Acer RL70-UR308 Desktop (Black)

If you are into home media systems this is a great idea. Add 2gb of 204-pin, DDR3, PC3-10600 memory (about $15) and you will have a fantastic system. Even though this is a "desktop" computer, it uses lap-top memory. Before I got it, I did a lot of research just to confirm what kind of memory it takes. It was the 204-pin part that was hard to confirm, but once you get it, it's fairly easy to install.

It comes with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard which work great for me from 10' away. Add a good media player, sit-back and enjoy. I am using XBMC but Media Monkey and WMP are okay too. I just got this yesterday evening and have spent most of the day getting it set-up and loaded with all my MP3s. So far I'm thrilled.

Windows 8 is a bit of an adjustment. It has a really different look and feel, but seems to be a lot like windows 7 under the hood. I'll update this if anything of note comes up.

12/20 update: Forgot to mention that documentation is minimal and quite poor, though not really necessary. I found some assistance on the web/youtube regarding the memory upgrade. There is one screw to remove which holds the case together,and you'll want to use a plastic credit card to pry the case apart. It snaps back together easily and you replace the screw. (may have warranty issue if you open the case). Also, since there is no cd, you'll need an external cd drive to make a windows recovery cd.

This desktop is awesome, amazing design and good size for a desktop.

I bought this PC for media center purposes, connected to a hometheater and a 1080p TV.

Unfortunatly this specific model doesn't have enough cpu power to play encoded videos like 1080p mp4 or mkvs. Even 720p with DTS sound sometimes flickers or pauses for a second or two.

I upgraded the memory to 6Gb and it still coundn't play 1080p videos, even after I uninstalled the mcafee antivirus and norton firewalls...

I could not play 5.1 sound through the HDMI either, but as it has a optical output, that was not an issue.

UPDATE: tweaking the codecs I was able to enable hardware acceleration to the GPU and now I can watch 1080p movies at 30% CPU. One more star.

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I bought this for HTPC purposes and I really feel like I made the right choice. It can be a little sluggish fresh out of the box but after I cleared off some of the McAfee/Norton bloatware it was fine. I have used it for streaming netflix and hulu as well as XBMC and Plex. It works perfectly for my purposes and windows 8 was nice on my tv after i configured the largest possible font sizes. I was even able to do some light gaming with Steam Big Picture mode and my Logitech F710. It also pairs nicely with the Logitech K500 kb&trackpad combo. It does everything that I ever wanted an HTPC to do in a nice quiet compact nettop. I plan on picking up a usb tv tuner or a HD Homerun for some DVR duties too.

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This is the 2nd one that I received the 1st one did not work and I informed Amazon and They Promptly sent me another and this one works Great The acer RL70 is a good media Computer how wever acer should ship these with 4 GB of Ram instead of 2 GB with what they have put inside of this with the AMD Radeon it needs 4 GB to work properly so I will order another Ram chip and that should speed things up windows 8 is sluggish because of the lack of Ram other than that you need to uninstall MCCaffee anivirus because it keeps you from updating the system.

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This by far was the best upgrade that I have ever been through. It took less than a hour to get my Revo hooked up to my HDTV & to be up & running. There was no hassle getting Google Chrome up as my home page, & the tiles are very easy to navigate. Come's with a two month free subscription to McAfee Internet Security Suite. This is a great PC for media,& some light gaming.