10 years ago I built a media MicroPC for my living room, one month before the WDTV live! came out and allegedly would do everything the media PC would do for $100, and with a remote instead of a kb/mouse. So I got the WDTV and sold the PC to my work for $250 (barely over parts costs) to be used as an internet PC in a studio for a station we just bought.
Now, 10 years later, the 40 gig seagate HD in that PC finally died. There's not much point into fixing up the computer for the office, as it can only handle 2 gigs of ram, and XP is too much of a security liability to allow to be a websurfing PC anymore (I'd have done away with it earlier except that station no longer has live DJs to use that PC). So, it's officially retired. As it was just going to be tossed out, I took it home with me.
But the only thing wrong with it was the HD, so I yanked an 80 gig out of another old dead machine at the house, stuck it in, reloaded XP from a disk I have... And it's back in business. And because it's a fresh install with no updates and no other programs, it boots up as fast as my gaming PC does with a SSD
I've long since fallen out of love with the WDTV in favor of the chromecast, and now I'm falling out of love with the chromecast because of its stupid steadfast refusal to natively play any format other than mp4 (and all the trendy pirates are into MKVs these days), and the only good transcoding app (VideoStream) has been shitty lately as well.
So now, we've come full circle. I'm gonna stick it on my living room TV, and its only job will be to use VLC to play my shows and movies. Well, assuming it can handle 1080p. I'll have to test that.
