XP professional -Do I need it or just home

cannyscot_2

Buying a laptop for new work i am doing. My father insists i need XP professional but as I am probably buying from Dell it cost anothe £70 or so -is there any point.

all i do is internet mail and excel /word

nickmack

Unlikely you'd need Pro based on what you've said, but here's the differences:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

cannyscot_2

Thanks-is what it is saying about better security worth having? or does the normal security stuffdo a good enough job ie if you were going into cafes and using the wifi connections -would I be any safer with these security features on XP professional?

woo

whichever version you go for you will need to get extra security, firewall, anti-virus and ant-spyware etc.

i can't see any realy extra benefit for the home user of the minor additions to xp pro.

Cubeguy3

XP home edition was designed for the home user and not desinged to be networked together (although it is still possible to network with Home).

For what you've described and so long as you've got a wireless card for the cafes, etc and have the XP in-built firewall turned on, anti-virus installed and the Windows updates kept up-to-date then XP home is fine.

cannyscot_2

No you are right -not a clue about any of those terms!

woo

For me the only bonus of pro for home use is the inclusion of IIS (Microsofts Web server), which i use to test my web stuff locally before deploying it in the wild.

Lawbag_2

Upgrading from Home to Professional isnt an easy route should you decide to do so at a later date.

For you purposes Home is fine

cannyscot_2

Does that mean you do web pages type things and then test it as if it is a web page in this program rather than put on explorer-sorry bit of a dunce!

wolfman

For plain html you can just view it straight in the browser. If you want to host any form of scripting language you'll need a web server application. IIS comes with XP Pro, but not XP Home (AFAIK).

You could try something like Apache though, which is free.

I too, have to have IIS as I often do web based .Net work which requires a web server (namely IIS).

cannyscot_2

Thank you all -the iis thing is probably beyond me but I will just stick with buying an acer laptop with xp home and not worry about trying to get xp porfessional.