God things must be really tough, for why else would HP be literally giving away a Media Center PC. Check out this great bargain from PC Mall.
bq. For $669 you can get, Intel® Pentium® 4 2.53GHz processor, 512MB DDR SDRAM, 120GB Ultra DMA hard drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Combo, 48X CD, NIC, GeForce4 Graphics,Windows® Media Center Edition ( hp Refurbished Model 854N )
In other words HP really screwed up on this clunker so bad that almost everyone returned it. It still is not a bad PC to buy, just for PC functions that is. Optimists could say – well this is one way of Microsoft clearing out old Media Centers and making way for a new version of Media Center Operating System. Pessimists, on the other hand could see an encore of Smart Display debacle.
I think this just points out Windows XP Media Center Edition software’s weakness. And that is if Microsoft wants to make MCE mainstream they need to need to offer MCE as a general public release (as a software upgrade) not as an OS tied down to OEM machines.
Alexander I completely agree with you on that. I think Microsoft is making a big mistake by keeping this as a lock OS. It would nice to see them sell this as a $49 upgrade to all comers. Or even as an add-on for signing on to MSN Broadband