[Leon05]

I'm building a high-end desktop PC for college, for everything from homework to entertainment. To save dorm space and money, it seems practical to buy MCE so that I can watch TV through the PC monitor. I could live without this feature if MCE has significant problems as compared to XP... are there any flaws I should know of? I found an OEM version on Newegg for 130 bucks or so, but it says it must be purchased with hardware... Can anyone help me out?

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One big honking obstacle, depending on your school

Some colleges require that PCs connected to their networks be capable of joining a domain. XP Media Edition CANNOT join a domain. It can be networked, as in workgroup...and it can access some network resources if they are available, but it cannot join a domain.

Meaning, you may not be able to access university storage space (required by instructors sometimes), log into a university email system, print to university printers, etc

Surfing the net....you can probably do that, but that could differ on how they are set up, I think...

So, the first thing you need to do is contact the IT department at the college

[gerryf]

One big honking obstacle, depending on your school

Some colleges require that PCs connected to their networks be capable of joining a domain. XP Media Edition CANNOT join a domain. It can be networked, as in workgroup...and it can access some network resources if they are available, but it cannot join a domain.

Meaning, you may not be able to access university storage space (required by instructors sometimes), log into a university email system, print to university printers, etc

Surfing the net....you can probably do that, but that could differ on how they are set up, I think...

So, the first thing you need to do is contact the IT department at the college

[Neil Jones]

Media Center edition of XP, as I've said on here a few times, has to be one of the most pointless gimmicks and uses of XP I think I've seen in a long while.

It might just be me but the only reason I've found for wanting to watch TV through the monitor is if I'm doing a spot of video capturing and/or editing, either from source tape or TV transmissions.

Anyway you can always buy your own TV capture card, stick that in and it does the same job under standard XP, plus its a [bleep] sight cheaper as well.