Do I need XP Prof. or is Windows XP Home OK for me?

Question

I use the computer for e-mail, web surfing, some banking and an occasional Ebay purchase.
Will XP Home suit my needs or is it necessary to get XP Prof.?
Is Home less robust and more vulnerable to "crashing" and hackers?
Thanks

Answer 1

Professional Edition: Superset of Home Edition
At its most basic level, XP Professional is a business- and power-user oriented superset of Home Edition. Because this orientation, it includes features that wouldn't be appropriate, or would be too complex, for the typical home user. The most obvious difference is security, which is vastly simplified in Home Edition. Each interactive user in XP Home is assumed to be a member of the Owners local group, which is the Windows XP equivalent of the Windows 2000 Administrator account: This means that anyone who logs on to a Home Edition machine has full control. Likewise, the Backup Operators, Power Users, and Replicator groups from Windows 2000/XP Pro are missing from Home Edition, and a new group, called Restricted Users, is added. Hidden administrative shares (C$, etc.) are also unavailable in Home Edition.

Answer 2

The prof. vs. home is very simple. With prof. you get windows networking capability. Like joining domain and forest. Supposely, the prof. and home are identical product except for minor difference in the registry which turns on and off product feature. If your not planning to deploy a 2003 server and use domain for logging then you'd be fine using home.

To answer your question, you have to know a little about hacking. Most window hacking comes from vunerabilities the windows comes with. For example, most window when installed uses the default "workstation" work group. This is dangerous since any hacker can guess the "workstation" work group as being default, combines with your IP and "careless" folder sharing enabled, you can let anyone hack in to your prof. or home with ease. The trick is what and how to protect your computer. I'd strongly suggest you let a professional pc guys help you secure your computer. Just installing protection software doesn't do the trick, it needs to be configured properly.

A really good professional pc guys will configure everything from your firewall to pc. Pc guy can securely locked down such that no external hacker can be let in no matter how good they are. However, there's no software or patch that can fix user mistake like clicking a fake site to give out your login/password or opening a wrong file.

A final word, when I say a pc guy, I usually mean a guy with good 10 to 15 year experience dealing wtih pc. If pc guy isn't available take it to a local ma&pa pc shop that's been around a long time.

Answer 3

Windows XP Professional is much more stable than Windows XP Home. Windows XP Home tends to crash all the time, windows XP professional rarely crashes.However if you have waited this long to get Windows XP maybe you should wait a little longer and get Windows Vista.

Answer 4

Home is fine. Prof is usually for business or heavy computer users that want more control over there PC. The only limits on home that really matter are networking. You can only have a certain amount of network clinets... and i dont think that is going to bother you. As long as you have SP2 i would say both are as protected as each other.

Answer 5

I do everything mentioned above on XP Home.
I would use that if I was you.