Those of you considering the Dell Inspiron Zino HD, especially as a possible home theater PC system, should check out Lionel Menchaca’s blog posting over at Direct2Dell from last week. In an article entitled “A Little Quality Time with the Inspiron Zino HD”, Lionel puts the system through its paces – checking out wireless network performance, and playing back different video formats – everything from MPEG2 to Flash video delivered by Hulu and YouTube.

The good news? The low-end dual-core Athlon model appears very capable of handling nearing everything thrown at it – although it did have trouble with HD Flash video from Hulu (not very surprising). Of course this can be remedied with the new Flash 10.1 beta that’s out so there’s certainly hope out there.

Of course one still has to wonder what the single-core Athlon 2650e will be like with media center operations.. but you’re probably better off upgrading to at least the dual-core 3250e if not the dual-core Neo X2 6850e. We actually purchased the dual-core Neo model on Friday (thanks to the Dell Black Friday deals) so once we get the system, we’ll be sure to put the system through its paces too. We’re hopeful the Zino HD makes for a nice low-end home theater PC for the average consumer.

[Check it out]

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