I decided to build a new Media Center because our old one (Hewlett Packard) was sucking air. I’ve been slowly buying the parts over the last several months as I saw things on sale. The new one is pretty swank – A terabyte of storage (4x250MB SATA2 drives), 2 GB of RAM, three HDTV tuners, dual-core AMD 64 4800+, a sweet Asus motherboard, and Windows Vista Ultimate (yes, we bought a legal copy). It rocks, and we finally get HD channels on it. It’s been awhile since I built a new machine (I’m married with mortgage now), but I had forgotten how fun it is.

Vista is taking a bit to get used to, and I’m not sure I like the new Media Center interface as much. However, as with any new OS, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and it will be old hat in a couple of months. I’ve found a fair amount of annoyances with it, but again, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. All-in-all, Vista runs very smoothly on the new machine (it really makes our old Media Center look pathetic).