Initial Impressions

Hello internet,
Being one of the 300 lucky hardware beta testers, I thought it seemed appropriate to share my experiences with the Steam Machine.

I've had about four days to do some testing and formulate an initial opinion, as well stumbling upon my share of bugs.

First of all, my specs:
  CPU: Intel Core-i5 4570 - 3.2GHz
  GPU: Geforce GTX 780 - 3GB
  RAM: 16GB
  Drive: 1TB Hybrid hard drive (8GB SSD for frequently used files)

As you probably have seen in other blogs and videos about the Steam Machine, the hardware was shipped in a heavy-duty wooden box.  Inside was the Steam Machine itself, the controller, various cables, a wifi antenna, and a recovery USB drive.

I will be testing the device on an HD monitor, which has no HDMI audio support.  As I'll explain in later posts, this distinction is important.

As I've been testing for several days, I have a few backlogged posts to get up, including ones about the first bootup, initial controller impressions, etc.

More to come very soon (pictures too).