Standard Definition, then you will want to look for S-Video.  If you have a High Def Set, then it depends on what your HD set accepts.  I would suggest DVI or HDMI and then VGA in that order.  DVI can easily be converted into HDMI.  Those two cannot be turned into VGA as easily.
• A Bunch of USB ports - Just always handy.
• At least 2GB of RAM and 2 Cores on the CPU.

The one machine that caught my eye was the Acer AX1700-U3700A.  I cannot comment directly about the hardware, but if it is all of the pieces I was looking for in a media center.

Good Luck!