Is MediaDirect worth it?

I just got my new e1505 and I'm going to reformat it very soon. Is it even worth it to save the MediaDirect partition? How often do you use it? What are the advantages of it as opposed to just booting up Windows and just using Windows Media Player (or whatever media player you prefer)?

 

Here is something to consider... even if you reformat, MD is still on your laptop. It is in a hidden area of your HDD which you don't have access to using the XP disc.

Unless you get specialize software, it will be very hard to delete the HPA so you are most likely going to lose around 2gb no matter if you want MD or not. As for the actual partitions, the only partition that you need to keep is Partition 1 which is 47mb - not really a noticable amount of space.

 

In my opinion, it's the only reason to choose a Dell over better looking brands (Asus, Acer, Sony).

 

The only way to completely get rid of it is to swap your HD. Then you go through hell to reinstall... took me 3 days but it was done ! Fun hell with os reinstallation and you learn a lot... it's like a father/son time but more of a man/laptop ^-^ usually dog.

 

I used it once when I fist got the unit, thats the only time I've used it

 

For specialized software, do you mean those that wipes the drives with zeros like dban?

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

 

MediaDirect is something unique to Dell notebooks (AFAIK), so I'd keep it. I do want to know if using MD is less power-heavy than booting up into Windows. Has anyone here or any place on the web conducted any type of experiment? Anyone have personal experience with the battery usage of MD over Windows?

 

To answer your question I believe it uses more HD memory instead of RAM. When i first install media with only 800MB it works! but it boots up extremely slow due to the lack of space for hibernation it uses. and I had like 70MB memory. Now when i install it with 1000MB the memory kick up to 2XXxMB.. finally when i did a 1.4GB the memory kick up to 5xxMB. overall I believe it saves some battery life because it doesn't use as much system proccessing. :]

 

Yeah ... I like MediaDirect ....

 

I really like mediadirect, especially on long car rides and airplane trips

 

same. KEEP IT!

o, when I reinstalled, I deleted EVERY partition except the 47mb diagnostic partition and used the rest of the space into 1 partition. Then, I wanted Media Direct back so I used Norton Partition Magic to resize my 100GB HDD to a 92.x GB partition, leaving about 2GB of unpartitioned space left for Media Direct.

now...to get a copy of media experience...

 

I say keep it, especially if your someone who travels on planes and such alot. If you want to maximize your battery life while watching a movie, listening to music, or viewing pictures, Media Direct is a great way to give you that extra battery. The partition dosent really take up that much room, and its a cool feature.

 

Maybe it's good for viewing movies, but I don't know about music. It located every audio file on my hard drive (about 3700, probably 400 of them being sound effects I use for editing) yet, you're limited to seeing around 12 songs to pick from at a time. Kind of a hassle, IMO.

 

imho Dell Media Direct is a personal preference. Some ppl might use it all the time others might not use it at all

 

My friend has a e1505.. he told me that when he pops in a widescreen DVD, MediaDirect uses the whole screen (since its 15.4 inch widescreen), but WMP leaves little black spaces at the top and doesn't use the whole screen.. so that might factor into your decision if you watch a lot of DVDs.

 

Peronsally I dont have it but for maybe a GB already instealed its worth just keeping it, plus u have a butten anyway

 

I deleted MediaDirect the very first day cause I didn't really see the point of using it. I recommend dual booting instead. Why would someone use MediaDirect when you can boot up a tweaked windows xp(10-15 processes) in5-10 seconds?

 

Ar first it sounded neat, but frankly ANYONE who is seriouse about playing movies on their laptop is going to be playing in formats like xvid/ac3 in mkv containers, or using newer compressions like h264 wich the media center cant handel.

Just format the HD bare, install the combined community codec pack and satisfy all movie playback needs in one swoop (well accept for that nice interface part, but hey, who needs all that clutter when your watching a movie? )

 

Which 10-15 (which is it?) processes are you keeping, where?

 

I didn't know about the extra battery life.
How much extra are we talking here?
I use MD regularly. Especially when I have left a DVD in the drive and want to go back to watching it. It starts right where I left it unlike many other DVD playing software I have used which require the use a scene selection.

ucb9999

 

I will do a test tonight to find out how much power you really save with media direct. I personally like it and its like having a laptop and a portable dvd player in one. WHen you boot into media direct the computer kills processes not neccessary for the dvd to play or other media saving a lot of processor time and memory. Keeping it.

I will have my results tonight, I work late so it will be midnight or so.

 

Here are my results of tonights test. I ran a DVD of Friends for 1.5 hrs, then rebooted my laptop and saw that I used 60 percent of my battery. I divided 90 minutes (time running disk) into .60 (amount of battery used). I came up with 150 minutes so that works out to 2.5 hrs.

So when running media direct you should get approx. 2.5 hrs of DVD play time. My next test will be with Windows Media player or Windows XP Media Center Edition Player. If it uses the same amount of time I am getting rid of Media Direct. But if it saves about 30 minutes of battery I am keeping it. I will post those results here too at a later time.

Does anyone know how long you can play a DVD when running windows and your favorite media player?

 

It's a useless feature for me so I never bothered to repair it. I hardly ever watch DVDs and can't imagine ever needing to watch one on a trip. I'd rather sleep or look out the window than uncomfortably try to watch a movie. Now I just have a dedicated button for lighting up the media buttons.

 

What type of battery do you have? I have a 9cell and can get roughly 5 hours of battery life when watchign DVDs. I watched LOR Two Towers and then a little more that half of Kingdom of Heaven. LOR is 3hrs and KoH is over 2hrs.
Maybe its because of my display settings. If I turn down the brightness and deactivate the wifi, I get a considerable boost in battery life.

ucb9999