Shoud I get xp home, or xp pro?

[Superbeast]

I bet this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a topic about it.

Right now i use xp home, I play alot of games and download lots of stuff everyday, browse lots of sites ect.

I was wondering how pro is any driffrnet then home? is it worth the extra $50-60

[Dark Nova]

Take the one u have, i wanted to go with pro, but i had already a liscence for home. im not paying 50-60$ for an diffrent OS. they both work the same.

(i heard, that there are more complaints about XP pro than XP home)

[HyperTF]

Here is a pretty good summary... I think it sums it up nicely

Originally Posted by CNet Forums http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0....sageID=1362869 Home is tailored for the home user and Pro for business. Home users might find some benefit in owning the Pro version. Both are built on NT and offer the NTFS file system for added security and fault tolerance. Pro is a bit more configurable for business applications. It can also join a domain which Home cannot. Both can run the same software in most cases.

And this is Microsofts comparison reference...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/h...choosing2.mspx

[ffreeloader]

Take the one u have, i wanted to go with pro, but i had already a liscence for home. im not paying 50-60$ for an diffrent OS. they both work the same. (i heard, that there are more complaints about XP pro than XP home)

Not in my experrience. I work on far more of the XP home machines that I've built than I do on XP Pro machines. Given equal user skill XP pro just doesn't screw up as much. I'm still a Win 2K Pro fan where MS OS's are concerned myself, but in looking at XP I'll take Pro every time. Given a price difference of $60 spread over the lifetime of the OS that $15 or so per year is well worth it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Home Edition users won't be allowed to upgrade to the newer versions of Windows. The offer of upgrading to WinXP 64 left HE users in the cold and only users of Pro were allowed the upgrade. Sure, MS may change its upgrading scheme when the new versions debute later on, but I would save myself the hassle -and possibly the money- and buy Pro now.

[JTH]

I say get XP Home. Most people only want pro because the name sounds bettter. I have both - one on one machine and one on the other - and for a home user there is no difference. Pro merely ads features used in a networking environment.

[ffreeloader]

I say get XP Home. Most people only want pro because the name sounds bettter.

I'd have to say that's a pretty broad brush you paint with. Just how do you figure you can read people's minds?

[moonlight burner]

Originally Posted by Superbeast I bet this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a topic about it. Right now i use xp home, I play alot of games and download lots of stuff everyday, browse lots of sites ect. I was wondering how pro is any driffrnet then home? is it worth the extra $50-60

If you have a XP Pro, you can get access into 'DOMAIN' of private network-eg. your company network and able access the resources like files inside the 'Doman'. Kinder like it gives you the capability to 'join' private network...

MB

[JTH]

Originally Posted by ffreeloader I'd have to say that's a pretty broad brush you paint with. Just how do you figure you can read people's minds?

I can't read people's minds, but Microsoft are clever people and they are well aware what marketing ploys to use when naming their products. You can't say that, given the choice, someone who didn't know better would choose Standard over Professional. People don't want to be "standard", they want to be the real deal.

[HyperTF]

He he, I get almost the opposite with the systems I have installed... when I give them the option between Home and Pro many just go "Oh, I don't want all that stuff... just give me the Home one"

[Negeva]

i get that with my customers as well; they always go for home, the 'extra' features in Pro seem to scare them off.

u can still use Home to log on to domains, its just more tedious to setup.

[ffreeloader]

I can't read people's minds, but Microsoft are clever people and they are well aware what marketing ploys to use when naming their products. You can't say that, given the choice, someone who didn't know better would choose Standard over Professional. People don't want to be "standard", they want to be the real deal.

After working in a technical service profession for 20 years, during which I sold many people a lot of different products, and being around the computing industry for a few years I've learned that most people are far more intelligent about marketing than you think they are. The fact that there are multiple threads going on this issue right now shows the validity of the point. If "most people" were just taken in by marketing ploys then there wouldn't be so many people asking for advice so they could make an intelligent decision.

[tetsuo]

I was using XP Pro cuz the name sounds cooler. Then I installed XP home on my new machine (lost the pro disk) but installed StyleXP and applied the "pirated xp" bootscreen, so I feel okay about it again

[wilcopshot]

I think people growing up in this modern day and age can spot a marketing ploy a mile off. Buy 1 get 1 free = nearly out of date. 2'99 = 3. completely free = we'll hassle you for the rest of your life. a small fee applies = a large fee applies.

As for the subject in hand. XP Pro and Home are identicle apart from the extra networking resources. However, a lot of people agree with me when i say that i find home generally more unstable. The simple fact of the matter is that i repaire more Home XP computers than Pro. I really would love for an expert on the NT kernel to tell us a bit more because i find the stability, feel and compatability of Pro runs rings around home users.

(i heard, that there are more complaints about XP pro than XP home)

Maybe this is because pro users know what they are doing more? I know home users who dont know they have problems untill i use their computer and tell them thats not how its meant to be.

[piasabird]

If you use your computer at home mostly for gaming and Internet, I can see no real advantage of using XP Pro.

The most differenced have to do with using your computer on a large LAN. For college you may find most institutions recommend XP Pro. I also think for a Virtual LAN connections VPN you may need XP Pro. But for the most part, a casual home user does not really need XP Pro.

I have a router at home with 2 computers and use XP Home and I have no reason to get XP Pro.

As far as a 64 Bit OS is concerned you have to turn in that XP PRO license forever, if you want to get a good price on XP Vista (64). I think that there are not enough drivers available to just switch to XP Vista. There is just not enough benefit yet to switch. Every piece of hardware you have will require 64 bit drivers.

[kev7555]

I have to agree with wilcopshot.

I work on customer computers every day and repair systems running Home Edition much more often than Pro. Is this because of the OS itself or because of customer incompetence? Can't answer that one for you but my experience has been better stability with Pro.

If for no other reason, I like it because of the ease of installing and configuring hardware and software.



-Kev

[flanzig1]

The percentage of XP home to XP pro private users is probably close to 10 to 1. So in a consumer oriented computer shop that is probably the percentage of repairs. In the business world it's probably close to 100% Pro and repairs there would be done in-house or a commercial computer shop or contractor. As for the difference between Home and Pro, I haven't seen any general operation differances.