Windows XP Pro vs. Home

Hello,

What kind of advantages does XP pro have over home? I am a relatively avid gamer and does pro have any gamer's features?

Thanks,
Joseph

well from a gamer's standpoint.. i'm not sure

advantages for me: remote desktop, better file sharing and so on...

Interesting, too bad the upgrade is 200 USD.. ..

Off-topic: cmonex, please check your PM..

No gaming advantages I'm aware of. More flexibility in networking and whatnot than Xp home. Pro is geared to a business environment and administration standpoint.

Buy hey, I'm a dinosaur still on w2k with no plans to upgrade unless I'm held at gunpoint. Correction. I'm on 98SE (as my desktop is verboten territory still)

What machine is it destined for?

Edited by wallythacker 2006-05-08 5:26 AM

XP Pro is the evolution of NT and 2000, and is much better for working environments, where you need some protection of your files, do networking, want to share folders, printers, etc.

With Pro you can have a (rudimentary) form of Terminal Services, i.e. you can login to a remote machine running XP Pro and act as you where sitting before it. Rudimentary because you cannot have two different sessions (remote and local) running at the same moment (as is possible on NT Terminal Server or 2003).

For gaming: well, I think it is better to stick to XP Home, for better support of DirectX libraries and so on. But I am not an expert about seriuos gaming on PCs. Freecell for me is a very nice game...

Okay, well, the PC was designed for home, and looking at these minor changes, are not worth 200 USD for me in my opinion, although not having remote desktop ..

i heard theres a little trick to get remote desktop onto xp home

also xp pro can run two sessions (1 remote 1 local or even 2 remote) again with a little hack, i have the description i got from a friend who uses it but i never tried it. i did try it on that pc, and worked beautifully.

Pro is intended for networks with a domain controller. You can not (officially) connect a XPhome to a domain controller in a corporate network. That is the main difference between the two. Pro also has better workings concerning policies. (when you logon to a domain, the domain controller can toss policies to computers or groups to enable/disable access to certain features)

Due to a bit of extra services required for the bigger networking stuff, for gaming XP-home would be your best deal.

If you really wanna get the most out of your system concerning gaming, do a google for "black viper services" his site aint up anymore, but google should have it cached, and other copies of the site are floating around as well.

I never purchased a computer with a pre-install XP on it untill my current laptop, and with the home-build systems I have, I always tweaked them a lot, but I decided to actually see what the default install would be like on my laptop.
After going through the registration process and getting finally to the login part, besides the anoying popups of trial software and stuff, it used over 500mb of memory.
After getting rid of Norton Internet Security, it went down to around 350mb, but still unacceptable. I didnt get 1gb of memory to have all that crap running, so after getting rid of most of it, and doing my usual services tweaks, I managed to get it down to around 200mb, but still for a clean boot this is ridiculous.

Now it boots up nicely around 100mb in use, that includes messenger and antivirus.

hm, i didnt tweak my xp pro, and i have 384 mb ram so you can be sure it isnt eating 350 of it

ok, i checked, i have 90 mb available now, and around 100 is used by my programs. the integrated video eats somewhere between 8-32 mb (dunno how it is setup).



Edited by cmonex 2006-05-08 10:28 AM

The integrated video will have a share option setting in the BIOS that you can tweak. If you're a gamer you'll want the 32, else 8 will still get you 32-bit (24 in your case) colour and the resolution you are used to.

I agree completely with PocketDVD, OWM installs are always messy, poorly considered and bloated out. Format C: was the first thing I would always do - and I usually will ask for most of my purchases with blank disks and a pile of CD's.

I have the XP Pro hack, it was actually generated as a error in the SP2 beta. The trouble with using it (as i've stated here before) is that in a corporate environment, it wont actually let you use the machine properly - fine in stand-alone, and that you are devolving network security files to do it i.e. bad & liable to be patched out by Windows Update.

The XP Home trick... there was a nice one pre SP4 that would transform NT4 Workstaion into NT4 Server... but you didn't hear that from me
MS plugged it in SP5/6/6a before you all rush to get NT4 CD's

lol

Just goes to show that in reality, there is not much of anything between the relases; other than marketing.

"Release frequently and release early, letting users do beta testing."
I don't remember who wrote this, but it makes me think to Bill (Gates) && Steve (Jobs). Funny, isn't it?

Some more details would be welcome

yes!! i could get around 100 mb free with this!

lol, yes rather.

That's easy to get it going in a small memory footprint, you just have to be a sensible IT user to do it, and not love your eyecandy. You also need a decent hardware specification that isn't going to trouble the CPU, and some swap file management.

PD is a little heavier on the registry than I am. I've not forced link library unloads since my 9x days, but there are a huge number of documented & undocumented registry modifications that you can make.

Job list:
1) Update everything - window too, but I'm thinking tray software mainly
2) Unload everything from the system tray. Use HKLM...\Run and HKCR...\Run to do it properly
2.1) Don't have anything with the word "Symantec" plastered on the box on, or near your system
3) Service Cull - Driver helpers, Windows Update, Task Scheduler, Messenger, Firewall, ICS, User Switching, UPnP (Uninstall it from Add/Remove first), BITS - you need to know what killing services will do though. Disabling AU/BITS will prevent Windows update from loading. Killing UPnP may prevent messenger from sending files. Others include automatic network share location, presence broadcasting, ad-hoc hardware ejection (I've not listed the services for any of these)
4) Page file configuration. 2nd hard disk, 1.5 time RAM is average, though increasingly people say not optimised. Disable debugging and crash dumping
5) Blow up System Restore *shudders*
6) Don't load things up in your web browser, all those spyware toolbars you have running my be pretty, but half of them install daemon services into the service hosts
7) Wave a hanky at the eye candy. Clear type, translucent effets, animations, shadowing, you name it, it's bloating out explorer.exe - even quick launch & your lovely desktop wallpaper; a 1024x768 BMP is 2,359,350 bytes (2.2 meg), that's sitting in 2.2 meg of RAM when the desktop is drawn as well as 2.2 meg of disk space.

hey, C:Amie the only thing ive not done is disabling system restore though i really should disable it, it has NEVER helped me when i was in trouble!!

all the other stuff is quite natural to do IMO.

ok now i have had a 640x480 wallpaper for a few days, will soon get bored with it though, thats why i very rarely have one.

oh and i MUST have quick launch..

any other ideas please, i'm not sure how much the system eats but my programs use 100 MB now and 90 is available. so i guess around 200 including the video ram..