Media Center 05 Vs Xp Pro

dantonkin

dantonkin

dantonkin

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Hi there,

apart from the obvious, what are the main differences between the two OS's.

Would Media Center be fine for everyday use?

Are specific hardware drivers needed for Media Center?

Is the UI any different from XP Pro?

Hope you guys can help

Cheers

Dan
 
Media Center IS XP Pro. There are two minor differences:

MCE doesn't let you join domains. There are workarounds to re-enable this feature.

MCE includes 'Media Center'. An extra application that allows you to watch tv/video listen to music/radio etc. With the MCE remote, it really is very good!
 
dantonkin said:
Hi there,

apart from the obvious, what are the main differences between the two OS's.

Would Media Center be fine for everyday use?

Are specific hardware drivers needed for Media Center?

Is the UI any different from XP Pro?

Hope you guys can help

Cheers

Dan
Click to expand...

MCE is just an extra interface as such, you can switch back to traditional XP (i.e. Start button + taskbar etc) for 'normal' usage. :)
 
no_1_dave said:
What about games, are the drivers as stable etc?
Click to expand...
The only driver that's any different is the graphics driver, as it has to include some more stuff (more fully implemented in Vista) to enable Media Center to work. I can't imagine the drivers differ much to their standard equivalents.

Apart from that, the OS drivers are identical to XP Pro.
 
Standard XP drivers from nVidia and ATI will work perfectly under MCE, the only thing missing is the MCE applet to change graphics card settings.

Also unless you kill the MCE background services they will reduce 3DMark scores by about 1%
 
i made the change to MCE around 6 months ago, did it purely for my XBOX360 and capture card. great OS, granted it takes a bit longer to boot then before becuase of the extra service etc but its worth it.

Never had any issues with drivers etc.
 
Bomag said:
Standard XP drivers from nVidia and ATI will work perfectly under MCE, the only thing missing is the MCE applet to change graphics card settings.
Click to expand...
Not entirely true. The drivers are different - the MCE applet with ATi drivers is actually a separate installation. I haven't got it installed on mine.

The MCE graphics drivers have to pass a different set of WHQL tests and have to support things like VMR9 (Direct X 9 Video Mixing Renderer) to do the fancy transitions and allow you to watch video. I've tried MCE with standard XP Pro/Home drivers, and loading up Media Center you're greeted with a 'video card not compatible' message.
 
kidloco said:
thats weird , i always use the latest XP drivers for my 6800GT and never had an issue with them in MCE
Click to expand...
Maybe they've nVidia combined them together. The normal ATi drivers don't work for me on the PCs I've tried it on (I don't have any nVidia cards).
 
nvidia do have MCE specific drivers too

the only thing i've found missing (which is a real pain for me) is the section in 'conrtol userpasswords2' that says 'Manage Passwords' that you get in xp pro (its to do with domains)

so it can't remember passwords for mapped drives

to et around it i just use a logon script
 
bledd. said:
nvidia do have MCE specific drivers too

the only thing i've found missing (which is a real pain for me) is the section in 'conrtol userpasswords2' that says 'Manage Passwords' that you get in xp pro (its to do with domains)

so it can't remember passwords for mapped drives

to et around it i just use a logon script
Click to expand...
If you use the workaround to re-enable domain support on MCE, it magically re-enables that as well.
 
ive tested my system with xp pro, xp ro x64 edition, mce 2005 and have to say for my system mce is fastest(not benchs just real world speed) there may be another reason for it though.

When xp loads i the little blue job hat goes accross the screen only goes once then get welcome screen, all others not the case three or four times it goes.
 
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