We have liftoff!

On a quest to get some ideas of the furniture we wanted, we lucked into finding a set of four motorized chairs that had been mis-ordered at a local showroom. It was supposed to be black, but instead is a Navy Blue. Works pretty darn well for us (little flecks of blue in carpet anyway).

They are huge! And Comforatable! Four chairs and five arms means someone gets to double-fist their drinks too. We're still trying to figure out how to configure the room with chairs and such for the kids or more people.

Steff was so pumped up about it that she also finished the screen border. The room is just about done! A little more paint here and there, the HTPC coming, mounting the antenna in the attic, connecting the CAT5, upgrading the IB.. okay- but those are just loose ends. The room is fully functional!

HTPC Trigger pull

Okay, at least partially.

I've ordered the NSK2400 and the Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard.

What remains are

• Processor
• RAM (DDR2)
• Hard drive
  

I'm kinda hoping that the processor (the low-wattage AMD X2) is going to go down in price soon- supposedly they just had a price decrease and it should show up in the retail channel later. RAM and HDDs show up on specials periodically.

Decided on a case

Actually, I've decided on just about everything- I just won't pull the trigger!

This case is awesome. Quiet, heavy, comes with a power supply:



Okay, now it probably isn't worth going single-core. Chances are more software will want dual core stuff and when we tested my ATI HDTV tuner at New Year's, the CPU was getting hit pretty hard- as well as the disk drive! So, a faster CPU with modern disks should be the ticket.

Dual core means AMD or Intel- with Intel being about twice the price. So I think I'll go with the slowest X2 processor. It's still >$130, but last year it was double that, so... Anyway, then I need RAM- one stick of 1G should be enough for now. Hard drive... I want SATA just for the cool factor- it doesn't hurt that it also is faster. So, I'll be on the hunt for that too.

Let's add it up so far (and this is the reason I'm hesitant).

• Case. $92
• CPU. $130
• MOBO. $90
• RAM. $100
• Hard drives. $100.

Let's see- thats.. uh... 2..330..420..512. Ouch. No software either. No keyboard, or DVD drive (I have those).

How is Dell selling this same type internals for $419 with keyboard, dvd drive and XP?