[Dignam]

Currently I use my 360 with an external HD to play movies on my projector. It works well but it is pretty limiting in what it will let me do. I was blown away with the awesomeness of what XBMC can do so I want to try it out.

For now I have 2 options to try to test everything out. I have an old xbox that is collecting dust and I have an old computer. I would prefer to just try to use the computer so here are the specs:

MOBO: MSI K8N Neo 4/SLI
CPU: AMD 3200+
RAM: I believe 1 gig maybe 2
GPU: BFG 7950 GT (512MB)

I imagine this would be much better than using the xbox right? I am not looking to play blueray dvds or record tv right now. I want to be able play media either directly off of it, or over the network using XBMC. I do want to be able to play HD (at least 720p maybe 1080p also) video files though.

So I guess the main question is will this system still be powerful enough to meet my needs to even bother with? (Down the road I would like to build a more high end HTPC but dont have the money right now so hoping this is good enough to play around with)

Second would be what OS to go with. I have a copy of Windows 7 but have yet to play around with it. Never touched Linux in my life but would be open to trying it.

Thanks for your time!

[LoonQ]

Go with Ubuntu... I just did that myself and was impressed!! The installation worked fine and all drivers was simple to install. Then just read the wiki here and you will have XBMC installed in a minute

[Dignam]

I just D/L the XBMC Live iso and burned it to a cd. Trying to boot it on my old laptop just to play around with it but it just gets to checking battery state...

/dev/sda:
setting advanced power management level to Oxfe (254)

It just sits here and does nothing. Guess I might need to wait until I can get a new PSU in the old computer to really toy around with it.