Pro Vs Media center

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Guest

I sign into various networks (domain and other types) with Pro now. I have
different user accounts set up for the different networks. Have to get new
laptop. The selection with Pro installed is rather slim. Does Media Center
have the same networking capabilities as Pro does. Have gotten lots of
different answers like yes no maybe?? I understand that the encryption
capabilities are different but how about the rest.
Thank you
 
In
safeguy said:
I sign into various networks (domain and other types) with Pro now. I
have different user accounts set up for the different networks. Have
to get new laptop. The selection with Pro installed is rather slim.
Does Media Center have the same networking capabilities as Pro does.
Have gotten lots of different answers like yes no maybe?? I
understand that the encryption capabilities are different but how
about the rest.
Thank you
Click to expand...

MCE is XP Pro, at bottom, but it does have some limitations. For one, you
can't join a domain (similarly, you cannot do so with XP Home). You can
access domain resources, just as you can with Home, but you can't join. Re
encryption, I don't know what you heard, but MCE 2005 does offer EFS...

I can't find a good link that compares all the WinXP version features on one
page, but you might see
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/evaluation/compare.mspx.

If you are not finding laptops with XP as an option, well, I have to wonder
whether you're looking in the right places. Laptops designed primarily for
business use *do* offer WinXP (Home or Pro) - and don't generally even offer
MCE as an option at all.

Bottom line - if your main goal for this laptop is for business use, and has
nothing to do with multimedia features such as MCE offers, I'd stick with
Pro...
 
Wait until Vista is available. Some versions of Vista have MCE built in and
can also join a domain.
 
As others have said, you can't join a domain easily. MC also does not
support the use of Credential Manager, thus if you try to use the MC
machine to access the corporate network, you will need to type in your
user name and password a lot.

--
Jeffrey Randow
(e-mail address removed)
Windows Networking MVP 2001-2006

http://www.networkblog.net

..On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 08:58:01 -0700, safeguy
 
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