More powerful is not better. More powerful is more expensive to buy and to run, noisier, hotter. He was bragging about how low his power draw was, and how cheap

More powerful is not better. More powerful is more expensive to buy and to run, noisier, hotter. He was bragging about how low his power draw was, and how cheap his box is. I suggested getting a cheaper box that draws less power yet still contains all the functionality he needs. Personally I don't need anything more than XBMC on my media center, and given the popularity of the device I had (ASRock NetTop 330) I doubt XBMC would add features that wouldn't run on it, historically they have always targeted relatively under-powered devices (original XBox, and now iPad et al). On the power front, CPUs have steadily been getting faster and faster all these years, but our general requirements have not risen with the same speed. I have an Atom N270 in my netbook, which is basically a single-core version of what's in the NetTop, and I am running Windows 7 and frequently play Team Fortress 2 (it looks like minecraft, but it's playable!) You can't really describe something as "underpowered" without a context of what it's for. If I was still doing video editing, I would probably consider your computer "underpowered", but if I was building a dedicated server to run iptables to replace my Netgear router then Atom would be overpowered.