I’ve been running an Intel P4 Shuttle and it’s served me well. But mind full of it’s fairly hefty power consumption (around 140W in idle) and being a bit noisey as it’s got 5 fans. I’ve decided to treat myself to something a little more energy friendly and up to date. Any way after a bit of luck on ebay? I’ve picked up an ASUS P5B-MX micro ATX motherboard and Intel E2160 cpu. With some extra new bits I’ve assembled a dual core machine that idles at about 60W, it’s quieter too. In my haste to put this all together I’ve bought a nice In Win media centre PC case.
bt 553 case
Here’s the warning though. I need a couple of PCI cards, one for a couple of extra usb ports the other for a sound card (as there seems to be a fault with the on board) solution. (The latter is the only component without warranty! ) Trawling around for low profile PCI cards I’m staggered to find that (a) there’s hardly any choice and (b) the few options are very expensive. Dare I say I assumed there would be plenty, but I’m wrong 
So unless you desperately need a low profile case or money is no object I’d say avoid. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.
As to choice of O/S I’ve stuck with XP Pro for now, the main reason being I’ve a modest on board graphics card. Probably not good enough to do Vista justice.
Just had some brilliant help from the www.reciva.com . They got my out of warranty Logik IR100 radio working again in spite of the fact that they don’t deal directly with the hardware. Now all I’ve got to do is get Virgin to sort my broadband out and I’ll able to listen to Dinner Jazz Excursion (http://www.dinnerjazzexcursion.com/ ) without dropout 
Thanks once again to the kind folk at Reciva.
I’ve mentioned Internet Radio to a few people recently and been greeted with an element of uncertainty and ignorance to some extent. What’s it’s all about and why should I bother I hear you asking? Well for a start there are literally thousands of stations covering all genre’s. You can listen in almost any language and any category form jazz to … well anything really. What do you need? Well you can buy a dedicated radio like the Logik unit I’ve reviewed on my blog. Or you can use a PC with a piece of software such as MediaMonkey. http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/ Other things you’ll need are a broadband connection and a wireless access point/router if your using a radio such as the logik or equivalent. You’ll also need to check your download limits as all the time your listening you will be using your broadband download quota. The best stations broadcast? at 128Kb/s or above which is similar to DAB. Here’s a good site to view the technical details and find links to other internet radio manufacturures. Happy listening 
http://digitalradiotech.co.uk/broadband_internet_radio.htm
