XP home vs. XP Pro

[Jim]

Question; Is XP Professional an upgrade to XP Home
edition? Or should a PC with Home edition be wiped out
and the have Professiional installed fresh?

 

[Chris Lanier]

Yes, Windows XP Professional can be an upgrade to XP Home. There is no real
need to format the hard drive and do a clean install. the upgrade process
should be great!

 

[4000 psi]

what are the main diffs between the two?

Yes, Windows XP Professional can be an upgrade to XP Home. There is no real
need to format the hard drive and do a clean install. the upgrade process
should be great!

 

[Chris Lanier]

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

 

[Ken Blake]

In

what are the main diffs between the two?

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, these features aren't needed, would never be
used, and buying Professional instead of Home is a waste of
money.

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

 

[Bob]

What if you want to use Maya 3.5 Unlimited at home. Alias
Wavefront only supports Windows XP Professional, not Home
for what ever reason. Do high end graphics applications
used by professionals work with Windows XP Home, like
Maya, Softimage XSI, 3d StudioMax, etc.. Just curious why
highend graphics software, developers only support
Windows XP Professional and not Home if they are the
same.

 

[CZ]

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, these features aren't needed, would never be
used, and buying Professional instead of Home is a waste of
money.

Bob wrote:
What if you want to use Maya 3.5 Unlimited at home. Alias
Wavefront only supports Windows XP Professional, not Home
for what ever reason. Do high end graphics applications
used by professionals work with Windows XP Home, like
Maya, Softimage XSI, 3d StudioMax, etc.. Just curious why
highend graphics software, developers only support
Windows XP Professional and not Home if they are the
same.

Bob:
Ken's choice of words is unfortunate, and is very misleading IMO.
There are significant differences between the two (see my comment below).

You might contact the graphics programs developers and ask them why XP Home
is not supported.


My thoughts on Home vs Pro
There are significant differences between the two.

Some things that Home does not have/support (that Pro does):
Ability to disable Simple File Sharing
Local group policy
gpedit.msc
ComputerMgmt: Local Users and Groups
ASR (Automatic System Recovery)
Client Service for Netware
Dynamic disks
Encrypted file system
Drive/folder/File level access control in normal GUI mode (does have it via
SafeMode)
IIS
Multi-processor support
NT/Win2k/Win2k3 domain membership
Power User gp
Offline files
Remote desktop hosting
tasklist cmd
systeminfo cmd

And Home cannot create user groups.

Also, Home is limited to 5 concurrent inbound connections, whereas Pro is
limited to 10

 

[Alex Nichol]

Question; Is XP Professional an upgrade to XP Home
edition? Or should a PC with Home edition be wiped out
and the have Professiional installed fresh?

The Pro Upgrade CD (described as for Win98/ME/NT4/Win2000) will upgrade
XP Home perfectly well. Just run the CD from the Home system. ANd be
quite sure first that you *need* a facility that is Pro only, don't do
it just because it sounds macho. The system, apart from the extra
facilities, is exactly the same