Is this a good laptop for htpc

[mbartole]

I am looking to buy my first htpc. I have been researching units like the ASRock ASRock Core i3-370M 4 GB/500 GB/BD Combo Barebone System with MCE Remote VISION 3D 137B, for $679 on Amazon. however, today in Costco I came across an HP laptop for $550. Seems like a better deal to me, and I am not very techy so tinkering isn't a major factor for me. The specs look pretty impressive when compared to the ASRock, but I don't know if the processor or graphics card would fall short of htpc functionality. Is there any reason this laptop would not be as good as or better than the ASRock?
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11679400&whse=BC&Ne=5000001+4000000&eCat=BC|84|56670&N=4047229%204294967277&Mo=9&pos=1&No=3&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC5-Cat84&topnav=

specs:
Processor & Memory:
AMD Quad-core A6-3400M at 1.4GHz
4MB L2 Cache
6GB DDR3 SDRAM (2 DIMMs)

Graphics & Video:
15.6" High Definition LED BrightView Display (1366 x 768)
AMD Radeon™ HD 6520G Graphics

Thank you

 

[WR2]

Hello mbartole;

You'd have to get a separate Media Center Edition remote controller & receiver for the laptop to match the one already in the Acer HTPC.

If you look at the Big List of Mobile Processors (CPU Benchmarks) you see the Intel Core i3 370M dual core CPU is ranked #83 vs #143 for the AMD A6-3400M APU quad core.

The desktop graphics card - GT 430 - is a nice bump up in GPU power over the integrated HD 6520G graphics built into the laptop's APU. You find the GT 430 listed next to the HD Radeon HD 6830M in the ranked list just to the right of the HD 6520G review.