Need a Operating System.

[1Jason8]

Im building a new rig and need to decide on an OS. I've been looking at the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 because the music, video etc. stuff draws me to it, but my main reason for building the new rig is for gaming.

Does anyone have Media Center 2005 and is it just as good for gaming as XP Pro SP2?

I googled around about this but cant find anything about this OS and gaming with it.

 

[SultanGris]

Get XP professional, Home edition is crap, ive personally had problems with sp2, i only run sp1, but i do know that you dont want xp home, you want xp pro.

 

[mickylaren]

That's absolutely ridiculous. The only thing that's crap about XP Home is its name, which is misleading. Home is simply a slightly stripped version of XP Professional, but they are functionally identical. You have to examine your needs.

As far as I know, XP Media Center Edition will be pretty hard to obatin for a computer you're building. I don't think you can buy a retail version.

There are only a few reason why you'd need XP Pro over XP Home:
1 - You connect to a domain (if you are not using the computer in a large corporation, you probably don't need that).
2 - You need to have Windows automatically encrypt files for you.
3 - You need Windows's Remote Desktop capabilities.
4 - You use one of those obscure programs (i.e., Symantec AntiVirus Server) that requires XP Pro.
5 - You need to customize file security or share properties.
5 - You feel like spending an extra $100 to have your OS say "Professional."

 

[SultanGris]

if hes knowledgable enough to build his own pc, he probably wants the most bang for his buck, and therefore will want xp pro. home is more than slightly stripped.

when you go out and buy a car, do you get a gutless 4 cyl. motor when you can have a powerful 8 cyl motor? i think not. if you dont have the extra cash to get the best options available, then you shouldnt be buyin the car in the first place.

however, if you truly want the best os thier is, get linux, because all windows is crap, but if yer gonna get the crap, get the sweetest smelling crap i say all depends on what your going to do with it, but mark my words, i have many friends who bought home edition, and when they figured out it sucked, they bought pro, so instead of buying it twice, get the best the first time.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

You can buy it here:
http://www.directron.com/xpmedia.html

 

[sllewe]

when you go out and buy a car, do you get a gutless 4 cyl. motor when you can have a powerful 8 cyl motor? i think not. if you dont have the extra cash to get the best options available, then you shouldnt be buyin the car in the first place.

Now lets get a bit more realistic. Xp home lacks things over xp pro..no doubt there. But those features are not needed unless you need better encryption/network security, or need to have a better setup for a large network. If he needs that...the xp pro is for him, if not then why encourge excessivness?

Sean

BTW-If you can, try and get MC2005. It is very well done.

 

[mickylaren]

Exactly -
There's no need to buy an 8-cylinder if you deactive 4 of the cylinders. That analogy was a bit hyperbolic; there's no need for XP pro unless you'll use its features. It just sounds cooler ("I have XP Professional")

 

[SultanGris]

heh, i may have went a bit overboard, and i probably shouldnt have even mentioned home, but if you read his original post, it was about media, or xp pro sp2.

still, im betting he doesnt want home, and i wouldnt recomend that anyone get home, cause even if you dont use those features now, you never know, you might be using them sometime in the near future. trust me, my opinions are based on facts and events that actually happend. i dont take much stock in some people opinions on this forum, they like to defend advertisment annoyances.

mayby you like this analogy better, lets say you buy a car without AC cause your climate is colder, then you move to a warmer climate, now yer screwed. may as well get AC the first time.

trust me my fellows, all of my friends who have bought xp home also had to buy xp pro because xp home SUCKS monkeynuts, but hey, if you wanna buy it twice, go for it. only trying to save you time and money in the long run.

 

[Spike]

I completely agree with you on the XP home issue - Pro doesn't cost much more, and it does have a few extra features that can be very useful to the home user under certain circumstances, the question is one of whether or not those circumstances may arise in the future, even if they don't exist now.

I would say though, It wasn't about defending advertisements (though without them you wouldn't be posting here now). The issue was about your typing. Either you were trying to look clever, or you genuinely hate advertisements.

I believe that it's the latter, but that doesn't alter the fact that your posts were looking terrible. Gladly you aren't doing it anymore, but should I remind you that in the thread where I mentioned it your opinion was actually wrong?

The lesson: Mentioning no names where names are obvious is clearly futile, two wrongs don't make a right, and most importantly of all, whatever a persons view on the advertising that allows a site to exist may be, they have no bearing whatsoever on a persons opinion on completely unrelated subjects.

