Any reason to get Windows XP Pro instead of Home?

I'm a college student, and I'm going to be using my laptop for notes, web surfing, programming, photoshop, maya, and gaming.

Any reason I should get XP Professional?
Or would XP Home work fine?

 

None at all. I think there's some VPN and network synch functionality you'll be missing, but I suppose you don't need any of that. In my experience, there's no difference between the two except the included background (green vs blue windows xp image). After SP2 the home/professional even disappears from the boot screen lol.

 

XP Pro has lots of management features for enterprises on it, which most people don't need, but it does have networking permissions based around users, which is a pain not being in Home, if you share files on your home network, get Pro, otherwise Home is fine.

 

Networking permissions based around users? As opposed to ...?
Could you explaing a bit? (sorry)

Would it keep me from being able to share files? Or would it allow too much access?

 

In other words, you can specify the limitations on the ability of each user account on an XP-Pro system to access the network that system is attached to. (As an aside, even on one computer owned and used by one person, there are, actually multiple user accounts.)

That is as opposed to the much blunter level of control you can have in XP-Home, where you either share a file with everyone, and I do mean everyone - anyone who can connect to the network - or you don't share it with anyone (except, perhaps, with the other user accounts that are on the same physical machine). This is so-called simple sharing and is the only sort available for XP-Home, and, as the other poster stated, is a royal pain in the tuckus if you're trying to network several systems on your home network with varying degrees of access to certain resources (such as a home-brew file server that's connected to the network) and, in particular, if you have a webserver on the network that serves webpages out to the internet.

I had an XP-Home system that I just converted to XP-Pro for precisely those reasons.

 

Remote Desktop...I think it can only be done on XP Pro

 

Check with your school. If you need to log on to a domain to access University resources, get XP Pro. Otherwise home is fine.

 

XP Home might be fine, but I say just get Pro and be on the safe side.

 

i like pro better then home, but it really shouldn't make much of a difference. if there is no price difference then go for pro, if there is and it is significant, get home.

 

For me it's not even a matter of liking it better than Home. IMHO XP Home just sux. You're just so limited when using it compared to the Pro version. I guess it's because i'm in an IT field where I need most of the extra features that Pro offers, especially on the Networking side. So +10 for Pro!

 

If you plan on setting up your laptop on a network, XP Home can be a bit of a hassle. I recall having to jump through hoops for an hour or so to make sharing possible. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes I would have to wait a minute for other PCs on the network to become visible, other times 30 minutes. I'm told you won't run into these issues with XP Pro. Still, if you want to save some money and don't mind using the internet as a virtual network (slower connection) using programs like Hamachi, then I think XP Home should be fine.

 

LogMeIn would work on XP Home.

 

XP Home can be used as a Remote Desktop client (I was using my XP Home system that way up until I converted it to an XP Pro system - no change in the RD functionality) - to do that you just have to d/l the RD client from MS. However, I believe that INEEDMONEY is correct insofar as using XP Home as the host system goes - XP Home cannot be remoted to, only remoted from, using MS Remote Desktop.

 

most important reason to get PRO. most colleges and university networks are domain based.