XP Home vs. Pro

[Gurm]

Show me.

I'm not saying it's not true, I'm saying SHOW me.

Nobody has shown me home running HT yet... so I'm skeptical.

- Gurm

[agallag]

Want me to install Home on a Compaq Proliant ML530G2? Oh wait, it has two HT processors in it, so it definitely won't work. I don't think SmartStart supports XP either Somebody else will have to show you.

[mmp121]

I also recall something about XP Home NOT being able to do more than 1 head output. No Dualhead on XP Home, and you can kiss goodbye doing triple head. At least that's what I remember reading or hearing. I could be wrong on that, but just another reason to go XP Pro.

[Marshmallowman]

from http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;327809

Cannot Run Certain Programs on Hyper-Threaded or Dual-Processor Computers with a CPU Speed of Greater Than 2 GHz
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional

While it does not specificly say it, it implies Windows XP home can get this problem, which only effects HT or SMP machines...so home does HT.

Do you think intel would sit quietly by if MS decided not to suppport their "BIG feature in there consumer(home) OS?

[Wombat]

Originally posted by agallag
Got any stats to back that up, or are ya just guessing?

Stats that I can publish? No. But considering my former employer and environment, you can guess that I was in a lab full of experts on such things. I can tell you why, in a couple pages, some things are guaranteed to run slower.

Also, programs like Oracle ran a hell of a lot slower on HT at first - Like 3x as long slower.

[agallag]

I guess I can accept first hand experience in place of stats

[Wombat]

Short answer alone is: what happens when a program tries to optimally use two caches when it only has one?

[DGhost]

Originally posted by mmp121
I also recall something about XP Home NOT being able to do more than 1 head output. No Dualhead on XP Home, and you can kiss goodbye doing triple head. At least that's what I remember reading or hearing. I could be wrong on that, but just another reason to go XP Pro.

That was true during the early stages of the Beta (Whistler Personal had multimonitor disabled entirely), but it changed when they redesignated it as Windows XP and released Beta 2. Triplehead would have worked even without multimon in it as it makes it appear as if it is one monitor.

Off the top of my head, Home lacks the following features that Pro has (that have not been mentioned yet):

Ability to specify users as something other than a guest or an administrator (pointless for most home users), or to create custom groups.

Ability to adjust per-user permissions on NTFS drives (would be nice but most home users would never use it). It is either accessible to everyone or completely private.

Ability to adjust network share permissions in a per user or per group fashion. It is either read only or world writable (minus guest accounts, iirc).

Ability to bridge network devices.

Some wireless network features are not enabled or configurable in XP Home. I believe they relate to security. I am also pretty sure that IPSec is not supported in XP Home.

Windows XP Home does not support multiple physical processors. It does, however, still support SMP. They just have to be logical processors (ie, hyperthreading enabled P4's. in theory if you had a P4 that showed up as 4 logical processors you would see them and could use them all in Windows XP Home). This is a huge difference between XP and 2K. Windows 2000 was unable to distinguish between Physical and Logical processors. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (and related products such as SQL Server, etc) are both able to do this and their liscenses have been changed as a result. They are liscensed for a certain number of physical processors, with no restrictions to the number of logical processors.

I believe certain advanced network protocols are not included. I don't think IIS is included either. As Gurm mentioned, Remote Desktop is not included.

It cannot participate in a Domain. It can authenticate with one, but nothing outside of that. No profile support, no active directory stuff, etc.

Encrypted file system is disabled in XP Home.

A lot of the Windows 2000 style Administrative tools have either been removed or disabled in XP Home. Either they do not allow the user to change the settings or they provide a new interface for it.

Of course there is more than just this. Thats just off the top of my head. I might be able to find a better list if i look around my desk.


I believe that the easiest way of describing the differences is probably this. If you are using Windows 2000 and like it, XP Pro can do everything it can do in a similar (often improved) fashion. If you install XP Pro and don't change things back to the 2000 way of doing things, you will probably be fine with XP Home.

A very large percentage of the new GUI work for Windows XP was oriented around making Windows 2000 usable by the average person. As such a very large percentage of it found it's way into XP Home.

By far the biggest thing I have seen with XP Home is that you *cannot* make it do everything that Windows 2000 can, nor can you make it look and act just like Windows 2000. A very large chunk of the new XP features are shared between both of them, you just cannot disable them in XP Home and get to the Win2k style of interface.

[Gurm]

Hmm... I'm wondering if SMP support is actually in Home, but just "switched off". I mean, a lot of this stuff is just "not installed", as opposed to the kernel being different.

Basically, it boils down to this:

Do you want to run an OS that Microsoft has PURPOSELY crippled?

- Gurm

[UtwigMU]

IIRC home has poorer security and networking features.

Basically: If you need a licenced OS to basically surf internet, do office stuff and game (a la 98), go Home.

Else: go Pro

Windows XP Client Versions Overview on Arstechnica.

[DGhost]

Originally posted by Gurm
Hmm... I'm wondering if SMP support is actually in Home, but just "switched off". I mean, a lot of this stuff is just "not installed", as opposed to the kernel being different.

Basically, it boils down to this:

Do you want to run an OS that Microsoft has PURPOSELY crippled?

- Gurm

That is indeed the case. SMP support was never disabled from the kernel. It however will not use more than one physical processor. It will see it, however it will not use it. That one physical processor can have as many logical processors and it wants, and it will use them all. It just can't use mulitple physical processors.

As far as being crippled... Windows 2000 Pro was a crippled version of Server and Advanced Server. Windows XP started out as a crippled version of Windows .NET Server (although they forked it and now they are fairly different).

Since the beginning of NT the Workstation version has been a crippled version of the Server version, with different tweaks and a number of features disabled or intentionally removed or hard capped at a low number.

[Gurm]

Yes, but the difference is that Workstation (now Pro) has been optimized differently than Server.

Home is not optimized for anything, it's just Pro with stuff removed.

Pro will actually run apps/games better than Server will.

Home runs NOTHING better than Pro does... it runs the same 99% of the time, and some things it just won't do.

That's the difference.

- Gurm

[Afronaut]

If anyone ever thought the MURC had turned into a bunch of zeros with keyboards they can bookmark this thread.

Home runs NOTHING better than Pro does... it runs the same 99% of the time, and some things it just won't do.

OMG!

Do you want to run an OS that Microsoft has PURPOSELY crippled?

Or bloated with features that most people will never use. Or even know is there.

Stats that I can publish? No. But considering my former employer and environment, you can guess that I was in a lab full of experts on such things.

OMG

At least that's what I remember reading or hearing. I could be wrong on that, but just another reason to go XP Pro.

OMG

Calling them two separate CPUs is probably slower than running standard Uni.

HAHAHA

It's not really SMP, after all.

In your EXPERT opinion?

[Jon P. Inghram]

HHAHAHAH OMG U SUXORZ 2!

If anyone ever thought the MURC had turned into a bunch of zeros with keyboards they can bookmark this thread.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home runs NOTHING better than Pro does... it runs the same 99% of the time, and some things it just won't do.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


OMG!

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you want to run an OS that Microsoft has PURPOSELY crippled?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Or bloated with features that most people will never use. Or even know is there.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stats that I can publish? No. But considering my former employer and environment, you can guess that I was in a lab full of experts on such things.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OMG

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At least that's what I remember reading or hearing. I could be wrong on that, but just another reason to go XP Pro.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OMG
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calling them two separate CPUs is probably slower than running standard Uni.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HAHAHA

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not really SMP, after all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In your EXPERT opinion?

[Wombat]

I still have no idea why Afronaut is still here.