4 Windows 7 Media Center Blu-Ray PCs Under £500

All retail versions of Windows 7 excel at managing and playing files as they all include great networking capabilities and Windows Media Center by default. What's more, a very competitive environment means that as the Christmas period, prospective customers will get superb value for their hard earned money.

Surprisingly, there are a number of computers that can serve as Media Center boxes and are available for £500 and less, many of them from recognised brands.

Dell for example has the excellent Zino HD, a diminutive Mac Mini like desktop computer that has a tiny footprint and a number of features like two eSATA ports, a number of finish options and smart services from Dell like Datasafe Online with 2GB storage space for one year and the Datasafe Local 2.0 Basic.

Maxing the Zino HD to just under £500 yields a machine with an AMD Athlon X2 3250E processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 512KB L2 cache, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 2GB RAM, 640GB hard disk drive, integrated ATI HD3200 graphics and a Blu-ray drive.