XP Home Vs Pro

Is home good enough for regular webmastering.

[jaski]

Got my new machine assembled with AMD Athlon on Asus Board. Stuff I do is mostly editing text files and ftp and web browsing. Also I load Apache/PHP and MySQL on my machine but all that works even on windows 98.

Is there any reason why I should prefer XP Pro over Home.

[bill]

Pro allows you to join a Domain and has IIS. There are a bunch of other small differences. I use the Pro version on all my personal machines.

• Windows XP Home Edition Comparison Guide [microsoft.com]
  
• Windows XP Home Edition vs. Professional Edition: What's the difference? [winsupersite.com]

[jaski]

Thanks for the links bill. Not much difference really .. atleast I don't feel I am likely to use the little extras Pro has to offer. I think I will buy XP Home and save money.

[Matt Probert]

For what it is worth, we host with the Linux O/S and develope using XP Home.

Matt

[roblaw]

Jaski,

If you are using (relying upon) PWS with your windows 98, you will want Pro. Pro has IIS, home does not. PWS does not operate on XP.

Obviously, you can figure out a method to get around anything, but out of the box, Pro doesn't require any changes to be up and running with a local version of IIS.

roblaw

Funny story: I bought a laptop with XP Home from Dell a while back. When I got it, I realized that PWS wouldn't operate and there wasn't a simple alternative. The upgrade price would have been $79 at the time of purchase. I called Dell and asked if they would sell me XP Pro for the $79 price as if I bought it with the system and the woman on the phone said they couldn't, but they could provide me with a $200 voucher so that I could buy it myself. I let her know that it was my mistake for not looking into the differences when I ordered. She said that was OK and sent me the $200 credit to use. They must have had a top line number to reach that quarter!

[jaski]

Thanks for the replies. No I don't use PWS/IIS. I use Apache/PHP which works on all windows. So XP home looks like the best option.

[smalldude71178]

Also networking aspects in Pro is much powerful than in Home. Example you can share a folder and give access only to some people once you share. But in home once you share a folder all people on the network can access the folder.

[jaski]

Thanks smalldude .. and welcome to webmasterworld.