Uprade from XP Home to Professional?

[UiriamuChan]

I already have Windows Xp Home Edition. But I'm trying to decide wheter or not I should upgrade to Professional. All I really need to know is what's the big difference is. And please be specific as possible, as in don't say Professional has more security and options , but do tell me how does the better security and what kind of options does it have that will benefit me and my computer. Thank You in advance.

[bailey]

pro has more networking built into it for connecting to a domain.
if your not connecting to a domain, it would be a waste of money for you to upgrade.
other than that ,there the same.

if your in a large company and have your own domain and several servers, with a extensive network, the system administrator will do the upgrade for you.
if you do not fit into that, you have no use for pro

some place there was a link to a site that gave the exact differances, but I don't remember where it is.
I do know for a fact that it is a lot easer to install a networked printer with pro than it is with home

[JPMiller]

The only REAL difference in the two is support for extra networking options.
I wouldnt "upgrade" you will see no real world improvements...
you will get much better results from tweaking the windows you already have...
My suggestions...
XP-Smoker... for tweaking windows and getting rid of alot of the MS garbage that hogs resources.
TuneXP... wich does alot of the things XPSmoker doesnt...
RegscrubXP... one of the better registry cleaners...
Diskeeper 8 ... ... soooooooo much better than windows neutered stripped down defragmenter
EverestHome...... in my opinion the best diagnostic tool for windows Ive used... im STILL finding things out using this proggy... its much more in depth than anyone gives it credit for..

[BARNEY]

Home is more than 98% of what most home users need IMO. You also don't need tweaking programs to get home to respond like pro because either one will run as smooth as W2K with about 8 tweaks that you can find in any good PC magazine. But the links are good above for extra tweakage and configyrations. Most of the pro benefits are in gpedit.msc which is your group policy editor. You can add a network printer just as easy in home as in pro - you just do a a tad differently because pro makes it a two click adventure whereas home you have to do a a bit more (3 to 4 clicks no biggie or use print server software). Home is actually quite a good operating system.