Win XP vs. Win XP Pro?

B

BlacKnight

New Member
What's the difference? I"m currently looking at getting a laptop for school, and I was wondering which operating system is best? Win XP I've heard lots of bad things about, is XP pro any better? Or should I just go with Win 2k? (which I've heard lots of good about, and I like the idea of a "server" OS that doesn't have all the garbage that MS dumps into their consumer versions of windows.)
Thanks in advance
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Xp home has some bug/secruity issues i guess thats what i use on my HOME machine, my laptop has XP pro i cant tell the difference but it seems to use less resources on start up, and give over better quality that is what the general consenses is
 
I have retail versions of home and pro. You cant on the surface tell much difference between the two. However once you start hitting problems you see. Pro is much more stable and had better coding. The update features are better too, there are a lot of patches that are pro only.

well thats what i think anyway
 
U are right on Rizz.. Heres more description

If you are just a normal home user who has single computer that is shared, and Home edition is perfectly fine. However, on laptop machine, u will need to run a network wizard and launch some beauties that are only in Pro. I really recommand Windows XP Pro for the Laptops. It is very useful for Home computers too like mine since i'm using mine to share the internet connection. Couple of my tweaky hands and the WinXp's Help, i did it with much ease. Windows 2000 Professional Edition is nearly the same, with out some stuffs such as FAT32 issues and those wizards so u will have to do it hand by hand *which really is no problem for me..* I recommand 2000 if your laptop's specs are low, and i can give out the msconfig (system utility manager) for 2000. If you Specs are pretty well. (for me, pretty well is 1.5ghz cpu/256 ddr ram/40gb space). Ur all set to go for an adventure of Xp.
 
Not really Demon hunter.. Windows XP was built in the base structure of Windows 2000 so it carries it's strcuture. Windows XP is more of teh version that is combination of NT system and the Normal Windows System.

WinNT->2000------------WINDOWS
Win3.1->Win95->98----XP

So it is combination of the 98 and 2000 i should say.. not really of ME because WinXp's stability and it's structure is not even comparable with that of ME..i dun know why thye made Me for -_-;;
 
I've never touched Professional edition, I use home edition only on a 3 computer network with a networked printer and everything works fine. I have one laptop and two desktops connected to a wireless router (the laptop is wireless via a PCMCIA card) which goes out a PPPOE DSL connection. Everything works just great.
 
If you really want XP, go for Pro (which works on anything over 1 ghz from what I've seen, just make sure you have a good bit of ram).

Otherwise, go for 2000 Pro. Not as frilly as XP, but in my opinion it's just as good if not better. Even if your comp is a beastly rig, 2000 would still be better...

/me wishes /me had gotten 2000 pro instead of xp...
 
Pro essentially contains functionality required by corporate users. It has better security and privacy functionality. It also contains more intricate networking abilities. Pro also has a backup feature. It also has several administrative type features. Pro gives the administrator extreme power over each user's access rights to files and applications.

Home has simple security and simple networking. There is no built-in backup, but you can download Pro's backup utility. This utility is NOT supported for Home, but will probably work. There really is not the idea of an admin user. Home has very simple administrative rights. Basically you can either make a user admin, or child. The child account has some protection against the account being able to run certain applications, but it's rather simplistic.

Home is fine for most home users.

I use Pro at work and Home at home. They are both quite stable. About the only time I reboot is after installing some updates. And actually, the only time I got a blue screen has been with Pro. I ran one of the NVidia card demos and it royally crashed my OS. They ran fine on Home. But who knows...it could have been some deep driver issue.
 
Another thing to note about XP is you may find older games don't run on it. It is especially difficult to get DOS games to run. But even 95 and some 98 games won't run. I still don't think anyone has gotten Tie Fighter to successfully run. They've come close, but not close enough.

I still have a PII 300, so I use that for some of the older games.
 
Tasty; XP works below 1ghz.. my sister's comp has 500mhz pentium3 with 10gb HDD and stil works.. pretty slow compared to mine, but my sister likes the design and the things she can do with

Squared; have you tried installing Service pack? Xp's compatibility has improved greatly. It runs a lot of the old games and it does have a Command Prompt so it has capability of running Dos games. Probably may need to make adjustments though
 
For getting older programs to work, have you tried the Program Compatibility Wizard? It allows XP to run additional code to emulate the older versions of windows like 95 and 98. I have XP Pro and still have my Tie Fighter CD at home, I'll try it out and let you know if I can get it working. Linkage to a how to on the Compatibility wizard:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows....pat.asp

As for Win XP itself, I have had only one major problem. When I tried upgrading my PNY Geforce 2 card to a PNY Geforce FX 5200 Ultra, it would lockup the PC after the POST. I had to reinstall windows to get it to take the newer board. Of course that messed up all my installed software. Otherwise, Windows XP Pro has been running like a dream.
 
Regarding DOS and XP. I think part of the problem is the command prompt in XP is not truly running DOS. DOS does not exist on Windows XP machines. Or, it doesn't exist in its true flavor. The thing is, if it's a DOS game, I'll just install it on my old machine, which is more than capable of running DOS games.

I have tried the compatibility thing and it almost never seems to offer much help. Most of the games I have tried work just fine, there are only a very few that have a problem.

Here are a few examples of what I can't get to work properly:

Plankeye, please try your Tie CD and let me know if it works. I have not found one person on the message boards who has had 100% success. There is initially a problem regarding the joystick. But even once you get around that problem, you still can't really play the game. I haven't checked in a few months, so maybe someone has figured out something new.

Star Wars: Racer had crashing problems (on Win2000 too). I downloaded a fix which resolved it. But the problem I have now is the game does not remember my winnings after I complete a race. I shutdown and restart, and I am back to the first track.

MS does not fully support my Sidewinder joystick on XP. Their site clearly says the driver is not supported. I can get the first 8 buttons to work fine, but since you can't install the driver, the Shift-button sequence does not work.
 
I installed it and with the Win 95 compatibility setting it bombs out right away. With Win 98/ME setting I am able to get in and as long as I don't enable the 3d card I can actually start a mission. I have a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick that windows xp detects without a problem. I had a problem with the joystick when I first got in but fixed that quickly because I have a game pad too and it happened to be set as the primary input device instead of the joystick. Simply clicking on the advanced settings in the game controllers config allowed me to set the Sidewinder joystick as the primary. I should mention that I used the Tie Fighter Collectors Edition CD ROM. This came out after the original Tie Fighter and contained the expansion packs already bundled in. Although I had the original at one time that came on floppy disks, I have no idea where they are and I doubt the disks even work as they are over 10 years old now. Anyways, I got tie fighter to work on my XP box. If you need some help, let me know.
 
Oh, that's right. You can run in software mode, but unable to run in 3d video. That's why I haven't installed it. I'd rather stick to my old machine and get 3D off my card. I am using the Collector's CD as well.

Regarding your Sidewinder, are you able to get the Shift buttons to work? If so, what did you do to get it working? You'd make my day, week, no MONTH if you can help me. XP recognizes my joystick just fine. I just can't install the driver allowing me to use the Shift button and use game config files.
 
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