Battleangel

Good question. I’m asking myself the very same thing. It’s doing just fine but I’m missing a few components before I can utilize the box. As for internal suspension I can only say that I have resorted to carpentry and heavy rubber bands. Not exactly professional but it works.
If I can make up my mind, I will have a new processor online before the end of January. I can’t really keep stalling the construction any longer. To hell with ambivalence! HTPC or bust!

Here is the list of updated components:

• ATI Remote Wonder (RF Remote Control) [ON ORDER]

• Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical (RF Trackball) [ON ORDER]
• Silitek SK-7255 (El cheapo RF keyboard) (information) [ON ORDER]
• G400 DualHead
• I’ll have to get some sort of charger for all the batteries that these devices are going to consume. Perhaps something cheap and simple like this (1800mAh).

Perhaps the most interesting question is what kind of processor will power the device. The current CeleronA 266@400 is quite frankly a joke. The real dilemma here is that while a 400MHz Celeron is inadequate, a “real” CPU at 600-700MHz could probably get the job done. Unless you want to dabble with some kind of fancy video processing, a CPU above 1GHz is really overkill. But what choice do I have .. well .. lets review this once more:
(A) I could buy brand new components for the HTPC. In this scenario the choice would be the new P4-core Celeron at 2GHz. Simply because it is able to overclock to 3GHz with no extra cooling and at this speed it is the best encoder (and probably decoder) of video on the market today. Either way, the Celeron runs pretty cool and the overall performance is poor (it just excels at shuffling video and audio)
(B) Or I could use my current AMD XP 1600+ (1400Mhz) and just move it out of my gaming rig. This is a somewhat less speedy decoder/encoder but it is enough for most applications. It probably runs a little hotter (i.e. more noise) than a Celeron but I can always use a bigger fan or a different cooler or underclock the setup if I have to. The real upside to this is that I can upgrade my gaming rig a bit. Not that I really need to but it might be a wiser use of funds. To be honest I very rarely encode videos and it seems stupid to plan for a nonexistent scenario.
And btw. Getting a brand new XP 2100+/MB/RAM will be almost the exact cost of a similar Celeron 2Ghz bundle. So price is not the decisive factor either. Too bad, this might have settled the matter. Still, I’m inclined to go for the AMD system and just do the switcheroo.