XP Prof vs XP Home

[5614]

by 'XP Pro(f)' i mean windows XP proffessional.

 

what are the differences between XP pro and XP home... i have heard of a few things you can do on Pro, however i have always been able to do them on home (which i have), can someone who has pro (sayo!) please state a task which i could not do at all on home?

 

i mean for example, yesterday, i was reading about network connection settings (suspicious after that hack thread???) anyway, it said "on xp prof go to x, do y and z will happen so long as both you and the other networked comp is on XP pro" both my comps are XP home and it worked fine all the same! which made me wonder, hence this thread.

[Kedas]

if I'm not mistaken the Pro supports 2 CPU's the home only one.

That important when they come with there dual core cpu's.

and then there are all the more extra's for more professional networks. (don't know the details)

[5614]

i didnt know you couldn't dual process on XP home, if someone could varify that it'd be a very useful fact to know.

 

i'd also heard of the more advance XP pro networking options and wondered exactly what they were... i mean, what is there that you CANT do on home that you can do on pro? (e.g. an actual task rather than knowing there are!)

[bloodhound]

there are inbuilt utilities that allow u can setup web servers and ftp servers in xp prof. while in home u will have to install third party stuff lik apache etc.

[Kedas]

Anyway it would be nice to see what XP 64bit can do that shouldn't take to long now, a few more months.

[Sayonara]

can someone who has pro (sayo!) please state a task which i could not do at all on home?

I don't know what the differences are, because I have never used Home. Surely there must be some sort of features list on the Microsoft products web site?

[5614]

i cant find one on the MS website, however i can find one on other sites, so i cant promise 100% accuracy, but here's what this one says:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

 

improved remote desktop assistance

Multi-processor support

Automated System Recovery

Dynamic Disk Support

intergrated fax

Internet Information Services/Personal Web Server

Encrypting File System

File-level access control

"C2" certification

Domain membership

Group Policy

IntelliMirror

Roaming profiles

Multi-language support (can now be done in a single instal... WOW!)

Sysprep support

RIS support

64-bit

The user interface for IPSecurity (IPSec)

SNMP

Simple TCP/IP services

SAP Agent

Client Service for NetWare

Network Monitor

Multiple Roaming feature

Client-side caching

 

those seem to be mostly XP Prof only, bold = what will make it go forward, ie. they are things technology needs to go forward.

[JaKiri]

XP Pro isn't 64 bit

[MulderMan]

i think that refers to there is going to be support for 64-bt processing. one of the main pros of pro would be the networking funcionalities, eg the ability to join a domain and client policies. not much really needed for the home user but its nice to have.

[Kedas]

XP Pro isn't 64 bit

 

no it isn't this is a copy of what's on that site:

* 64-bit Edition Microsoft is shipping a 64-bit version of Windows XP for Intel Itanium systems that mirrors the Professional Edition feature-set.

 

So they clearly refer to XP 64-bit Edition.

this probably mean that there will be two Professional versions

(-XP Home)

-XP Pro

-XP 64-bit Edition. (based on the Professional version)

 

So most likely the 64bit version will cost even more than the Professional version. (I hope I'm wrong about this)

 

But the Itanium version should be an other one than the AMD64 one so I'm not sure.

[5614]

i dont know but i assumed that meant it had the capability to handle a 64 bit processor.

 

also XP prof is supposed to be able to hand dual processor (and XP home cant) however my friend with XP home (SP2) can access processor affinity (windows task magnage > processes > right click on any process), this option is normally only available on computers which can dual process, so we (him and me) made the assumption that SP2 gives XP home computers the ability to have multiprocessors.

 

(havent got SP2 myself, so i cant say more than that, he gave me a screen shot of what he can see (attached below))

[Dave]

I know for a fact that XP Home doesn't do the advanced file sharing that XP Pro does. I don't *think* Home supports things like the P4 hyperthreading. Apart from that, that's about it really.

[5614]

i can now confirm that XP home SP2 supports dual processor... dunno about 64bit processor.

 

i know that XP home SP2 supports P4 hyperthreading, not 100% sure about XP home SP1 and hyperthreading, i think it does, but dunno.

[herme3]

The differences probably wouldn't affect the average computer user. The biggest difference I noticed is that Windows XP Pro contains Internet Information Services. This means that you can use your computer as a web server. You can buy a web domain, and link it to your computer's IP address. Then you can store the HTML files on your computer's hard drive. Then whenever someone types in your domain name in an Internet browser, your web site will load because it will be hosted from your computer. Windows XP Pro also has more advanced file sharing controls. You can easily give certain network users access to certain folders, even if they are system folders. On Windows XP Home, you can't easily get into the hidden folder, C:\System Volume Information. This is because you can't change the folder sharing controls for this folder. However, in Windows XP Pro, you can turn off the lock with the advanced settings. Also, Windows XP Pro has advanced encryption technology. You can set a password on your computer, and if someone steals your computer, there is no way for them to access your files unless they know the password. Even if you take the hard drive out, and put it in another computer, it is still very difficult to hack open the encrypted files.