Last week, I ran across a pretty incredible deal from
Dell. They were (and, through tomorrow, still are) offering their XPS 420 system for as much as $700 off the regular price. I have been eying this system for a while, as it is one of the few (read: other than
HP's) moderately-priced
Media Center-capable systems that can be configured with Digital Cable Tuners. Unlike HP's offering, Dell's can be equipped with dual tuners, and, if I'm not mistaken, I can pop in some standard analog tuners in addition to these, giving me the ability to record up to four shows simultaneously. Not that I need that capability or anything...
Anyway. I went with the mid-range base system and configured it to have just what I wanted. Essentially, it's a fairly powerful (by yesterday's standards) system that will replace my almost-a-year-old custom-built Media Center. I was rather amused at the inability to select an amount of RAM below 3GB, not that I'm complaining. For under $1500, I think I got a pretty darn good deal, especially in light of competing offerings from companies like Life|ware that
start at $2000.
I should receive it by Friday of this week, but the tuners are delayed until sometime in early February, so I guess I'll have a couple weeks to get the system configured how I want and all. I guess that'll also give me time to schedule a
reliable appointment time with Comcast for getting them to send somebody out to plug two CableCARDs into the external tuners. You'd think I could just go and pick them up from the retail office in Redmond (which is maybe 10 minutes from my work). Lame.