Sony Vaio XL2 Digital Living System Review

There’s something to be said about building your own Media Center PC. You get to control the parts going into the system; you dictate the look and feel of the system and you have no one else to blame but yourself if things go bad. However, if there was one MCE system that really stood out last year that I wish I had purchased, it was the Sony VAIO XL1 system. That MCE system was one COOL system mostly because it actually looked like it belonged in the living room. Well Sony is at it again with the new Sony VAIO XL2 Digital Living System. This MCE based system is basically an update to the XL1 and is comprised of two parts again – the XL2 MCE PC and the XL1B 200 CD change. Now if you have an MCE system but really want the massive CD changer – you’re in luck. You can purchase the XL1B separately for around $799.99. Note – you will need to have an MCE 2005 box with UR2 installed for this to work. Of course you could just purchase the entire XL2 system and man.. that would be sweet. The box includes a 2,8GHz Pentium D 920, 1GB of RAM, and a 320GB HDD. You’ll also get an HDTV tuner, HDMI support, and an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT graphics card. Best of all -the system is apparenly quiet. Like I said, building your own system is always a lot of fun but sometimes… a product comes along that is hard to overlook. Here’s PC Magazine’s take on the box: