New (quiet) PC

Part of the grand plan for the media network at home is to add more boxes in other rooms.

I've kept up to date with the new media player boxes like the Netgear MP101 and Philips Streamium, but they're either too expensive for me to justify, or more often than not, just too limited in their functionality.

I'd really like to be able to surf the web, or read my email. Limiting the box to media playback just isn't good enough for what I have planned.

One of the key points however, is to keep costs and fan noise to a minimum. If I have multiple boxes, they're going to have to be quiet and I don't want to be paying through the nose for them. The trouble is, "quiet" and "cheap" do not normally go hand in hand.

One of the options I've been looking at is a lower end processor and Linux as the operating system, moving slowly away from the relatively expensive Windows or MacOS. It's a long time since I've delved into Linux however, so that will be an interesting task in itself..