Shuttle G5 8300m

The $3037 G5 8300MC's shiny chrome front camouflages a multiformat DVD drive and a seven-in-one card reader. At the base, behind a black drop-down door, are microphone and headphone jacks, two of the unit's four USB ports, and a FireWire port. On the back, the G5 carries most of the same standard PC, audio, and video connections as the other Media Center PCs here, including DVI and S/PDIF connections. And the G5 will have no problems running any Windows application: Equipped with the same 3.4-GHz Pentium 4 550 processor and 1GB of RAM as two other units in our roundup, it earned a WorldBench 5 score of 88--just 2 percent below the median.

Like most other Media Center PCs we tested, the G5 was very slow at seeking radio stations. The other apps worked fine and looked good on the accompanying 17-inch Shuttle XP17 flat-panel monitor. For input, our unit relied on a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Music and movies sounded great on 5.1 surround-sound Logitech Z-680 speakers with subwoofer. The speaker system comes with a Digital SoundTouch Control Center desktop module that you operate with a handheld remote.

Upshot: Shuttle's shoe-box-size entertainment PC, the XPC G5 8300MC can fit into spaces where larger units would never go. It's not very expandable, however.

Carla Thornton