XP Pro vs XP Home

[butch7]

I'm buildiing 2 new machines in the near future. Any significant advantages using XP Pro over the Home edition?

[Sempron]

Try these

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/evaluation/compare.mspx

I think the main differences is if you plan on running a network or server, you'd like to go with Pro

[sea69]

home is basically a 'dumbed up' version of Pro...

also there is a price difference.

;)

[Rick]

If you don't need the extra hardware support(like dual cpu) or the added security
Then save the Money and get xp home.

[123456]

from personal experience, XP Pro is better. Not much better, but .03% better. I would recommend Windows 2000 pro, but it's outdated now.

[pangea33]

What do you want to do with these machines?

A huge difference is the type of security you can use. Home only has simple file sharing, so anybody can get to any shares basically. There are ways to restrict certain folders, but it's not truly secure. If these machines will be on a network with other machines, or if you will have multiple users on these machines, granular user-level security might be important to you.

Do you lean towards gaming, application development, music production, video production, or general browsing/document creation?

Maybe I am just more comfortable with the nuance of Pro, or some imagined greater level of configurability and performance. Maybe its because the OS is targeted at network applications and mirrors my work environment, but I wouldn't even consider choosing XP Home on a new machine for myself.

Certainly many others would argue that its a wasted expense. Depends on your intentions.