I have been setting up basic off the shelf PCs for folks, from retail, and
so they always come with XP Home Edition.
No big deal these past 5+ years. No need for Pro Edition.

Now, I find that all the damn off the shelf PCs at retail come with MCE and
I am a MCE virgin.
There is no 180 day trial download, and I haven't bought one, so I dont know
how similar or not they are to standard XP editions.

For example, can i buy a MCE based PC, and disable the media menu buttons
startup and whatever else, and get the normal start menu and standard stuff?
So that the user can install MS Office, Photoshop, Quickbooks, or whatever
typical business apps that they would.

Thanks much!

Media Center Edition is basically XP Pro with two features removed - cached
credentials and the ability to join a domain. However, you can actually join
a domain if you do it at the time you install it, or by using a hack that
folks have developed (see www.thegreenbutton.com for hack info). However, if
you do join it to a domain, you lose the ability to use extenders.

Otherwise everything else works like XP Pro and any software that runs on
Pro should run on MCE.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"wewa" <wewa@no.mail.4me> wrote in message
news:uTKjBEd5FHA.2524@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>I have been setting up basic off the shelf PCs for folks, from retail, and
>so they always come with XP Home Edition.
> No big deal these past 5+ years. No need for Pro Edition.
>
> Now, I find that all the damn off the shelf PCs at retail come with MCE
> and I am a MCE virgin.
> There is no 180 day trial download, and I haven't bought one, so I dont
> know how similar or not they are to standard XP editions.
>
> For example, can i buy a MCE based PC, and disable the media menu buttons
> startup and whatever else, and get the normal start menu and standard
> stuff?
> So that the user can install MS Office, Photoshop, Quickbooks, or whatever
> typical business apps that they would.
>
> Thanks much!
>