M
mxmaniac
This is just an idea, but I personally think that if Vista Home Premium and
Vista Ultimate have a Media Center Enhanced OS, then this option should
become available to XP Home and Pro users as an improvement to the OS, to
compensate for hw and $ limitations.
I personally think this because most people, myself included, don't see a
full advantage for an upgrade to Vista as the best solution unless I truly
have to. Most normal users only need to surf the web, do word processing,
chat and send e-mail.
Most users will probably buy a nice video card with TV out and use normal
windows media player, and/or VLC player, or any 3rd party software for AV/DVD
and music playback; A nice TV tuner card could seal the deal and people will
have a far more stable media center PC than with Vista requiring 2GB+ RAM,
4GHz+ P4HT equivalent, 512MB Video card to truly take advantage of the OS.
Less crashes, better software and hardware compatibility, good enough for
most security. Aside from that, it's more cost effective than Vista itself.
For a decent Vista system, you would need a dual core procesor with 1.6GHz
2+ GB DDR2 Ram at least 80GB for main hard drive or partition (I'd recommend
no less than 100GB Sata HD), for almost full advantage of the video
capabilities, at least a 512MB video card enhanced for gaming (otherwise your
PC rating may be below 3.5). Basically for these features, you'd get them on
a PC worth at least 900 dollars if you shop around long enough.. maybe add an
extra 50 bucks on gas, or 6 hours looking online, plus S&H in some cases.
Even then, it may still crash. I know mine has quite a few times.
With this said, it'd be nice to see as a final true update for XP users to
provide Media Center capability enhanced to provide support for Xbox and Xbox
360 consoles in one as an added benefit for having a valid copy of windows.
Vista Ultimate have a Media Center Enhanced OS, then this option should
become available to XP Home and Pro users as an improvement to the OS, to
compensate for hw and $ limitations.
I personally think this because most people, myself included, don't see a
full advantage for an upgrade to Vista as the best solution unless I truly
have to. Most normal users only need to surf the web, do word processing,
chat and send e-mail.
Most users will probably buy a nice video card with TV out and use normal
windows media player, and/or VLC player, or any 3rd party software for AV/DVD
and music playback; A nice TV tuner card could seal the deal and people will
have a far more stable media center PC than with Vista requiring 2GB+ RAM,
4GHz+ P4HT equivalent, 512MB Video card to truly take advantage of the OS.
Less crashes, better software and hardware compatibility, good enough for
most security. Aside from that, it's more cost effective than Vista itself.
For a decent Vista system, you would need a dual core procesor with 1.6GHz
2+ GB DDR2 Ram at least 80GB for main hard drive or partition (I'd recommend
no less than 100GB Sata HD), for almost full advantage of the video
capabilities, at least a 512MB video card enhanced for gaming (otherwise your
PC rating may be below 3.5). Basically for these features, you'd get them on
a PC worth at least 900 dollars if you shop around long enough.. maybe add an
extra 50 bucks on gas, or 6 hours looking online, plus S&H in some cases.
Even then, it may still crash. I know mine has quite a few times.
With this said, it'd be nice to see as a final true update for XP users to
provide Media Center capability enhanced to provide support for Xbox and Xbox
360 consoles in one as an added benefit for having a valid copy of windows.