Would you like to drop the issue now please and get on with whatever you came here to do?

 

[SultanGris]

heh, sorry, but i truely do hate advertisements, without some sort of adblocker/popup blocker the internet is in my opinion unusable, everytime you click something, you get 10 windows that open if you have nothing to stop them. it gets old, and ffs, how many advertisements you need on your site? you trying to just pay for the cost of running it or you trying to make a profit? you got popup adds, banner adds, intellitext adds, enough is enough already. at the very least you should offer people the ability to become members by paying you direct, and disabling the adds for them, far more effective than becoming an ad*****, which will only drive people from your site.

I found this site through google when i reinstalled xp pro and my second HD partions werent readable. this site helped me fix them, and in the process i scanned a few other threads that caught my intrest, and frankly im surprised that everyone took the side of advertisments, and no one agreed with me, frankly, that doesnt happen very often, but if you will research intellitxt i promise you will find more people want them gone than like them,

sorry for going offtopic again, but it just amazes me that everyone on this site loves those retarded annoying adds, i just have a bad habit of liking to argue with people, since im mostly always right, and you would be amazed at how many people oppose the truth. however my way of convincing them of the truth sometimes isnt the most subtle, and honestly, i thought the periods were way better than misspelling,

and i wasnt wrong about anything, just slightly off topic.

 

[Spike]

It's OK sultan, I do agree that Advertising can be annoying, and some people do find intellitect pretty invasive. Personally, I'm not one of them, and I must say, on Techspot at least, I've always found the ads to be very contextual and relevant.

I do notice that you mention pop-ups. I've never seen a pop-up on Techspot, and so I am rather curious. I always thought that it was only a few unobtrusive banners and some intellitext here. I may be wrong, because in all honesty, I do have some ad servers blocked via my hosts file, purely for security reasons (having had some rather nasty ones install various things on my machine in the past).

With reference to the item I mentioned though, It was the legality of normal users obtaining corporate keys, being that it would break the lisence agreement on the part of the corporation, thus a user would either have to steal one, or use a keygen.


Anyways, I must admit that I got a little more worked up than I should have, so I shall apologse for that (and continuing to speak off topic!!!!)

Anyway, back to the original subject matter, An Operating System. I'm still saying XP Pro. Especially now that I have a ststic IP, One of the things I like about XP Pro is in fact the remote desktop. I know I don't really NEED it per se, but it can be useful.

 

[IronDuke]

Its nice to bring the off-topic to a close. My final remark is I use Firefox which blocks pop-ups that I do find unwarranted. However the hypertext I consider unobtrusive and acceptable.

On topic I'm with Pro all the way, although 2000 preferably.

Cheers all.

 

[sllewe]

Well i am for MCE2005. I have a HP with it installed on it...and i love it. Get a TV tuner and your set. As far as gaming, it is the same ( i have no benchmarks or anything, just my experience.)

Sean

 

[Mugsy]

Choose based on use/needs.

Im building a new rig and need to decide on an OS.

You should never decide on the OS before you know what your needs are.

I have a dual-boot system with XP Pro and Linux.

The Linux setup is more stable than my Windows setup, but installing new software is a b*tch, and not everything has a Linux driver yet (and even if it does, good luck installing it). But once you've got everything setup, it's fast and stable. And if all you need a PC for is to surf the Net, do some e-mail, maybe even some word processing, then a Linux installation is the way to go. It's free, and comes with a mess of great free software like Open Office (everything you need), gnu Instant Messenger, Firefox web browser, and often plenty of simple games. A nice solution if you're on a budget and your needs are simple.

Otherwise, you need XP (Pro of Home, essentially no difference any more).

 

[puppetgrimm1]

[quote/]There are only a few reason why you'd need XP Pro over XP Home:
1 - You connect to a domain (if you are not using the computer in a large corporation, you probably don't need that).
2 - You need to have Windows automatically encrypt files for you.
3 - You need Windows's Remote Desktop capabilities.
4 - You use one of those obscure programs (i.e., Symantec AntiVirus Server) that requires XP Pro.
5 - You need to customize file security or share properties.
5 - You feel like spending an extra $100 to have your OS say "Professional."[/QUOTE]



You forgot one important one at least to programmers and that is IIS
internet information services which allow the programer to create asp.net or anything related to the internet and you get the windows backup utility. You are right though for the average user the is no real reason to get XP Pro unless they are going to program, run a server etc...

Hope this helps!

Late
Puppetgrimm1