XP Pro or Home?

[DLx/P]

Was thinking of upgrading from 98se to XP. What are the advantages/disadvantages between XP Pro and Home versions? I use XP Pro and 2000 at work, I assume XP Pro has better security and the like. But really don't know if its worth the extra money over the home edition. Not really doing anything special at home with the PC. Just email, internet surfing and graphics programs.

Thanks in advance.

 

[poertner_1274]

I would suggest using XP home simply because it is cheaper to buy, especially if you are just planning on doing simple things around the computer.

 

[Crybabytek]

To Pro or not to Pro? A couple of things come to mind: XPPro runs Oulook. XPHome runs Outlook Express. The rub is in the details. If your home P.C. is connected to broadband, is connected via cable, or you are connected to the internet via your office modem then I'd go with XP Pro (which is basically Win2000.)
OTH if you are using your home 'puter for the usual stuff, (i.e. kids, games etc.) with a 56k modem, XP Home is already way too much O/S as it is. And as has already been pointed out, is considerably cheaper. Just be careful when installing as you could lose absolutely everything you have installed in Win98. If your home 'puter can be partitionod (try "Ghost"or Partition Magic whatever) and installed XPH on a second partition that way you can keep both O/S Would also strongly recommend that you first double the amount of RAM you have before you install. 256 won't cut it with XP - it will choke something fierce - Minimum 512 RAM. O.K.?
BTW, are you suggesting that Microsoft actually turns out anything that can even vaguely be called "secure"? <lol>

 

[SNGX1275]

Originally posted by Crybabytek
To Pro or not to Pro? A couple of things come to mind: XPPro runs Oulook. XPHome runs Outlook Express. The rub is in the details.

Have I missed something here? As far as I know that is 100% incorrect. XP Home will run Outlook just like Pro will run Outlook. And XP Home and Pro both come with OE, neither come with Outlook.
I think this needs to be tacked up with the myth that Office XP will not run on anything except a WindowsXP box.

Edit1: Link to help you decide which XP is right for you:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp
Edit2: Link to prove OXP runs on 98 and above:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/evaluation/sysreqs.asp

 

[XtR-X]

Have you ever thought about licenses? They could be exactly the same but one is more expensive because of what you can use it for?

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Rick]

Originally posted by Crybabytek
To Pro or not to Pro? A couple of things come to mind: XPPro runs Oulook. XPHome runs Outlook Express. The rub is in the details. If your home P.C. is connected to broadband, is connected via cable, or you are connected to the internet via your office modem then I'd go with XP Pro (which is basically Win2000.)
OTH if you are using your home 'puter for the usual stuff, (i.e. kids, games etc.) with a 56k modem, XP Home is already way too much O/S as it is. And as has already been pointed out, is considerably cheaper. Just be careful when installing as you could lose absolutely everything you have installed in Win98. If your home 'puter can be partitionod (try "Ghost"or Partition Magic whatever) and installed XPH on a second partition that way you can keep both O/S Would also strongly recommend that you first double the amount of RAM you have before you install. 256 won't cut it with XP - it will choke something fierce - Minimum 512 RAM. O.K.?
BTW, are you suggesting that Microsoft actually turns out anything that can even vaguely be called "secure"? <lol>

Your information is a little misconstrued. Outlook Express comes with BOTH versions of XP.. Neither come with Outlook and both can run it as SNGX pointed out.

256 not enough? Why it certainly is. 512MB is nice and I'd recommend it, but 64mb is the minimum requirement. 128MB gets you slow but manageable performance, 192MB and above should give you good performance for basic multi-tasking, internet browsing etc... 256MB and above runs very well for most games & apps with XP.

 

[Goalie]

DLxP- For home use, I really don't think there's much of a difference between Pro and Home, and as such recommend the cheaper of the options. Plus, as I understand it, some of the more technical options are taken care of by wizards in home versions, but most accounts are set up administrative, while in Pro the administrator is strictly a different account with easier access to the nitty gritty.. Sngx's link to MS's chooser is a good idea to look at.

Now, as to crybabytek... WRONG. Outlook, and Office XP for that matter, is running, currently, on my win98 tower, my winME laptop, and a winXP machine. Sngx points this out quite accurately too.

And yeah... Rick is right, 64 is the minimum requirement.. but man I do NOT recommend that... I tried that once on a uni-machine during deployment. Scrapped it, and put NT4 back on immediately. Personal experience prefers 256 as a minimum for XP, but it's up to you.

Good luck with it, and hope this helps somehow..

 

[DLx/P]

Thanks for all the input. This PC already has 256MB. The biggest thing I will be doing on it is Photo Shop and Corel.

Looks like XP Home it is.

 

[Nic]

Top Performance with 1 GB of RAM or More

 

[DLx/P]

Thanks much Nic, great link.

 

[cromrell]

XPH vs. XPP (domain login)

XPH vs. XPP:
one of the larger differences btw XPH and XPP is that you can't login to a domain w/ XPH.
Tried to deploy a XPH on our office network (NT4 domain) for a PC-challenged user, but too much hassle to access network resources (manually), and scrapped for win2k.

deployed XPH on my nieces home PC (she has DSL, but is a standard home users), no problems yet...