OS: XP Home or XP Professional

xp prof has a built in webserver, more user restrictions etc available (you have more options than admin and limited) and a few other things, i'd still be using home now if i didnt need prof for me c#/asp.net homework as if you have all the extra things running prof runs games a bit slower than home

Definitely go with Professional. With the Home Edition, there are quite a few settings that you can't go into and change, at least not easily. With Professional, it's a lot easier to set things up and change settings.

I get tired of this question....not the people who ask it, but the people who respond (and not necessarily the people who have thus far responded since I hope they would agree with what I am about to say):

You only need XP Pro if you need what the extra features. MOST people do not.

TaliosFalcon clearly DOES need it, so he should have got XP Pro.

Oshe...can't tell.

They are the same operating system, with Pro having additional features that are largely needed in a professional environment where security is an issue. TaliosFalcon is a developer and therefore he needs it for yet another reason.

90 percent of people who feel they must have it, but it because they think they are getting "less of an operating system"--that's simply not the case. They should have called it something else (xp home and xp business, maybe).

I know tons of people who got the Pro and wasted the extra $70.

Look here and do the homework, then make an informed decision rather than listen to uninformed people say "Get pro--Home sucks! You're not a man if you don't get Pro!'

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

whilst I agree with gerryf, there is one other aspect that may sway your decision: resale value.
You may find that you get a quicker sale and/or higher price if you ever decide to sell your laptop.

That is a valid point and one I had not considered. I can see where the "appeal" of XP Pro could swing the deal for someone.

Personally, I have both..XP Pro for my laptop, since I have to hook up to several domains, and XP home on the home computers which are in a workgroup

well right at the start, if you plan to be in a network with other computer to share files and all, pro is the way to go. I mean, in home you can't browse domains and some other little irriting things are just... well irriting ^^

pro has a lot of useful things... but most people don,t even know or care about them... you have to know what you want.

home is a very good choice unless you use the pro's features like it was said before.

here's the list of features that XP has over home

To be fair, how many home users have to browse domains? You make it sound, unintentionally, like you cannot browse a network (workgroup), which you can.

Also, for those who know how, you can access files on a domain with home, you just cannot JOIN the domain.

Remote desktop is nice, but you can accomplish the same with freely available software (and some would argue it works better than XP Pro over dial up)

Multiple processor support of two processors--uh, yeah...name 10 people with a multiprocessor machine (not including hyperthreading, which is recognized as two processors). OK, I have a multi-processor file server, but who else?

I can count the number of times I used Automated System Recovery and the backup utilities on one finger--there are better alternatives to both

Web server software -- apache=full fledged webserver for free, vs. crippled mini-IIS with XP Pro--good enough for web development and not much else.

Security features supporting file encryption--argh, the next time some one uses file encryption and then forgets his/her password and cannot GET his/her files I will kill someone

Enterprise and advanced networking features so XP Pro machines can join active domains--yes, we covered this one. Especially useful for anal-retentive SysAdmins who want to lock people out of computers so they cannot get into trouble



XP Pro is over-rated for most users.

I use pro for the network features... I use folder protection instead of that damn encryption, and I don't use most of all features... except some administrative features.

you are definitly right about xp pro being over-rated. How much people brag about having pro without even knowing what it does over home??? way too much =P

If you have a p4 with HT, you need PRO, HOME will not support multiple cpus, even if it is a virtual second cpu and not a physical one

Is this true? Can anyone clarify for me because I am on order for my 9860 and I have got Home.

I wish people would do their homework...

Marax winxp home does support HT.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;810231

I AM THE LAW! - Judge Dredd

I hope my post did not add to the confusion on the hyperthreading issue. Either way, very few programs utilize multiple CPUs--that is why you typically only find them on servers, since windows server basic operating system functions do support multiple cpus

I would have to disagree about your comment gerryf.
If you bring up taskmanager you will notice that quite a few programs are multi-threaded. Whilst that does not imply HT will be used the OS allocates the threading to which ever virtual CPU is available.

My point is there is a difference between symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), which is what dual processing is, and simultaneous multithreading (SMT), which is what hyperthreading is. SMP can actually be less efficient than SMT, but there is no getting around the fact that you have twice as much processing. SMT gains are due more to increased efficiency then to increased processing capability, and is essentially CPU slight of hand. (which sounds more derogatory then I intend).

Just go for home. For the normal Windows user the difference is just a blue scroller at startup instead of a green one. And that's it.

There went my argument.

I can see we are going to have some great discussions gerryf

I would say HT not so much greater efficiency but the use of spare capacity within the chip. I would define greater efficiency getting more out of any one logical unit say a branch predictor. Thus Intel or the programmer might make the branch predictor use less cycles every time it is used. That would be greater efficency.

However, if you have say two branch predictors and one of them is idle some of the time due to clocking restraints then by redesigning your clocking system (as an example) you may get a second branch predictor for free. This is exactly what Intel has done in HT. They unlocked the instruction piplelines to allow the underutilised logical units to accept another thread of execution.

This of course then comes back to your original correct assertion that SMP gives you twice the processing power because you have two real CPU cores (but of course you never quite get a 2x increase due to other constraints). With current P4/HT chips Intel does not have two of every logical unit on the silicon die so somewhere you are going to bottleneck because the other thread is using that unit.

What this has to do with the original thread I have no I idea but it sounded good at the time.

Personally if I had my choice between Home and Pro, I would go Pro just because I do not wish to artificially limit what I could do with one of the world's fastest laptops for the sake of a few dollars. Which of course is just another argument for why you ditch Windows all together and run Linux...