My journey on setting up a Media Center PC on a Acer Aspire 1600.
Tigerdirect had a great sale on the units so I purchased one and a Gyrus Universal Media Center Remote.
From some message boards I read up on I also purchased the extra 1GB of ram for the Acer, so that 1080p video would be possible. Although, I just found out that my TV is 720p/1080i which isn’t 1080p. Oh, well the system should work just that much better.
I decided to just setup the Acer as is, with all of its standard components before I start adding on things.
My planned addons are:
- The Gyrus remote
- Wireless keyboard and mouse.
- Wireless USB dongle (If this thing doesn’t have wireless internal.
- The extra GB of RAM.
My software plans for now are
- I-Tunes
- XBMC for windows. ( I know I probably could just install Ubuntu or boot from a USB drive, but all of the other systems in the house are PC, so I will stick with it for now)
First impressions. Well, it didn’t come with a manual. WTF! I guess I have to go find one.
I found the manuals online at Acer’s Web site.
I found a nice video on how to open the Acer Aspire on Youtube to add the memory. Adding the memory was a bit tight. I found that you need to shove the memory in at an angle then push down and snap into place.
The mouse and keyboard look cute, like small size Mac style and all white. Good think I have an extra wireless unit available. When I had the unit open I did see that there was not a wireless card installed. I’ll have to go with the USB dongle for now. I do plan on an upgrade for the house to Wireless N and I might just get a new internal card at that time.
