The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Has anyone reformatted an i9300 w/ other xp software?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by macr6, Jan 8, 2006.

  1. macr6

    macr6 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    20
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I'm getting an i9300 and it's coming with xp media center. I haven't played with MC yet and wanted to know if I don't like it is it simple to install xp pro? I guess I'm just making sure that dell doesn't have some primary partition or driver issue.
     
  2. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    1,659
    Messages:
    5,066
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    If you want to change the OS, you shouldn't have any problems. One consideration is that you'll have to buy XP Pro from a retailer.
     
  3. JustJimDelany

    JustJimDelany Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    11
    Messages:
    251
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I believe that MCE is pro minusthe ability to join a domain or something like that.
     
  4. azntiger1000

    azntiger1000 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    92
    Messages:
    1,188
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    is wmc good? it looks great and all but i know you can get skins for those but what makes it so special?
     
  5. netscorer

    netscorer Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    18
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    You should have no problems installing any other OS as long as you can find all the necessary drivers. All XP systems (Home, Media Edition, Pro) share the same drivers, so in this case it does not matter. Win98, Win2000 or Linux favor of the month may be a different animal though.

    As for the differences of MCE and regular XP - there are none. MCE is an application running on top of regular XP. In fact, you can convert any XP into MCE XP by applying MCE patch.
    IMHO, the only MCE usefuleness is for folks who know nothing about computers and want to use it the only way they know - through the TV-like menues. The other nice touch is that MCE packages into one wrapper the most common multimedia tasks, like browsing your photos, listening to the music or watching TV. The functionality is limited to the basic stuff but that is the target audience for MCE.

    Cheers,

    netscorer.