My receptionist is looking at getting some type of system for her upstairs, and was thinking originally of getting a mini system from JVC, Panasonic, or Sony. The salesguy at Future Shop instead steered her over to the HTIB section which he claimed would give her "much better sound." I looked and listened and they're basically all crappy, but I wonder if there's anything that is at least half decent sounding.

She wants a small system, but also wants it to sound good. I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to upgrade the speakers at a later date, but from the looks it seems that the HTIB solutions do not allow that. From the 2 or 3 that I saw they have to either go through the subwoofer (a la Bose archetype) or else have some type of proprietary speaker wire attachment system.

My question is is there a good Mini System or HTIB that would work for her? She's looking for good sound, but wants to keep the system as small and innocuous looking as possible.