HP Pavilion Media Center M7160n (Pentium D 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, XP Media Center)

Pros: 19-inch LCD, nice and fast,, good buy, great support!

Cons: Remote issue

Summary: Bought the $1,499 Costco bundle (m7167c-B) and it includes a wireless mouse/keyboard, plus that awesome LCD.

I had been thinking small-form-factor (Shuttle) to replace my 3-year-old PC, but instead went just as big if not bigger than my old box. So far, I'm quite impressed.

Only issue - the Media Center remote doesn't work. HP online 24-hour live tech chat has been awesome in trying to solve the problem-have not done the last step, they sent me an entirely different IR receiver than what's bundled, and I fear the keyboard/mouse might have issues if I swap them out.

But this thing actually comes with a full set of manuals - in paper! Wow, what a concept! And the bundled software isn't too bad, not as overboard as I feared. Still deciding if Norton is worth the hassle (it has frequent indigestion checking mail within Outlook '03).

First PC "cover boy" (Nov. Computer Shopper, plus PC Mag best buy) I've owned since my ol' Tandy 1000 20 years ago!