Microsoft XP

[petena98]

Hello all

I am a PC home user only, at the moment I have Win98 installed but I want to install windows XP  please can someone advise me if I should get Home Edition or Professional and why. Thanks so much to anybody that replies

Peter

[stevie21]

If you really really needed the extra featuers that are available on the Pro edition then you'd probably not need to ask which one to choose. I have a habit of trying to say something helpful & coming across as cheeky so hopefully you won't take this the wrong way.

Just stick to the Home edition as you're unlikely to need things like IIS. If you managed on Win98 then any version of Windows since then will be an improvement.

Obviously if you have the chance of either Home or Pro at the same price, I'd choose Pro.

[j2buttonsw]

Home edition as you are unlikely to want to add it to a domain.

[Potatoman]

Defnatly Home edition

[hertz]

If you only have Win98 on your machine at the moment, it suggests it may not be a new one. Some computers, their peripheral equipment (printers, scanners etc) and software may not work with WinXP. Use Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor tool to check.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/upgrading/advisor.mspx

[inetbuff]

Further to the previous answer, check if Windows 2000 will work with them. I had Windows 98se for three years, using it every day, and I thought it was a very good operating system. In fact I had ME before that and I had it overwritten with 98se which I considered to be an upgrade. I read that 98se is better than 98. Then I upgraded to XP Professional, which I have had for about two years. Watching it start up and shut down, I suspect that it is a better operating system than 98se, but having said that it doesn't really have anything that I would want to use that 98se didn't have. It had tons of programs but I only use a few. Basically I just word process and go on the internet. I don't know if the latest XP has been corrected by Microsoft, I doubt it as it is the same version as when it was first introduced, but I had to download sixteen critical updates from Microsoft to plug holes that would let hackers in. So if you do get XP installed, go to microsoft.com and let it scan your computer for the critical updates that it needs. I recall there have been a few viruses as well that were targetting certain operating systems and I had to download things that got rid of them. One thing I like about XP is it has an instant messenger called Windows Messenger (or at least Pro has) which can communicate with any instant messenger, i.e. msn, aol, yahoo. One thing I don't like about it is that it cannot play an old dos/windows 3.1 arcade game which worked perfectly on 98se. I read that there is a new operating system coming out in 2006.