xp home vs xp pro

[dubstar]

major and minor differences are..what again?

 

[Friend of Bill]

Price, file security, multi-processor support for Pro and again about $100.00 more smackaroos for Pro.

 

[FoSsiL]

well the pro does have more feature than the home version, but many pplz end up tweaking their system and disabling some of those stuff that comes with it; so the home verison will do just fine, unless ur running some kinda advance network system or something. whatever, up to u=)

 

[yoyo]

Pro has a blue scroll bar in the boot screen, Home a green one.

Guess that is already the main difference for most users.
Pro is a superset of Home, means everything that can be done in Home can be done in Pro, too. It also means that most parts of the OS are identical.
You can't log into a domain with Home, there is no Group Policy editor, Internet Information Server is not included, no encrypted file system, backup utility not installed by default but on the disk, .....

some links:

Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

A file by file compare can be found here
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=104

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

 

[tibboh]

I pondered this for ages, as I wanted to get rid of my "borrowed" XP Pro. I opted for purchasing Home version, and having now run both versions, I believe Home is well sufficient for my need.

And of course, if you have an old copy of '95/'98, you can re format HD and do a clean install with the UPGRADE versionof Home, as it only asks for verification of previous Windows O/S - it does NOT have to be pre installed (but this does not appear to work for system restore packs - you have to have version installed - but kept in background).

 

[Perris Calderon]

I had the pro cd sitting around my house for abut a year.

I was planning on using it in my next computor, but now realize I'm not getting another computor till hammer.

by then, loghorn will be out

so I did the upgrade.

for the aggrivation, it was not worth my effort at all.

now, if I go dually, this would be the biggest boon for the conversion

 

[sherpard]

windows xp professional can be activated as many times as u want? eg. when u format your whole hdd and lose everything and u reinstall windows u register again.
for windows xp homeedition is it true u can only activate the product 3 times before the key becomes 'dead'?

 

[dubstar]

for windows xp homeedition is it true u can only activate the product 3 times before the key becomes 'dead'? [/B]

i have home edition, and i have reinstalled about 6 times, using the key.. 6 times, it works everytime.

 

[FoSsiL]

Originally posted by sherpard
windows xp professional can be activated as many times as u want? eg. when u format your whole hdd and lose everything and u reinstall windows u register again.
for windows xp homeedition is it true u can only activate the product 3 times before the key becomes 'dead'?

thats just so wack, why would the key die out after 3 times.
this is just nonsense.

 

[XP Abuser]

phooey to activation. the only thing i activate is my middle finger

 

[03bigMark03]

muhahaha

I use XP Pro and my dad's laptop uses XP home. There's really not much difference. Just more networking tools, and more general management tools and i think there are more languages in XP pro or something like that.

 

[zyfos]

Activation key dies if you replace like 3 or more components in your computer. From what I've heard, XP will look at the devices you have installed on your computer, take some ID numbers from em, and crunches the numbers through a hash algorithm. The result is an ID key for your computer that Microsoft keeps track of to make sure that you install it only on that one computer. If you install the same copy of XP on a different machine, a different ID number would be sent in and Microsoft would know that you are installing it on something besides the original computer and they freeze your activation key.

 

[jdn]

I f you have more than one user on your computor I would install XP pro as the account types on home are limited to "admin" and "limited". This can be a real pain. XP pro lets you define just about everything a user can or cant do through the gruop policy editor.