What are the differences between Home and Pro with XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DTJ
  • Start date Start date
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DTJ

The Microsoft site is not exactly helpful.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx

I need to know which one to buy. I am concerned with adding an XP
home workstation to a network that is already running NT 4
Workstation, W2K Server and XP Pro. They are all running DHCP from a
wireless/firewall/router/switch.

If I buy Home, how will that limit me? Will I have issues that can
not be overcome, or is it just more difficult to get things working?
I seem to recall that Home is limited when it comes to peer-to-peer,
but I don't remember anything about when running DHCP.
Keep policits honest, re-elect Bush.
Put traitors where they belong, send kerry to prison.
 
The main thing I ran into is XP Pro runs a web server but XP home does not.
I had to upgrade my laptop to XP Pro to do freestanding web development.

Eat tainted meat, drink polluted water, care about only yourself.
Vote republican.
 
In XP Home Edition, you cannot join workstations to domains, only workgroups.
You need to use XP Professional for joining domains
If you aren't sure, about anything else, you may want to go with XP
Professional
 
DTJ said:
The Microsoft site is not exactly helpful.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx

I need to know which one to buy. I am concerned with adding an XP
home workstation to a network that is already running NT 4
Workstation, W2K Server and XP Pro. They are all running DHCP from a
wireless/firewall/router/switch.

If I buy Home, how will that limit me? Will I have issues that can
not be overcome, or is it just more difficult to get things working?
I seem to recall that Home is limited when it comes to peer-to-peer,
but I don't remember anything about when running DHCP.
Click to expand...

DHCP isn't a problem. Some basics - Pro can join a domain - Home can't. Pro
has offline files - Home doesn't. Pro can host Remote Desktop - Home can't.
Pro supports 10 concurrent network connections - Home supports 5.
Keep policits honest, re-elect Bush.
Put traitors where they belong, send kerry to prison.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant, and somewhat tedious.
 
Actually, the link you've already visited answered all of your
questions quite clearly.

The WinXP Home and WinXP Pro versions are _identical_ when it
comes to performance, stability, and device driver and software
application compatibility, but are intended to meet different
functionality, networking, security, and ease-of-use needs, in
different environments. The most significant differences are that
WinXP Pro allows up to 10 simultaneous inbound network connections
while WinXP Home only allows only 5, WinXP Pro is designed to join a
Microsoft domain while WinXP Home cannot, and only WinXP Pro supports
file encryption and IIS. (Oh, and WinXP Pro usually costs roughly $100
USD more than WinXP Home.)

Windows XP Comparison Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

Which Edition Is Right for You
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

Windows XP Home Edition vs. Professional Edition
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

For gaming purposes, either version will do equally well, although
WinXP Pro's more granular security controls may make it easier for you
to assign permissions to folders that the games use. (For some
obscure reason, most game developers seem to not understand WinXP's
file security paradigm, and require even limited users to have
unnecessarily high privileges to protected systems folders. For
example, saved games are often stored in a sub-folder under the game's
folder within C:\Program Files - a place where no inexperienced or
limited user should have write permissions.)

To address your concern of WinXP Pro's having more background
processes: there shouldn't be any more processes running in a
stand-alone or peer-to-peer networking scenario than WinXP Home would
normally have: WinXP Pro's additional processes and capabilities
would really "kick-in" when the machine is added to a domain - not
something with which most home users and gamers need to deal. Your
primary performance bottleneck, regardless of OS version, will stem
from having only 256 Mb of RAM. You really should double that to 512
Mb. Another key factor would be the capabilities of your video
adapter: make sure you've got one that has at least 128 Mb of its own
RAM. Also, no amount of OS "tweaking" will overcome the performance
hit caused by insufficient RAM.


--

Bruce Chambers

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having both at once. - RAH
 
dbadams56 said:
The main thing I ran into is XP Pro runs a web server but XP home does not.
I had to upgrade my laptop to XP Pro to do freestanding web development.
Click to expand...

Not so. XP Pro comes with the IIS web server, and that server will not
run on XP Home. But other servers will run on XP Home. Apache, Tomcat,
JBoss, whatever will work just fine on XP Home.
 
DTJ said:
I need to know which one to buy. I am concerned with adding an XP
home workstation to a network that is already running NT 4
Workstation, W2K Server and XP Pro. They are all running DHCP from a
wireless/firewall/router/switch.

If I buy Home, how will that limit me?
Click to expand...

See http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp
for the list of things that are in Pro only. In addition Pro will
support ten simultaneous connections in a network - Home only five

If you see no need for any of these Pro only matters, save money and get
Home

The one that would be important is if your network is set up as an NT
Domain - probably is. In that case you need Pro, as Home will not join
a domain (you can arrange for one to use specific resources, but that is
hardly likely to be adequate). Aside from that, a network set up as a
Workgroup can have Home in it perfectly well, You might need to do some
special setting up if you wish to use NTFS file/folder access control,
but you can do that in Safe Mode
 
Eat tainted meat, drink polluted water, care about only yourself.
Vote republican.
Click to expand...

I apologize, I forgot to remove that from use. It was meant in humor.
I hope I did not offend anyone.
 
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