Longhorn 4008 Can Turn Into Longhorn XP Media Center Edition?

OSNews reader “AnyWeb” claims that both his Longhorn splash screen and its signature of Longhorn has turned into “Longhorn XP Media Center” (screenshot) after fiddling a bit with some settings. Read more about his explanation on how it happened.


I’ve just discovered something weird, in my testing with the leaked Longhorn 4008 alpha, i went into add/remove programs and chose ‘add remove windows
components’ and looked at what was there (wanted to install IIS for testing…)


I couldnt install it becuase it asked for CD2 which i don’t have, however while i was in there i noticed that it has something called ‘media center’ which was by default not checked, so i checked it and even though it error’d
out complaining about the lack of cd2, once i rebooted the Windows XP Professional (1985-2003 “Longhorn Edition”) splash screen now says Windows XP Freestyle !!!


not only that but the desktop signature that used to just say ‘longhorn professional for testing purpo…’ now says ‘Longhorn XP Media Center Edition for testin……’


so, that leaves me to feel that they have blended the Media Centre Edition (isnt that oem only?) with XP Professional to create ‘Longhorn’


i’ll post some screenshots of ‘Windows XP Freestyle’ splash screen and the desktop showing what i am referring later this evening on my website


Get more screenshots of the Freestyle booting and signature here, and you can get other general Longhorn shots here.


cheers
anyweb



Please note that this is alpha code so it is expected to still have “joined” source code between different releases of programs that are similar. For example, XP Media Center is nothing but an XP PRO spin off (an “specialized evolution” of XP PRO of some kind), as Red Hat PRO is a ‘spin off’ of Red Hat Personal (or the other way around :). A few added packages, a few more modifications and different configurations here and there, can create a new product, maybe a bit more specialized on certain areas than most people would need, so it is marketed as a different product.


At this alpha stage of Longhorn, the evolution of XP Media Center is still using a common source code base with the upcoming Longhorn, so for now, a user may be still able to turn on/off a few options that are only available for the other similar product and turn one product into another. However, we expect that this “trick” will be removed from the final version of Longhorn.


Please note that AnyWeb told us that he did not notice any changed functionality between Longhorn and XP Media Center except the splash screen and the signature, but he also said “I didn’t really tried hard enough to see any differences yet“.

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