What's the big hype with media center? All the PCs come with media player, what else does this have?

I have a machine running media center upstairs and I don't see the difference.

With my newest machine that is running Vista I can list, have my library, rip, burn and sync music - is that the kind of thing you are talking about?

Comparing WMP to Winamp, WA is tons heavier, thats the only thing I can really notice myself.

You can rip and burn with media center? I don't think media player has that ability (nor does winamp). I may have to check that out after all, I've been using a freeware program for ripping, but it's not ideal.

Player can indeed rip CDs and XP has it's own burning facility. I have used the Vista version of media center and honestly when the machine is turned on it makes no difference. The only time that it really makes a difference is when the machine is turned off and you can use the direct play function-which is great. Otherwise I see no point to it, especially on XP.

Yup, media center is all about a couple buttons that allow you to ignore the mouse in order to play media. Supposedly its setup for playing media better in other manners, but I've never seen those to be that newsworthy.

Well if you take M$WC and compare it to Winamp, winamp runs very "heavey" compared to M$WC so that is an option to avoid it. Some others work better but I do not use any. I seldom play music on this computer.