What is the difference between the XP home and Professional versions?

My system is 5 years old. It has an Asus p38-f Pentium 3 100mhz bus Atx motherboard. Pentium 3 450 mhz CPU, 256 mb ram, 30 gig hard drive, Diamond Viper v770 32mb AGP video card, SOUND BLASTER LIVE VALUE sound card, 52x CD drive, 52x CD-RW drive. The operating system is Windows 98 Second Edition and I have Microsoft Office 97 Pro, and Norton System Works 2003 installed.

I was thinking about upgrading my operating system to Windows XP. Is this just a matter of putting in the new operating system disc and installing it or will I have to reinstall all my existing software? Do you think the new operating system will work with the software I already have installed or will there be conflicts. I also have AOL 9.0 has my internet provider.

Could also tell me the difference between the XP home and Professional versions.

Thanks for the information.

This question was answered on November 11, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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If all you want is to upgrade all you have to do is put in the CD and choose update.

Although the XP Pro and Home Editions share the same common core code, they don't have the same features The right version for you depends on the functionality you need Think of XP Pro as a superset of XP Home Below is a short list of supported features:

Backup—XP Pro has the standard Win2K backup program; XP Home has no backup program Dynamic Disks—XP Pro supports dynamic disks; XP Home doesn't IIS—XP Pro includes IIS; XP Home doesn't

Encrypted File System (EFS)—EFS debuted in Win2K and lets you encrypt files on an NTFS partition, a very useful feature for mobile machines XP Pro includes EFS; XP Home doesn't Multiple Monitors—XP Pro supports up to nine monitors; XP Home supports only one monitor (Windows Me/Win98 supported multiple monitors)

Multiprocessor—XP Pro supports up to two processors; XP Home supports only one (as did Windows Me/Win98) Remote Assistance—Both editions support Remote Assistance, which lets someone from a Help desk connect to the client desktop to troubleshoot problems

Remote Desktop—XP Pro adds to Remote Assistance by letting any machine running a Terminal Services client run one Terminal Services session against an XP Pro machine Domain Membership—XP Pro systems can be domain members; XP Home systems can't, but they can access domain resources Group Policy—XP Pro supports group policies; XP Home doesn't IntelliMirror—XP Pro supports IntelliMirror, which includes Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS), software deployment, and user setting management; XP Home doesn't support IntelliMirror Upgrade from Windows Me/Win98—Both XP Pro and XP Home support this upgrade Upgrade from Win2K/NT—Only XP Pro supports this upgrade 64-bit Support—Only XP Pro will have a 64-bit version that supports the Itanium systems Network Support—XP Pro includes support for Network Monitor, SNMP, IP Security (IPSec), and the Client Services for NetWare (CSNW); XP Home doesn't

For the best list of supported features, see the Feature Guide document (featguid.doc) on the root of the XP CD-ROM.

Hope this helps Good Luck!

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Posted by julie of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 11, 2004

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