I see a lot of people buying Dell systems and others on Slickdeals and automatically upgrading it to XP Pro. For some reason, they think it's a better Operating system than XP Home. I get customers at Dell that confuse the two all the time. About 80% of people buying PCs would get absolutely no benefit from buying XP Pro. People say to me everyday, "I need Xp Pro because I need Excel and Word." No, it doesn't have Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. That's included in Office, not Windows. And no, it isn't more stable. It's the exact same OS. The most notable reasons to have Pro would be:

1) Logging on to a school or business domain. For example, a student that lives on campus and logs on to the school network (if the school uses a domain). If you live off campus, this would not apply since you are not logging on to a domain.

2) Remote Desktop. This doesn't apply too much because most people use a 3rd party application like PC Anywhere or GoToMyPC. (Home still has VPN)

3) Multi-CPU Support

4) Off-Line files and folders on a network.

5) Roaming Profiles (Really only companies use this feature)

Here's a more complete comparison between the two:

Why would I need Windows XP Professional?? [microsoft.com]

Check it out before you buy!

thanks for the post yo. hopefully this will save some folks some cash. i personally would be dead in the water w/out remote desktop.

Quote from briang : thanks for the post yo. hopefully this will save some folks some cash. i personally would be dead in the water w/out remote desktop.

You use the XP remote desktop? Most use another app. When I need it, I use PC Anywhere 11.

yeah, i vpn to work, then connect to my pc at work, as well as other pc's. i also have web remote desktop set up on my home pc so i can access it from anywhere. pcanywhere costs, RD don't :-)

Great message, Mav!

Recently there was a deal on pcanywhere. I can't seem to find the post

Quote from briang : yeah, i vpn to work, then connect to my pc at work, as well as other pc's. i also have web remote desktop set up on my home pc so i can access it from anywhere. pcanywhere costs, RD don't :-)

Yeah, the second one is what you would need Pro for. But, for VPN, you can still use Home. Either way, you are a person that gets benefit from it. Most people that say they need Pro don't even know what those things are.

Well, there are a few more caveats with Home - problems with setting NTFS file permissions(have to use cacls.exe or other command line utilities utilities), only simple file sharing (no advanced file sharing), limited group policy settings.

I use win2k3 domain server at home (2 desktops, 1 laptop and a server) which came from Action Pack, and of course as mentioned above XP Home is not a domain-ready OS. And having roaming profiles is really nice, no need to remap the drives all the time. All the desktop items and My Documents are always synched, etc etc.

I use remote desktop - the fastest Windows-to-Windows remote management tool in my experience, but for those wanting to have a free alternative, I suggest TightVNC or UltraVNC. it's worth mentioning that neither of the VNCs supports the XP logon screen (must set to standard windows 2000 logon screen using "control userpasswords2" from Start-Run menu)

i recently found myself with an abundance of XP pro license keys. I ditched XP pro for linux on all of my systems except for one. Once i get that whole dvd copying under linux thing straightened out, i'll probably have another one.

good post though, i had often found myself wondering why I need Pro over home. Remote Desktop definately wasn't it, as I use VNC.

I was actually wondering about the differences a few months ago, so I looked it up:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showc...me_pro.asp

I don't see why the majority of end users would need Pro, but if it's a free upgrade, why not?

Quote from Gord : I was actually wondering about the differences a few months ago, so I looked it up: http://www.winsupersite.com/showc...me_pro.asp I don't see why the majority of end users would need Pro, but if it's a free upgrade, why not?

It's never a free upgrade with Dell. Not sure about any other PC makers. But, if it is free, sure why not. But, most people would be wasting money. Especially those people that think XP Pro comes with Excel and Word.

Quote from Mavtech : It's never a free upgrade with Dell. Not sure about any other PC makers. But, if it is free, sure why not. But, most people would be wasting money. Especially those people that think XP Pro comes with Excel and Word.

Sorry, misread your OP. Thought I caught a 'free' in there somewhere.

I wish more sites had an option of no OS.

Quote from Gord : Sorry, misread your OP. Thought I caught a 'free' in there somewhere.

No prob. I'll let you live.....this time.