Hi. I was surfing the Internet today and came across an advertisement for the Windows XP Media Center computer. I then started to wonder, what hardware and software would I need to do everything, or almost everything, one of those computers do? Would it be possible to create something close to one of these systems without actually purchasing one? Thanks.

"I was surfing the Internet today and came across an advertisement for the Windows XP Media Center computer" I don't like the sound of that. sounds like it's optomized for winXP. (one of my pet peeves) If you want to put a different OS on you probably won't be able to get drivers for it. But you could duplicate the function by selecting particular componants. It will be more expensive but you'll end up with a better computer. Don't use any on board stuff except maybe NIC, USB, storage interfaces like RAID or SCSI or SATA, stuff like that. you need: - a descent sound card ~$30 - a video card with video and SVideo in and out. make sure it says directX9 is supported. - a web cam - a game paddle - a CDRW/DVDRW combo drive Select the rest for performance. dual channel DDR will give the best bandwidth so selection of the MB and recommended RAM is important. it will determine what processor to match it to. After that the rest of the debris is added.

Creating a media center pc like the ones being sold by compaq or dell is possible, but is not worth the trouble. For one, Microsoft does not sell its media center version of XP on the retail channel, it's only available to major companies like the one listed above. You might be able to get an OEM copy off the net somewhere.....but the main reason it isn't available in the first place is because MS requires a certain limited set of hardware to be used with it that it has tested and found appropriate....you'll see that the major companies media center pc's have very similar system specs, and this is why. If you don't want to shell out for a completely new system with this new windows OS, you could always use a copy of XP....it won't have all the functionality of the media center OS, such as wireless remote and so forth, but underneath in terms of performance and reliability, it identical to windows xp. It is windows xp at heart...