[TJD]

i know, i know, 2 questions in one day, but....
whats the difference between WindowsXp proffessional, and windowsXp home?

[Sidders]

Professional is for professional users, home is for home users. Obvious really.

[TJD]

thankyou. and what is the actual difference

[Sidders]

More features I'd guess, try these links:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/ ... atures.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home ... atures.asp

[Morals]

XP is more expensive

[Eddie]

Do you mean XP professional is more expensive? because they're both XP!

[Morals]

I did mean that yes. I hang my head in shame for being such a retard.

[Dopey]

XP Pro does seam to have a lot more features such as personal web server (apparently) and it can log onto a domain network rather than just home networks (peer2peer).

[MK Chris]

If you are going for Windows XP, I would suggest a lovely little freeware program called XP AntiSpy (http://www.xp-antispy.de/):

"XP-AntiSpy is a little utility that let's you disable some built-in update and authetication 'features' in WindowsXP.
For example, there's a service running in the background wich is called 'Automatic Updates'. I don't know what this service transfers from my machine to other machines on the internet, especially the MS ones. So I play it safe and disable such functions. If you like, you can even disable these function manually, by going through the System and checking or unchecking some checkboxes. This will take you approximately half an hour. But why wasting time when a little neat utility can do the same in 1 minute? This utility was successfully tested by lots of users, and was found to disable all the known 'Suspicious' Functions in WindowsXP. It's customizeable, but comes up with the Default settings, which are recommended."

[Matt]

XP Pro does seam to have a lot more features such as personal web server (apparently) and it can log onto a domain network rather than just home networks (peer2peer).

All versions can log onto a domain. Not much use to many networks if not.

Pro has a load more network admin tools.

[Bob23]

I think basically, if your computer is part of a network office environment, get Pro. If you're using at home to type letters, post on here, look at the occassional filthy site and maybe connecting to a small home network use Home Edition.

The Auto-Updates the Topher talks of means that your computer checks whether there are any updates for XP (ie new security risks) and automatically downloads the patches to fix it whilst you are on the net. Similar to Norten 2003 updating the virus lists. I personally have this turned on. I hope no-one hacks into my computer as a result though.