[KHM3]

Well, It is really up to you. For computers Samba is enough. In case if you use other devices you may want to setup UPnP. I have PS3 which does not understand computer shares so I use UPnP.

[BLKMGK]

It's been my experience that XBMC is a much more full featured front end vs a somewhat poorer experience using uPNP which usually ends up looking liek a badly done WEB site with some video. uPNP seems to rely heavily on the backend doing much of the UI work whereas XBMC IS the UI and thus can be made to look like most anything and be more featured. the downside being that XBMC takes a more robust hardware platform for it's clients vs the mostly braindead stuff I've used for uPNP clients (Buffalo LinkTheater etc.)

That help?

[john_es]

OK - this makes sense, and so it seems that XBMC should be calling itself a media client, rather than a media server no?

Now that I have installed it on my laptop, I gotta say that on my 2.x dual core machine with 3GB or RAM, XBMC seems very slow. Things like dragging the mouse are horrible. Is there a way to speed this up?

[sandos]

I think using a mouse is not well supported at all, since its not the most common way of using XBMC?

[smcnally75]

OK - this makes sense, and so it seems that XBMC should be calling itself a media client, rather than a media server no?

Now that I have installed it on my laptop, I gotta say that on my 2.x dual core machine with 3GB or RAM, XBMC seems very slow. Things like dragging the mouse are horrible. Is there a way to speed this up?

Where to you see XBMC claiming to bet a server? Even if it does, it still can be used as a media server via UPnP. FWIW, I've been running it on a laptop with and old P4 with 1GB of RAM and aren't having the issues you describe. Although you can use a mouse, there really isn't much of a reason to use one.

[BLKMGK]

What video subsystem does that laptop have and is it running the proper binary video drivers for the video chipset?

I too have never seen XBMC billed as a server - it's a Media Center...