Home or Pro XP?

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

I've been reading a fair amount of XP and video editing posts. A question that I've been wondering about deals about the 2 versions of XP. There is a home and professional edition. I'm assuming both share the same kernel. If any, what is the difference between the two? Is one more suited to video editing than the other?

Thank you

[Phil Pugh]

Pro is aimed at the business user and has more security and management capabilities. There are probably lots more 'subtle' differences. MS are pushing the home one for multimedia.

I'll stick to 98/ME for the time being!

[Dr Mordrid]

Au contrare. I'd go with Win2K and tell Billy boy to shove XP where the sun don't shine.

Win2K + SP2 + Dx8a + Video Capture Update + WMP7.1 gives you about 98% of what XP has that's worth having without the WPA protection scheme and the built-in advertising. It's also hell and gone better than Win9x if your hardware supports it. For DV it's definitely the way to go.

The rest is fluff.

Dr. Mordrid

[Frank Marshall]

Hi,

The latest copy of Australian PC User has an interesting comparison between WinXP and 2K. To make it short, they found Win2K to be the faster OS; 13% faster in Office on a 2GHz P4 system. Here's some of their more intriguing findings:

800MHz Celeron with Win2K beats 2GHz P4 with WinME.

AMD Athlon with Win2K beats all comers, "...we obtained our highest Office application performance from AMD's 1.33GHz Athlon and Windows 2000. Even the 2GHz Intel Pentium 4 with RAMBUS memory couldn't touch it."

1.2GHz PIII with Win2K beats 2GHz P4 with XP.

1.2GHz PIII equals 2GHz P4 running XP.

The main reason to "upgrade" to XP according to these guys is that they found XP to be close to crash-proof. In fact they couldn't get the OS to fall over in their tests. Certain nasty applications they knew would cause grief did go down but they couldn't take the OS with them.

Cheers.

[Snake-Eyes]

Well, I'm finally ready to back up all the crap littering my hard drives (RAID0), format, and install Win2K again. I had removed it during my last round of hardware upgrades, since my Herc GTXP didn't seem to like it too much. Hopefully this time will be different!

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, XP is pretty stable....but I've not seen proof that it's that much better than Win2K SP2 ++. In fact I've brought it to its knees just browsing poorly written web pages several times.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

I've been messing with XP Pro for the last couple of months and it seems quite good. This was not for video stuff, just general office stuff, web browsing etc.

When I first installed it I hated it, but once I got it back to a more "normal" (WTF is that GUI about!) looking version of Windows I found it to be good. Games performance seems pretty fast and generally smoother than 9x/ME.

Personally I wouldn't touch the "home" version as it lacks dual CPU support and is unable to log onto a domain (yes I have a home network with dedicated NT server), but that may not be an issue for you.

Rob.

[Brian Ellis]

BBC World Business News last night gave an interview with William, by their anchor Patrick O'Connell. He gave Bill a really hard time and twice tried to get him to make a public apology for all the sins that MS O/Ss have inflicted on us in the past (after BG admitted that XP was more stable than earlier ones). Oor Wullie very adroitly changed the subject each time. Paddy realised that he was fighting a losing battle there and went off on another tack or, rather, attack. However, this was the first time I saw Billy Boy a little disconcerted. I bet that next time he is asked for a live interview by Biznews, he makes sure that it is Kate Noble who will be opposite him

As for XP, I'm not likely to go for it. I've just installed W2000 as a dual boot on my office computer and this is giving me hassle, mainly because my scanner does not have a W2000 driver. I tried the W98 driver, but this resulted in the BSOD (different style to W98, but just as cryptic on a darker blue), any time I touched a desktop icon. I therefore got rid of all references to it but, each time I boot up, the P'n'P detects it, even down to the model number, and asks me whether I want to install the non-existent drivers. I've told it to ignore it and not to bother me, but it still tries to do it, no matter what I do. This is a PITA I don't want to change the scanner, because it is a very expensive ($2000) PRO model, albeit several years old, nothing like the tin 100 buck rubbish that is in the shops now. I occasionally use it for precision scanning for mensuration with a tolerance required of ± 10 µm.

[AndrewDV]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
Win2K + SP2 + Dx8a + Video Capture Update + WMP7.1 gives you about 98% of what XP has that's worth having without the WPA protection scheme and the built-in advertising.

If you are so daring to add OfficeXP to your installs, you pretty much get all of XPs features except the GUI and applets like WMP8.

[Fred H]

OfficeXP did not print images on two of my printers, only garbage. The same images went fine from other programs, same OS (98SE), same hardware, same printers but not from WordXP.
No OfficeXP here, thanks. Back with Office 2000.

Fred H
SM6JNA

[wkulecz]

Brian E,

Does your scanner have NT4 drivers available?

I've had very good success installing NT4 scanner and printer drivers on W2K using the apcompat tool on the W2K OEM CD.

--wally.

For me WPA is sufficient condition to ignore XP for everything but notebooks. Problem is, XP home is nuetered for networking which is where the advantages of XP lie over w2k on a notebook that needs to move amoung differnet networks.

[Brian Ellis]

Wally

Thanks for the tip. I found the .exe file on the CD-ROM and the .INF. This could be useful and I'll try it out when I find a little time (have a major project on with a deadline, just for the moment).

I agree with you that it is nothing of Gates' business to be indiscreet enough to monitor what I have on my computer. I stated before and I repeat that I refuse to buy ANY software with WPA or similar and certainly not an undebugged O/S, of all things. The more people who take a similar attitude, the quicker this unwarranted intrusion into our private affairs will disappear.

[DentyCracker]

The only WinXP that makes sense is the Pro Corporate Edition that needs no activation. Turn off the fluff and it is faster than win2k. It runs some apps win2k couldn't, such a Fifa2000. I have a friend who couldn't find proper win2k drivers for his pci modem. He installed XP and lo and behold, it had drivers for the modem built in. WPA is not a problem if you don't plan to change your equipment around all the time. Unfortunately I do so it is a big PITA.

[Fred H]

1. - Dual boot: 98SE as first and XP Pro as second.
Is it possible?
2. - If, yes then install XP over the existing second boot W2K.
Is it recommended, or best to uninstall W2K first?
3. - Ghost the whole 98SE primary, ghost or uninstall W2K secondary, then install XP as unique OS.
Test. If not satisfied, get back the ghosted backups?
Any issues, ideas?

Fred H

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

If you can ghost your machine, do so before ANY OS changes. You can use that image to return your machine to normal.

As far as which OS, that one is up to you. I went out and purchased XP Pro for my business and development machines. So far, it works very well.

For my video machines, I have been using Win2K. That is a proven OS and works very well for software based video editing. Since I use PIC MJPEG and Huffyuv (software codecs) with a WinTV, it is an easy option.

If you are using Matrox MJPEG (hardware codec), then you should stick with Win98. The Win2K driver does not support the hardware codec.