The Media Center PC

Chris Anderson, of "Long Tail" fame, sings the praises of The Media Center PC:

I'll no doubt be savaged for praising a Microsoft product, but my favorite technology of the week is our Windows Media Center PC.

It looks like a product with a future:

It appears that, after a slow start, Media Center PCs are finally taking off and now account for 43% of desktop PCs sold in retail (although less than a third of them have TV tuners). Microsoft is promoting it by eliminating the price premium over the regular Windows XP home edition. As a result, you can now find Media Center PCs for less than $900. It's also going to be built into the default home version of Windows Vista, the next major Microsoft OS. And it's at the core of Intel's new Digital Home strategy.   Analysts expect Media Center PCs to reach US sales of more than 20m a year by 2007, and some are rather hyperbolically predicting that it will be "next year's iPod".