[themiller]

I have an old notebook with the following specs:

AMD Athlon (1.6 GHz), 1.6 GHz,
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
160GB HD

I also have a 1 TB external USB 2.0 HD that I use to store my movies/shows on.

Current all this notebook does is run Utorrent and act as a server for my 2 xbox machines ruining XBMC.

...


All I really want to do is hook the computer up to my LCD (38 inch) with a VGA cable and run xbmc on it, while also having it still act as a server for 1 xbox and have utorrent running in the background. 720p is good enough quality for me.

I'm not particularly attached to any OS.

I've been running XBMC for years now, but never on anything other than an xbox, any advice is greatly appreciated.

Will the computer have enough power to do what I want?

Thanks!

[T800]

Why don't you download XBMC for your laptop and give it a go?
It sounds like it might be similar spec to my netbook, it will play 720p files but drops frames.
I'm gonna put a graphics card in this week to how it runs.

[themiller]

I will - I just didn't want to bother starting the process if someone was going to say 'no way that will work'.

I'm also curious to know if the system would be significantly better running linux instead of windows XP (I forgot to include that in the original post). If linux is the way to go, I will need to reformat etc.

Right now, the system works well, and my wife is happy. I don't want to start screwing with the system in order to make it better, break it, and have an unhappy wife...

[T800]

I totally get you.
I've got to the point where I have a back up popcorn hour in case the HTPC has a bad day!
I never tried Linux but I did try XP and Windows 7 and it struggled on both.