Topic: XP Pro, Media Centre?

[mistybear]

Could someone please explain the difference between XP, XP Pro and XP Media Centre.

I'm thinking of upgrading, or would Vista run on this computer?   

[Sandra]

XP pro has a few more options mainly to do with networking over XP Home.
I dont think that you would really benefit from anything that it offers over Home.

Media Centre lies somewhere inbetween Home and Pro, although some say it is XP pro, with the addition of an extra program that you can run once you are in windows called Media Centre.
I dont know why MS dont offer Media Centre as a seperate program that you could install to XP Home or XP Pro.
The Media Centre part allows you to organise all your Audio, Video and Photo files in its own library and has a nice, modern looking interface.
If you have a TV card in your pc then you can watch TV and use it as a PVR.
It is a nice addition to windows, although I dont use the library part as I have never got around to setting that part up.
If you do set it up then it searches all your drives and locates any media files and makes them readily accessible through various search terms such as name, genre, artists name, alphabetical and possibly some others as well.

Your PC should run Vista ok, I have forgotten how much ram you have so you may need to increase that as it runs ok on 1 gig but people say its a lot better on 2 gig.
Vista Premium and Ultimate both have Media Centre included, I am not sure which of the others have it, the business version doesnt have it.

[mistybear]

Thanks for that Sandra, it doesn't seem worth it then to get either of them, but the media centre part does sound good. When I installed that VLC player, it took a few of my media files and then when I installed Nero, it grabbed some media files.

It's all too confusing, I just want all audio and video files in WMP. So a Media Centre which would keep all those files together.

Michael has showed me how to re-name the files to send them back to WMP, but doing them one at a time is tiresome.

I only have 1Gb of memory, Michael has 2Gb, but he has probably less room because of all his games, maybe an extra hard drive when I get around to getting his new case.