xp home vs. xp pro
 

differences?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p.../choosing2.asp
If you check your email a few times a week and do some light browsing get Home on the other hand if you are a power user or even a tech head get Pro.
Edit: I would also reccomend Pro over Home in just about every situation.

I can't imagine a situation where I would ever tell someone to choose Home over Pro. Pro is a lot more stable, has more security features (in terms of permissions management, etc.), and so on.

Also, the Recovery Console (very useful if things get fucked) doesn't work in XP Home, while it works in XP Pro. Go with Pro :)

Also, networking XP Home with other machines is sort of a nightmare. Another vote for Pro, if you must go with XP.

i'm pro "pro".

pro. i had home and upgraded them all to pro... it's much easier to network

just one of the huge things that kills XP Home for me (never have been forced to use it fortunately) is the crippled networking. It is impossible as far as I know to join a domain when using home edition.

I certainly haven't noticed any stability differences between the two however i havn't run either on any older or slower computer (lifes to short for slow computers), but with sp2 coming out alot of the networking (at least the integrated wireless tools) have been revampt, in both versions, and from the looks of it are "the cats ass".

like the others said the networking in home is horrid
i spent 2 hours trying to network my firends computer to his laptop which was running 98, didn't work
so we formatted and put pro on instead
worked within 5 mins >_<

The home edition is a nightmare with networking. I work in tech support at my university, and its a damn pain everytime someone comes in with an XP home machine--it just doesnt like to cooperate.

Id drop the extra cash for pro.

My 2 cents;

Anything with two letters or numbers in it sucks.

I won't run anything except server 2003 and win 2000. Best MS OSes ever made. XP is still too pretty, in the way and crappy on support for me. I always had problems with external modems when I tried XP. Never in 2K or 2k3.

I have home now, and I've had very few problems setting up a network, but I'm getting pro on my laptop.

I have only XP-Pro and love it. Very stable

Heh. It would be better to say that, of the OSes that MS has released, 95, 98 and XP are extremely weak when compared with 2000/2k3.
However, NT has two letters...and rules.

You, sir, are clinically insane. As a long-time system administrator of NT, there are many things it does and "rules" is not one of them.

Concur bro. w2k and w3k are nice, and those others are weak. i am also quite fond of nt.

'Rules' is subjective. Maybe 'blows everything else away,' would be better. All in all w2k and w3k (not widely in production yet) have been quite stable, relatively speaking, to all this home networking, TCP port, wireless craze. XP and all those other garbage OSes like ME or 98se are/were rediculous. You want hardened, given me a 3.51 server and see if you can get in :)

The actual difference here, is you cannot connect an XP home workstation to an Windows domain (AD or otherwise).

Why do you ask?

-bear