what are the major advances of having xp pro versus xp
home? I have a 4 pcs that are xp home and planning to set
a peer to peer network, will have any issues? If I were
to add a server in the future will it be possible?
Nelson,
There are three advantages of XP Pro, which come to mind, based upon
my experience (I have a 3 computer workgroup, 2 XP and 1 2K).
1) Domain Membership - Only XP Pro will let you authenticate from a
domain. XP Home is limited to workgroup membership. For 4 computers,
maintaining identities (accounts / passwords) across a workgroup might
be awfully painful.
2) Security - XP Home uses the Win 9X/ME security model, that assumes
that anything shared should be accessible to anyone on the network.
3) Connections - XP Home limits sharing to 5 network connections,
where 1 connection is one share used by one person. If you do much
sharing of data, 4 workstations will likely eat up 5 connections
pretty quickly. XP Pro ups the limit to 10 connections.
If you were to add a server, and put all the shared folders on it, XP
Pro or 2K would be the only choice IMHO. As clients, Home and Pro
should work equally well.
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
