[pchelpers] Re: XP Pro

Hi Susan,

Friday, April 13, 2007, 5:35:31 PM, you wrote:

S> I finally found a retailer who still sells XP. Unfortunately XP Pro
S> sells for the same price as Vista Premium edition, which I found
S> rather annoying. I was hoping XP would have dropped in price. So I
S> have one more question. Does the XP Home edition have good
S> networking capabilities, or is this best done in XP Professional? I
S> want to network at least two computers together. The reason I ask
S> is because if I'm going to fork out that kind of money for XP,
S> maybe the cheaper XP Home will work just fine in this case instead
S> of buyer the higher priced Pro.

1. XP will not drop in price, unless someone is trying to clean out
their inventory; Microsoft does not want people to go backwards, for
various reasons.

2. Pro is designed for corporate environments, and can do everything
that Home can do; Home is restricted to discourage use in a business
environment and prevent use in a corporate environment, but is
generally functional for home networking. If you're only doing 2
computers, Home will do quite well.

3. If you have a CD for Windows 2000 already, you *MAY* be able to use
an upgrade version of Home, and tell it to wipe out the old system;
you should check to see if this is supported before you buy, as I'm
not sure if it can be done. You can't use it to actually convert 2000
to XP Home; that's not supported, since 2000 supports some features
which are also supported by XP Pro, but not by XP Home; you'd
effectively be downgrading. If you have a CD for Windows 95, 98, or
ME, an upgrade version will work.

If the system has 1GB of RAM (512MB bare minimum) and at least a 20GB
drive, Vista should be able to run tolerably, although, as Don says,
you might have some few compatibility problems.

Is there some reason that you don't want to buy on eBay? It's probably
quite safe as long as you check the seller ratings to be sure that
they're high (high 90's), and that they've got a reasonable number of
ratings. Also read the description carefully to be sure that you're
getting what you think you are. You may also be able to find some on
Amazon; Amazon has seller ratings also.

People living in the US might want to note that Walmart is selling
Vista computers for as low as $379, with some variant of Vista, at
least 512MB RAM, 80GB hard drive, 3Ghz CPU, and DVD writer. Amusingly,
I noticed that the 80GB drives are all described as "huge", while the
larger drives are not. Most of the computers must be ordered online,
and they are shipped to the nearest store for pickup.  As far as I can
see from the specs, these are all tolerable, but one might want to
bump the 512MB models up to 1GB at some time in the future.

-- 
Scott.



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