antisuck Wrote:An SSD is useful for your operating system, XBMC itself, the database XBMC stores your media info in and the various cached artwork and such. It can help speed up browsing through your media collection and generally make XBMC seem much more responsive and zippy on the type of low-power low-noise rigs many people prefer for their HTPCs. Not to mention reducing boot time [edit] or sleep/resume time [/edit] drastically.
You don't need one but they are nice, and not a huge expense for one this size.
if you are using a NAS it is likely because you want to share media to multiple devices, which also means you likely want to use a mysql shared library and shared thumbnail cache, so to your points on those, a SSD drive provides no additional value.
regarding boot time, after POST it takes ~ 20 seconds for my openelec (linux) client to boot, and that is off a USB 2.0 stick, so if 20 seconds is long for a ssd might help, but I doubt much as much of the boot time for linux is tied up in sysadmin tasks as the kernel, drivers, and daemons get launched and situated. Regarding returning from standby it is almost instantaneous.
SSD have there place, they are not magic, you should know if an why you should use one. but hell if you dont care buy one.
To the OP Kaitlyn2004,
Sounds like you might be lazy like me. :-) if you are looking for a no noise host that supports XBMC linux based, the shuttle XS35GT works, is noiseless, and works with linux based XBMC just fine. I got one because I was willing to pay the premium for a pre built silent box that would just work. outside of the lack of fans it is like any other atom/ion combo, and AFAIK any atom/ion nettop out there will work for XBMC. where I have the xs35gt the requirement was a silent xbmc client that had a usable interface and could play high quality 1080p content, the box works well that purpose.
regarding hardware, at least for now, if you want to use the easy button, intel/nvidia or amd/nvidia will work with the linux versions of xbmc. I am sure some of the people around here that get excited about exactly which nvidia card will express their deep heart feelings about the exact one you need if you opt for anything other than an intel/atom combo.
I read that the amd video is out there and may be working fine, but it sounds like it is less than mainstream (for now) and you might have to compile your own, I cant say for sure. so unless someone corrects me, for the lazy, you might want to let that one cook a bit more.
In short if what you are looking for is a xbmc client with your data on a server, you likely need less hardware than more, the most basic atom/ion box works fine, you can buy more, it wont hurt, but likely wont help much either. IMO there is a tendency on this forum to push to the overbuilt side of things, if you want good video, xbmc functionality, on linux, I can say from direct experience, atom 330/ion's with just 1G of ram and 2G usb flash drives work fine, anything more, provides marginal improvement for that use case.
Lastly
Regarding the linux versions of xbmc, if you want web browsing, and other general purpose capabilities, you will want to look at versions like the live version of XBMC, with that version, you can use a general purpose linux like Ubuntu, which would let you do anything you could do on a liunx host, including run xbmc, but you would need to build the system to match those needs which means matching your storage and memory to meet those requirements that could mean more or less ram or anything from a USB drive to a more traditional hard drive. On the other end, you could go with something like openelec, it is an embeded linux, like what might be on a cell phone or dvr for example, trade off is the linux is not open to install external apps out side of what is in the framework, but it is small clean and works, but if a web browser is important to you, you cant run firefox or chorme on it. I am using openelec versions of xbmc, because I am lazy, didn't want to have to deal with OS care and feeding for my TV based host, and I prefer browsing the web from my pc, but that is just me, you might feel different.
My advice would be, don't over think it, keep it simple, and until you have got some experience with xbmc, stick to the well trodden path.
Good luck
". How do you know it is no big deal, perhaps it is a very big deal, who knows it could be the biggest deal that there ever was,... for her. How do you know the import to her, only she would have any idea how big of a deal it is, 1 fan can make a lot of noise and be high pitched at that, that could or could not be of import to her. You are substituting what you value as important over her concerns. 
