So XBox360 doesn't work too well as a Media Extender when you are dealing with 802.11n both ways

I am a happy consumer using XBox 360 as a media extender with Windows Media Center being use a s DVR running on my closet room.  So when my roommate asked about what is the best option to replace his slow-as-hell Netbook currently used as DVR with something better.  I suggested using XBox 360 as the Media Center "client".

Eventually I offered to let my roommate used my XBox for a few days and see how good it was, and that's when I realized that such a setting didn't work for him.

First we tried to skip the whole router thing, and see if we can simply connect the XBox 360 with his netbook using an Ethernet cross cable.  Then we realized that in order to make that happen, we need to manually set IP address for both his Netbook and my XBox360.  I think it's doable, but it's a messy consider that my roommate is tech friendly but not tech savvy enough to mess with such low level stuff.

Then we tried to used to WiFi, and found that having both the Netbook and XBox 360 connect to WiFi worked only to a point.  Sure connection was being made and the XBox360 found the netbook, showed media content properly, but the connection was too slow that it took forever to load content and eventually timed out.

The network performance problem was solved when I use a long Ethernet cable to connect his Netbook to the router, so at least we could stream TV shows that he DVRed on his netbook.  But browsing content was still horrible slow and painful because ultimately the bottom neck was on his netbook.

At the end we both gave up.  For his case, it's better to buy a MacMini to replace that damn slow Netbook.

Again and again, we saw how shitty netbook is in real world usage.  You thought you only use if for web promising and word processing, but the moment to start playing any media, you instantly recognize how much piece of crap a Netbook is.