Lindows boss Michael Robertson sends The Reg (along with half the known universe, as far as we can make out) frequent editions of "Michael's Minutes," chatty bulletins communicating all the news and doings of the company. On the basis that there can't possibly be that much interesting about Lindows, we bin most of them without reading them; but we like the latest - we accept that whether we like his Minutes or not, Michael knows what he's doing, and this time in particular we think he's on the money.

He's announced the Lindows Media Computer, which is a small footprint mini-ITX cased machine using a 933MHz Via C3 E-Series processor, Via mini-ITX motherboard and Elegent's DVD bios. You may find this rings a few bells. The etDVD bios is an interesting notion which effectively allows you to not bother with the PC operating system at all if you just want to shove a DVD into the box and play it, and it intrigued us when we first saw it, although it struck us as a step towards a sensible role for PCs in home entertainment, rather than a complete fix.