[Jolind]

I'm expanding my HTPC built around Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe (atom 330, ion based motherboard). I have 4 gb ram installed on it and system disk is a SSD and dual WD Caviar green 2tb as storage.

Currently it's running ubuntu server with XBMC as media frontend. I also use it as a NAS for my home network and rtorrent (with the rutorrent http frontend). This is a working setup and it has served me well but I'm thinking about adding a BlueRay-player to it to make it a complete media machine. My problem is that linux isn't supporting BR-disc playback, and Windows with extra software does. Now I'm thinking of switching to Windows as OS for it but I dont know if my setup has enough power to run it smoothly doing about the same tasks as it does today. I would switch rtorrent to utorrent and use the inbuilt webinterface to control it, share the stuff through the windows network and ofcause still run XBMC as my frontend. I would still like the ability to control the machine from another computer (as I do now through ssh) but dont know how to do that on a windows machine.

I would really appriciate any input on the matter, specially if windows would be too resource hungry to make it a smooth experiance.

[jhsrennie]

Windows 7 works fine on my Acer Revo 3610, and that has an Atom 330 CPU. Windows itself isn't going to place any significant strain on an Atom 330, but check your BluRay player supports hardware acceleration or it won't run on an Atom.

There are various methods for remote control on Windows. Most Windows users use RDP as this is built in. VNC is an alternative, though it's slower than RDP. I think there's an optional telnet server, though it might be Server 2008 only: look in the "Add features" and see if it's listed there. Finally the Cygwin SSH server works fine if you're desparate to use SSH.

JR

[Jolind]

Great! Thanks for the answers. Much appriciated.

I will probably have a go with Windows 7 then. Sad to leave Linux since I enjoyed the experiance with a os that is alot of fun tinkering with, but since it lacks the blueray ability (without some plugin transcoding) there's really no alternative to a windows install. Hopefully I wont have much problems setting up DVXA hardware support and getting the PowerDVD suite functionally integrated.