media pc, part 6: the initial result

The media PC has been an incredible asset to our family life. It's satisfying to know that we are watching every TV show that we pay for monthly. It's even more satisfying to be able to watch any show whenever we want. We no longer miss shows because we're too busy; we just watch them when we're not busy. If that happens to be two weeks after the original air date, it doesn't matter. Our kids can watch their shows when school is over. We can browse our entire music library (30GB+) effortlessly, and everything plays through our 5.1-channel speaker setup. We watch photo slide shows on the TV with friends and relatives. If we're feeling lazy, we can shop online from our couch. TV shows are recorded as separate .mpg files, so we can transfer them, or burn them to DVD. It's everything that the hype promised it would be.

The PC was very quiet and cool. You could barely hear the computer running at around 2:00AM, when all other sounds had ceased. Even then, it was much quieter than a whisper. The hard drive stayed under 36C, and the CPU never exceeded 42C, idling in the high 20s. Everybody was pleased.