ive had a dell with a p4 for 2-3 years...very very happy with it till recently. think i may have burned some pathways in the chip from overuse...anyway...
the fans run very very loud even without running any processes (my friends call it the jet) - its noise is comparable to a room of servers...it eats battery (i get maybe an hour of life)... and its pretty heavy too ( but thats cause of fancy graphics cards and wifi chips i suppose)...

media center is for dicks with money, who buy laptops as an mp3 player, to allow them to watch vdeos as well...crap program.