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Just go to the website, pick the kit you want, and say "I want THAT kit with THIS card,how much" and there ya go.

How are end users supposed to know what kit they want? It's not like consoles, where you can say "PlayStation 4" and be done with it.

ask around

You can tell how much I know that I don't know from the following question: Who's "around"? If I don't know, the general public is even less likely to know. I ask this explicitly because I have a disability that makes me literal-minded, and I want my walkthrough about how to buy a gaming HTPC to be as clear as possible.

some of us don't advertise since we have more work now than we want

No advertising on the part of local HTPC builders leaves Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony with all of end users' mindshare.

Once you pick a shop ASK US and we are HAPPY to help

I asked a couple years ago in one shop and was told that the only computers they could build in cases smaller than a huge tower were computers with an Atom processor, and an Atom is about as powerful as a Pentium 4. If it varies from shop to shop, that's another advantage of consoles because wherever you go that advertises "PlayStation 4", you can get a PlayStation 4.

My biggest question is "What do you want it to do?" and you answer me that and I can point you in the right direction.

I told a sales associate in another shop what I wanted, namely to watch movies and play video games on a TV, and he told me PlayStation 3 was a better fit for that use case than a PC running Steam.

do you REALLY like casual phone style games? Then Bobcat. Do you REALLY like your big sprawling first and third person games? Thuban.

The manufacturers have done a far poorer job of promoting those brand names than the console makers have done of promoting their brand names.

Do you do kit builds, if so what do you charge? Can you help me choose the parts? Its really not hard questions

So the procedure becomes as follows: 1. find a kit, and 2. find a PC builder that will build it. This raises the question that the prospective buyer of a PC to replace a console must somehow answer: "Which kit do I want that will let me play the next five years of Steam games in this genre on at least minimum settings?". Any proponent of HTPC gaming and local PC builders should cite a recommended kit and video card for low, medium, and high price. And if the low-price kit is still more expensive than a console, the practical advantage of openness has to be made explicit.

Thank you for your patience with me. I'm just trying to get toward a walkthrough that will make HTPC buying as easy as buying a console.

But at least with Steam you can be off for up to a month and the games still run

Unless the listing for the game on Steam shows that a particular game has third-party DRM in addition to standard Steam DRM.

I had 4 games that were listed as supported. Of those, two of them would not install (as in you can click the install button and it would give a message that it was installed but there would be nothing downloaded). One of them installed but would not launch.

Yeah, the list of "supported" Linux games is still too rough. There is a good map of that situation here: http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com.

Here's a list

Also, it is usually harder to know what that additional DRM is going to do unless you want to do a bunch of Googling.

Why google when somebody/steam community has done much of the grunt work for you?

The reason I ask this is the one criticism I have for Steam is on their big sales it is often difficult to see at a glance which games use ONLY Steam DRM, and there are plenty of games on steam that use TAGES, SecuROM, even GFWL ON TOP of Steam.

It'd be nicer to have better indications on Steam itself about DRM status of games (in sales and out of), but there's this community maintained list if that's at all helpful: http://steamdrm.flibitijibibo.com/

Thought this might be handy for those who wonder what else they might be able to get on Linux Steam:

http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?title=Native_Games

Unfortunately only checking the Steam Store page of the item you are considering for purchase is not sufficient. For example: Borderlands Game of the Year Edition has two of the four DLC items with Securom but it is not listed on the GOTY edition page.

Now I always check the Steam Third Party DRM List before any purchase.

Steam shows this as well under game details. Anno's says:

"3rd-party DRM: Solidshield Tages SAS, 3 machine activation limit"

This came up back the first time we saw a story about the activation limit... which I think was SPORE, and then people freaked out when they realized it was going to apply to Mass Effect also, and I think the activation limit was removed.

There's a lot about this here: http://steamdrm.flibitijibibo.com/the-big-drm-list/

Lack? Here is a list of PC games with DRM. Not to mention that these are all games on Steam which is DRM in itself. Some DRM schemes are bearable, others are not. All are circumventable in one way or another (both for PC and consoles).