Were I not going to be gaming on my system I would have gone with a lower-end 4xxx series card. The 4350 uses a mere 10 watts. I'd love to hear feedback on real world use in an HTPC. It's small, low power, passively cooled, and still has acceleration. NewEgg has it on sale so it's selling for 24.99 USD. I'm unsure of the shipping but it's reasonable.
The 4350 and 4550 both consume less than 25WATTS of power. The comments above about the newer 4350/4550 chipsets using more power than the 36xx series is a complete farse.
I wound up choosing the 4550 as it had better DirectX 10.1 support and higher resolution support than the 4350. It is a little more expensive. I absolutely love and recommend either for HTPC.
They are *not* gaming GPU's.
I'm glad you like it and thanks for the info. I knew about DX 10.1 and high resolution but it's still nice to hear more from actual users and not just reviews. I had planned on recommending and using one of these two models for HTPCs but I was wanting to know more real world experiences.