Synchronization and XP Home vs. Pro?

Now that I've figured out which notebook I'll be getting (Asus z96J), I need to start thinking about software. So, I have a few questions:

- I want to be able to automatically synchronize certain folders between my desktop and my future laptop. I have a bit of a network going in the house, largely wireless with my desktop hooked directly to the router. Can Windows do this? Also, I'd like to be able to synchronize e-mails between the two systems (I'm using Outlook Express). Whenever a computer downloads a message off the main server at Telus HQ, it gets deleted over there, meaning I can only download e-mails once off the server. I'd like to have complete access to old e-mails from both computers. Can Outlook Express do this?

- At the moment, I'm kind of stuck between Windows XP Home or Professional. My desktop has XP Professional. I just assumed it would be the better choice. I'm not aware of any additional functionality valid to me as of right now. All I know is that Home edition runs on an FAT32 file system, and Pro runs on NTFS. Beyond that, I really don't know. Would I need Professional edition to be able to perform all the synchronizations I mentioned above? I'm on a budget, as I am just a lowly University student, so I'll gladly cheap out on the OS if I can justify it. Feel free to convince me that doing so would be a bad idea.

Thanks in advance

 

For syncing I reccomend SyncToy from Microsoft. It is one of the Power Toys available as microsoft.com. it's free. It will work with the folders and you could probably set it to sync the folder your email is in. Another good one is Second Copy, but it is not free. Also, for email, try out Thunderbird from mozilla.org. It is far superior to Outlook Express.

As for Pro vs Home, they bith actually run on NTFS and the main differences are advanced networking feature. If you are on a budget Home will work fine.

 

you can set outlook express to not delete your e-mails on the server