Oct. 1--In the not-too-distant past, small, budget PCs couldn't deliver when it came to delivering high-end multimedia performance.

If you wanted a home-theater experience from a Windows-based system, you had to pay home-theater prices.

That's changed dramatically. Computer makers have started rolling out small, stylish systems that start at under $500, but perform as well as systems from two years ago that cost three or four times as much.

Acer, the company that recently bought Gateway, has stepped into this arena with the Aspire X1200 Mini-PC. It's compact and stylish but has a punch that belies its stature. And surprisingly, it starts at $450.

Now, when Acer offered to send this to me to review, I was expecting the typical budget PC to arrive. I'd glanced at the specifications and thought they looked good on paper, but the price made me think I'd see a typical underpowered bare-bones box that I wouldn't want in my living room.

Boy, was I wrong.

The X1200 comes with an AMD Athlon X2 4850e processor. It's a dual-core, 64-bit chip that runs at 2.5 GHz. That's more than powerful enough to run most games and multimedia applications.

There's plenty of memory. Even the least expensive model comes with a full 4 gigabytes of RAM, and it's expandable to 8. But there's a caveat -- the video card uses shared memory, so 256 megabytes are devoted to graphics. That means the X1200 "only" has 3.75 of RAM available. For most uses -- even gaming -- that's more than adequate.

And speaking of the video adapter, it's an nVidia GeForce 8200, which has support for Microsoft's DirectX 10 3D graphics system, as well as 1080p high-definition video. It also comes with an HDMI port so you can connect it to an HDTV. Unfortunately, none of the available models comes with a TV tuner, HD or otherwise, so you'll have to add that later if you want to use this as a media center PC.

While it's not as muscular as nVidia's 8600 or 8800 adapters, the 8200 should be able to handle all casual games and most higher-end ones with relative ease. Still, I'm not sure I'd buy this machine as a gaming computer, unless you plan to upgrade the graphics. And yes, there's an available PCI Express graphics slot.

The model I tried came with a 320-GB hard drive, partitioned into two smaller drives. A larger, 500-GB drive is available on some models, such as the one sold by Best Buy for $460. If you're planning on using this to store video files, I'd recommend that one.

It also has a 16X DVD burner, high-definition 5.1 stereo sound and a built-in media card reader. The X1200 is loaded with expansion possibilities.