Windows Media Center; any cons?

I see several offers in the shops here for computers with Windows Media Center 2005 pre-installed.

Are there cons against it, security/privacy wise or in any other respect?

I think I remember me that it is based upon XP-Pro.

Any input would be much appreciated !
Thanks in advance

(PS: mods, I didn't know where to post this...).

 

Yeah, it's just XP pro with the ability to join a domain (large network) removed, and media center components added. I don't really think there are any major cons to it. I'm going to install it myself this weekend (hopefully).

 

Thanks Notok !!! Looking forward to your experiences !

Bump ...

Anyone else experience, please !

 

i don't know anything about it but there's a freeware, open source, equivalent which you could install on an OEM windows which could be cheaper, but as it seems MS is putting alot into MC it might not be a good idea. i tried it and didn't really like it but didn't give it much of a chance - uninstalled in less then an hour. here are some pages.
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/
http://www.maisenbachers.de/dokuw/install:install
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/screenshots.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal/

 

I actually really like it. It has a lot of the corporate enterprise stuff disabled, so by default it's a *little* safer, although not by a whole lot. It is definitely running a lot faster on this machine. The media center itself is just cool. A good monitor that you can enjoy as a TV is a must for it I'm seriously considering getting an extender for it so that I can watch movies and such from my TV. Overall I'm really liking it

 

Well, it bugs me that Windows Messenger must autoload otherwise it will have this annoying delay in loading.

 

Thanks guys for your input

Hi Rasheed187,
Is that something that only occurs in Windows Media Center, or more in general on XP-Pro?
(I only have W98SE ....)

 

Hi,

As far as I know this behaviour is triggered by design, so it´s only a problem in Win Media Center, you can safely disable or remove Windows Messenger in Win XP Pro, without getting bugged about it, but not in WMC. Or I might be wrong, does nobody else has this problem ?

 

The Media Center itself is just a program that comes with Windows MCE. When you start up the Media Center it tries to communicate with the Windows Messenger, so it will bug you if it's not there and running. Personally I've opted to leave Windows Messenger disabled, but then I haven't been using it that long. If you've got a good firewall, and especially if you're behind a router, Windows Messenger shouldn't be too much of a problem.. but you can also set it to Manual in services.msc.