XP Home or Professional

[Talal Itani]

Hello,

I currently have 2 PCs at the office, one with XP Home, the other with XP
Professional. I do not see a difference. I am putting a new PC, and I do
not know if I should buy XP Home or XP Pro. I will be doing some remote
accessing when I travel. Is remote accessing good on XP and a good reason
to get XP Pro?

T.I.

 

[Meinolf Weber]

Hello Talal,

See here the differences:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
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[R. McCarty]

There are more reasons to use Professional. If at some point you
expand and need a Server/Domain configuration you'll want XP
Professional on the PCs. Visually Home & Pro appear identical
but it's the underlying capabilities that aren't easily seen. Having a
Remote Desktop capable machine would justify the cost.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

I currently have 2 PCs at the office, one with XP Home, the other with XP

Professional. I do not see a difference. I am putting a new PC, and I do
not know if I should buy XP Home or XP Pro. I will be doing some remote
accessing when I travel. Is remote accessing good on XP and a good reason
to get XP Pro?

If for basic Internet surfing and some general document writing and
number crunching, Home would be fine. If for some more advanced gaming
and other network related functionality is required, Professional. For
remote access, Professional would be a safe bet.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello,

I currently have 2 PCs at the office, one with XP Home, the other with XP
Professional. I do not see a difference. I am putting a new PC, and I do
not know if I should buy XP Home or XP Pro. I will be doing some remote
accessing when I travel. Is remote accessing good on XP and a good reason
to get XP Pro?

XP Professional and XP Home are exactly the same in all respects,
except that Professional has a few features (mostly related to
networking and security) missing from Home. For most (but not all)
home users, even those with a home network, these features aren't
needed, would never be used, and buying Professional instead of Home
is a waste of money. In general, unless you need to join a domain, you
probably don't need Professional.

For details go to
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

Also note one other point not mentioned on any of those sites:
Professional allows ten concurrent network connections, and Home only
five.

 

[Daave]

Professional allows ten concurrent network connections, and Home only
five.

There is a way to allow up to ten simultaneous downloads in IE for those
using XP Home:

http://www.petri.co.il/allow_more_than_2_simultaneous_downloads_in_ie_6.htm

 

[Talal Itani]

Does it mean that XP Home does not support the new dual-core processors?

 

[Daave]

Does it mean that XP Home does not support the new dual-core
processors?

XP Home *does* support dual-core processors, which are actually single
processors with two cores. However, on the rare machine that does indeed
have more than one CPU, XP Pro is necessary.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Does it mean that XP Home does not support the new dual-core processors?

No, it doesn't mean that. It will support any number of cores in a
single processor. However it supports only a single physical
processor.

 

[Plato]

I currently have 2 PCs at the office, one with XP Home, the other with XP
Professional. I do not see a difference. I am putting a new PC, and I do
not know if I should buy XP Home or XP Pro. I will be doing some remote
accessing when I travel. Is remote accessing good on XP and a good reason
to get XP Pro?

The difference is $100 or so, that's all.