My latest project started back in December with some Boxing day sales, and finished up on the 1st with the maiden voyage.

It was interesting gathering all the parts from Greenlyph, NCIX, NewEgg and various local shops to come together in my first media center. I spent months price comparing and shopping around for the best deals, trying to decide on form factor, cases and where I would stop. There are still a few things I can think of that will have to wait.

Here is what I settled on:

• IN WIN IW-BT611T Slimline chassis
• Athlon 64 X2 5200+
• Asus M3A78-EM (Asus 780G Chipset)
• 2 x 2GB Crucial PC-6400
• 1 x SATA Seagate 500GB 16MB Cache
• LG SATA DVD-R/RW
• Logitech Wireless Keyboard/Laser Mouse Combo
• Windows 7 Ultimate RC 32-bit

Originally I was going to install Ubuntu 9.04, but thanks to ATI's horrendous proprietary drivers and two wasted days I decided to save the cost of a Vista license and install the release candidate of Windows 7 until it comes out this fall.

In the mean time this machine makes a great addition to my modded entertainment center (a story for another day).

Since my hard drive died this week and I needed to re-install Windows XP I figured I would leave a little space for the newest edition of Windows. After an entire day and a few restarts I managed to grab the Windows 7 beta from Microsoft.

To start with I am impressed to say the least. The installation was a breeze, it installed all of the drivers except those for the built in card reader, but that is not the end of the world. And it installed the default Microsoft drivers for my Intel graphics chip, which does not allow me to use the TV out, but again this is a beta. The install went faster then my install of XP and was simple in asking me where I wanted it to live and it went about it's business.

On the first boot it loaded in a snap. Of course, the first thing I did was reconfigure the desktop and install Firefox. All of my regular applications installed like a charm.

The only thing I noticed right off that will take some getting used to is the new task bar. I have only been using it for an afternoon, so far it is a little akward, but I expect it will grow on me.

I originally got this Toshiba Satellite with Vista Home Premium and it chugged out of the gate, after 8 months I broke down and bought an XP license, now I am pondering a Windows 7 license when it is released. Since this machine was a steal at 800.00 plus an XP license 150.00 and a new hard drive this week 90.00 and a Windows 7 license at least 185.00 I am looking at the potential of a 1225.00 laptop with 3 different Windows licenses on it. I am starting to think Microsoft planned Vista this way on purpose.

I love it so far and fear for Ubuntu's grand future since Microsoft may have a new contenter.