Does version of XP matter for the best performance

here's a few more sacrificial bananas for the pixel gods!
As for Win XP Pro vs. Home, well... My personal feelings about XP Home is that it has provided a breeding ground for more trojans, spyware and viruses than any other operating system known to man and M$oft should put it in the hall of shame next to Win ME. With it's severly limited user types, (basically Admin and lowly basic user), most users end up using the Admin accnt, then go online and all the crap they contract now runs on the comp with Admin rights and that comp now uploads to the internet, infecting others. Most users are unaware untill their comp/internet connection becomes slow. The basic rule of "never surf the net with an Admin accnt" falls on deaf ears since the other choice, basic user, is way too limited for most peoples tastes and has almost no rights beyond being able to log in. I avoid xp home like the plague myself, also because I have a 2003 domain at home and XP Pro is needed to log into the domain.

I tend to see XP home this way since I am an IT contractor and my current contract is with a large ISP's business dsl service. I would say that for about 30% of the people I assist the issue is viruses/nasties (this is confirmed) on there comps and 90%+ even have the secretary/receptionist logging in to their comp with an Admin level accnt. No wonder so many are infected. With XP Pro, you can give a lower level of rights without being too severly limited. Just my .02 cents.

Alien, if you're talking benchmarks, AFAIK and have seen personally, it doesn't matter.

Performance should be around the same, the only difference is Pro lets you join a domain and has a few extra options.

XP Home is slightly faster, mainly because it runs fewer services - but there really is little difference for most home users. Incidentally, spybots are more of an issue than viruses at the moment (in terms of their penetration, recurrence and sheer nuisance value) and everyone who goes online should have a spybot detection/removal tool regardless of whether they run XP Home/Pro or any other version of Windows.

www.blackviper.com to solve that pesky 'too many services" issue.

I agree with andre, XP Home should be faster for that very reason. Pro starts so many services that an average user would never use. The more services, the more resources used.
Lois being certified myself and also a business owner I would have to disagree. XP Home is really not the problem, its the user. Most of my service calls are from people that have a locked up computer and cannot get it to boot shorter than 3-4 hours later. 2000+ adware, new.net, weatherbug, ect... Most of these programs are agrred to be installed by the user. I have to take the blame off MS on SOME of the problems. MS usually has a fix for a trojan before it even goes public. Technet always has worm updates before I even see the worm. consumers can use free antivirus and adware programs among some good pay programs that can keep them up and running without any problems.

also, the reason XP sees so many problems is because attackers know that 99% of the consumer world uses XP. Whay have a virus or trojan for Lindows? You would accomplish taking out the lowest percent of people using, OSX, Unix, Lindows, Redhat, ect.

This needed to be said, thanks kidgambino, there's too many brainwashed Microsoft bashers out there who seem to want everyone to move to Linux but don't want/know how to support the poor end user once they get there. Don't get me wrong Linux can be great but it is still limited by software availability and ease of use/support issues. Microsoft are fighting a constant battle with a host of commercial realities, consumers want/need ease of use and they need to be hand-fed updates and patches, they also want/need to be able to run all/any consumer software they so desire natively on an extremely wide range of hardware without the need for hamstrung/buggy emulation tools. Anyway I'll stop now - but really, Windows XP is not the Devils spawn and if you want to run the latest games what else are you going run them on? It's a catch twenty-two; you've gotta have the most popular platform to get the most popular software - you've gotta have the most popular software to get the most popular platform.

good call, you can bash MS all you want, but I know you use it.

I love windows, but I bash IE.... those bastards...

Wow, that brings up a good point of this topic. IE, a hotbed for attackers...the perfect reason to switch to Firefox. All the features of IE, just better.