New machine, setup advice sought

["Jason Slack" <]

Hi All,

I have a nice HP Media Center m7320n PC. I plan to use it as my software
development machine.

I would like some thoughts on how to best set this up for my needs.

Here are the highlights of the systems specs.
Pentium D 920 processor
4GB of RAM
300 GB HD
DVD-RW and a DVD-ROM
Wireless card
NVidia 6600 256mb video card.
all the tv tuner and controls all media center PC's come with

Here is what I see as options:

1. Run Windows Media Center (XP, not vista) as the host operating system.
This would provide me all of the native functionality of the Media Center
PC.
- I do have 4gb of RAM, so I dont think Windows will see more than 3GB with
PAE turned on. So I loose 1GB of RAM, correct?
- I can then run VMWare Workstation instances for a Windows Development and
a Linux Development environment. (I dont like to 'infect' my host OS with my
development needs, thus running a version of Windows in a VMWare
Environment)
- Can I upgrade the Media Center that is installed to Windows Vista Ultimate
Edition? (which I own an upgrade version)? Would this be wise? I think the
920D is a 64 bit processor, so I could use the 64-bit version that came with
Windows Vista Ultimate and then Windows should be able to see all 4GB of
RAM, correct?
- I can use the wireless card as Linux does not have the best wireless
support.
- Much easier to add a second large hard drive in the extra bay and have it
used for network storage (in my opinion, I dont have experience adding hard
drives to linux systems)

2. Run a distro of Linux as my host operating system.
- This would not give me the native Media Center features that the PC
offers...
- Support for the PCI wireless card would not be there.
- Can still run a linux and a windows VMWare instance for development
purposes.


So I am trying to decide.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Jason