XP Home vs. Professional

What special advantage does XP Professional have, if no gaming at all?

 

Ability to join a domain network and a couple of other networking/security features. Basically stuff you won't need for a regular home user. However, XP Pro support from Microsoft will be longer than XP Home.

 

Thanks sp00n.

 

wow vaw you keep asking simple questions over and over...most of which can be easily found using google *shrug

 

It's not that yours truly is incapable of asking questions that will embarrass you.

 

Pro has the ability to remote desktop, run a web server and also supports an encrypted file system. these are just a few of the many differences, but those are the most important to me.

 

Panteedropper, thanks.

 

no problem, what consensus did you come up with? are you going to do XP pro?

 

If you are not planning to join a network then go with XP Home. It's cheaper (assuming you are paying for it). In regards to support, we will eventually, though *grudingly*, have to switch to Vista or a later version so I don't think it's much of an issue,

 

Pro also supports two sockets for processors.

I just wanted to add that in there but I do agree Home works fine for normal use if you don't need remote desktop.

 

Thanks all for your input!

I think so. I don't use networking etc, but the remote desktop that you mention can be quite useful. Actually the reason I asked about this was that I was looking at two T61 models, one has integrated graphics and only Pro available, the other has Nvidia and an option of Home/Pro. Selecting Home will reduce the price of the latter to about the same as that of the former. Since the Pro has something additional that can be useful to me, and I read that discrete graphics (which is unimportant to me) will consume more battery and generate more heat, I think the first model (Pro + integrated graphics) is the way to go. Sounds like a reasonable conclusion?

 

Personally I would go with Home+dedicated. You an always upgrade to Pro if you feel the dire need to but you can't replace the graphic card. You never know, you might just need more graphic power at some point in the future.

May I ask how the remote desktop might be useful? Do you plan to create a network?

 

For the majority of users, Home will be just fine, but if you have a choice where there isn't much difference in price, then definitely Pro. If you know you might use some Pro only features then it's quite nice to already have them there, although Remote Desktop is one of the only features I can think of that could be really useful to non-corporate users.

If dedicated graphics aren't necessary for your needs, I'd vote for the integrated/Pro combo. ^^

 

I actually went with home after having pro on my last two.

Everyone says you can't use your school's wireless with home, but supposedly it's not going to be a problem here. I guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks for sure.

Leaves the biggest burn of xp home being not being supported as long.

 

Home's non-inclusion of the IIS webserver was one reason I choose XP Pro since web development (ok, deployment) under Visual Studio.net 2003 (which I still use) required this IIS component.

The later version of VS.net, i.e. 2005, provides an inbuilt web server for testing code, so IIS would not be required. In this instance, XP Home would suffice.

Not being a gamer, I too would choose the integrated option when buying a notebook.

 

vaw, i back you up 100%. The remote desktop feature alone is worth the extra few bucks. Integrated graphics + XP PRO(assuming that you will use the remote desktop feature from time to time) is the way to go in your case.You'll be very happy with your purchase.

 

In my case it's unlikely I'll need more graphics power during the lifespan of this laptop , but you made a very good point for anyone who might. As for remote desktop, I'm not sure what I need to do in order to access to my office computer from my laptop while away from office?

Thanks, that's what I decided to do.

(Lucky we have both superpig and UltraCow here )

It's actually 20 bucks less Thanks for backing my decision.