XP Home or Media Center Edition

Both are no extra charge. Which one should I get?

Is there any disadvantage to getting the Media Center Edition?
Does the XP Home Edition include anything that the Media Center edition
doesn't?

Thanks.

 

media center is better, you can always tame the extra features if they
arent needed.
i've stopped media center from starting up the apps automatically, so it
is just an icon on my desktop if i want a glorified "media player".

but it will occupy over 2gb additional of disk space over the original
home install. these are mostly the samples they give you which can be
erased.

 

Actually the reverse is true. MCE is built on Pro, not Home, and inherits
many of its features. go with MCE

 

Not according to this:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3672_7-5536454.html

Keep in mind that this is version 2005 we're talking about. It's the
third release and the first two were indeed built on Pro.

Bob

 

There's a lot of confusion about this. The bottom line is that MCE 2005 has
all the features of Home + most of the features of Pro. Direct from a
software engineer on the Media Center team at MS:

"Media Center is not XP Home. It's not XP Pro either. Media Center should
now be thought of as another version of XP just like Home and Pro. It's
closer to Pro than Home, the major difference is that Media Center 2005 does
not support connecting to a domain. The reason for this is that Extender
devices use Fast User Switching technology to work and that functionality is
not available on a domain."
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcreasy/archive/2004/10/13/241803.aspx

 

Interesting article, but wrong. I know of which I speak. Four of my five
are MCE 2005. Check out the MCE newsgroup or thegreenbutton.com and you'll
see the truth

Tom

 

Interesting....thanks.

Bob

 

and, to support the 'Based on XP Pro, we have this link....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition

 

i hate to say this,
but media center really is an addon program that gets added on after
windows xp is installed. it is integrated into the main installer and i
have not looked to see about breaking it out myself.
after installed, but it can be disabled like a separate program, and you
can start it back up. i've done this many times. i leave it as an icon
on the desktop.
you can get the same affect by buying the snapstream product...
and installing it yourself.

i wouldnt be surprised if microsoft actually is bundling a version of
the snapstream product because they look very similar to me. i dont use
either myself, just installed for various clients.

I am guessing that it is PRO that is getting installed first, and then
MC is getting installed on top, superceding some of the dll's from pro.
that is why the domain feature is removed.

 

It is an application, of sorts, but does have significant differences. It
'modifies' the underlying OS. MS calls it an OS.

It is definately not the Snapstream product. Snapstream's Beyond TV is
vastly superior. MCE has way too many limitations, including a whopping two
tuners. I under 6 tuners under Beyond TV and it works flawlessly. BTV even
has a PC based extender which is key functionality missing from MCE.

Tom

 

I was always told to get XP Pro as its networking capabilities were
much better than home. Are you saying that I don't have to upgrade to
XP Pro if XP Media Center is standard with the system?

What are the advantages of XP Pro over Media Center if any?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yes, that is what I would say. The advantage of XP Pro is joining a domain
(unlikely at home) and cached credentials (unlikely at home). The superior
networking and security capabilities of Pro over Home are included with MCE,
as is Remote Desktop.

Tom

 

I'm guessing Media Center doesn't have the abilty to run the MS ASP web server?

 

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I went with Media Center.

 

If you mean Internet Information Server (IIS), then yes it does. Run it on
mine.

Tom

 

Yes that is what I meant. I was told that XP Home edition could not run it and I
assumed the same was true for Media Center. Interesting. Thanks.