Quite a few owners of Gateway Media Center Edition home theater PCs are pretty upset with the company at the moment, as requests about the upgrade path for machines running the 2004 Edition of the Windows XP Media Center operating system are receiving conflicting information. Some are hearing an update will be made “by Thanksgiving,” while others are hearing that an upgrade will not be made at all.
At issue, among other things, is the ability to use the new Media Center Extender devices that require the 2005 Edition. Perhaps tellingly, HP—who makes a Media Center Extender device— is already offering an upgrade, while Gateway, who does not intend to sell an Extender device, is not. While not it’s not fair to expect a vendor to continue to upgrade software for years on older hardware that cannot take advantage of the new version’s features, we’re not talking about ancient PCs here—even machines purchased in the last year, running MCE 2004, are not being upgraded.
I doubt Gateway promised an upgrade to any of the purchasers of their Media Center PCs, but either way, they need to make it clear to their customers which models will be upgraded (and when), or state that they don’t intend to offer an upgrade path at all.
Upgrade path for MCE 2005 from Gateway? [TheGreenButton]
Windows XP Newsgroups [Microsoft]
Update: Jack writes
I implore you to also include mention about Sony’s equal refusal to offer an upgrade to its Media Center 2004 customers. Sony, unlike Gateway, does sell the MCE extenders, which makes its upgrade policy even more curious.
At least they have stated that they don’t intend to. Gateway hasn’t said one way or another.
