XBMC has been seen running on this.

Only the closed-minded should make generalizations about the effectiveness of this machine until they've been used in the wild, so I'll hold off doing so until I've played with one for a while.

http://www.trimslice.com/ Looks interesting, I've been after an ARM desktop for a while. The Beagleboard looked a bit enthusiast for what I wanted but this should be much more consumer friendly. The supposed 3W average consumption makes even the most low-powered x86 product look like it's hugely ine...

Yup, I've set Mediatomb to transcode DIVX files on the fly and they play back just fine on the PS3, it even allows the 1 minute preview jumps. I think there's 2 lines in the config file that need to be changed (it even has remarks beside them so you know which two) and it's up and running very quick...

I went with an under-volted Athlon X2 5200, clocked down to 2GHz, on a 740G motherboard running Linux Mint. Mediatomb for the media server (about the only thing it can't serve to is an XBox360) and also running MythTV to record DVB-T. It idles relatively high (40 watts), but I prefer having the addi...

The C7-D is about the same speed as a PIII-800. However, it will use less power than the Athlon.

http://www.norhtec.com/ Not a personal recommendation but I'm keeping an eye on their ARM based MicroClient TC. Once they have linux up and running on it it'll be a much nicer solution than their current RDP/WinCE options. Just be aware that, AFAIK, they only ship from Taiwan so you have that risk, ...

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41883 I'm running a 5200+ X2 that's under-clocked to 2.0Ghz and under-volted to 0.925V running on a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 motherboard. With a 250W PSU (SS-250SFD), it's drawing 40W idle and 56W load from the wall with a whilst running 2 core Ortho...

Just a note, a P4 M is not the same as a Pentium M.

If you don't mind the odd form factor:-

http://linitx.com/viewcategory.php?catid=150

my GA-MA74GM-S2 (no HDMI) goes down to 0.800V, at which it'll quite happily run my 5400+ X2 @ 1Ghz.

Intel front-end: http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_5542.html For the back-end, an under-clocked AMD X2 would more than likely be fine. I bought a 5200+ X2, Gigabyte 740G (mATX) motherboard and 2GByte of RAM for about £110. I've under-clocked the processor and it's running at 2Ghz @ 40W idle ...

VIA held the retail sub-mATX monopoly for a long time but now Intel is using the Atom to control the segment. VIA's loss of the small platform started with Intel's introduction of a product built around a Celeron CPU, to which they added a SIS chipset on a mini-ITX form factor motherboard and substa...

My first reflex in any situation like this is: what's your PSU ?

It's not pointless, it's just not really a netbook platform. What it seems to be is a TV platform along the lines of, as has been noted, Apple TV. If the Atom can take care of the encryption on Blu-Ray discs, which it should be able to, then you have the basis for a complete TV system that could inc...

The Atom CPU isn't the heat problem, the chipset is. Atoms run passively, if there's a fan on the motherboard then it's on the chipset.