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    Dell XP home upgrade

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by gators, Jul 31, 2005.

  1. gators

    gators Notebook Consultant

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    My Dell should be coming in the next week with XP home, I need XP pro for my college. Since Dell doesn't offer a XP home backup/restore CD from what I've heard, should I just spend the extra $50 or so and buy XP pro and not the XP pro upgrade. If I just buy the upgrade and I want to reformat I wont be able to get XP home on the comp so I can upgrade it to Pro right? Or is my thinking flawed, I dont know much about computers
     
    gators, Jul 31, 2005
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  2. Brian

    Brian Working at 486 Speed NBR Reviewer

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    Man, after I read your post now I'm confused. First off, I see no reason why you really need Pro, so if you don't want to deal with it, surely you'll be fine. It's popular to recommend Pro, but 90% of notebook users don't need it.

    Anyway, Dell sends you a restore CD, what you probably heard is that they don't include the full OS CD. The Latitude models have this as an option, but not the Inspirons. So go with whatever is cheapest to upgrade to Pro if you want to.
     
    Brian, Jul 31, 2005
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  3. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    actually you will have a backup of your XP Home. There is a burning utility under start-->programs menu that will allow you to burn one copy of XP Home to a disk. As far as to whether you can upgrade it, I would just pay the extra 50 bucks and get the full version of XP Pro. This way you can instlal XP Pro on any computer you have and you don't have to depend on XP Home being installed. I'm not sure if you are required to have XP Home on your system in order to use the upgrade.
     
    Amber, Jul 31, 2005
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  4. drumfu

    drumfu super modfu

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    many schools require xp pro because they want you to log onto the domain to access network resources such as printers, storage, email.

    however, most people have their own printer and i'm 99.999999% sure you will be able to configure your email client to grab your .edu mail.

    that being said, if you have a full version of xp pro (such as what you would buy at the store), then you will have no problems.

    if i were you, i would investigate a little more about WHY your school says they want you to have xp pro, because i'm sure you don't actually NEED it and you can save yourself some money.
     
    drumfu, Jul 31, 2005
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  5. gators

    gators Notebook Consultant

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    I have a class called problem solving using computer software (for econ major) and I talked to someone and they said I need the software requirements for this class, which is XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro.
     
    gators, Jul 31, 2005
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