I’m considering an upgrade to XP Professional, but am not sure whether it is worth the hassle.  Although the upgrade, and installation of some drivers, has been well documented here, it is still not the simple one-step installation that it should be.

My question is essentially what does the XP Professional version bring to the table over the Home Edition?  I have read comparisons that XP Professional provides greater networking capabilities, and greater security.  Some even opine that Professional is more stable.

My home network is just a simple wireless network wherein my other 3 computers are all XP Home.  Our system at work is using 2000 Professional, and I have not yet tried to access this.  If I did, would I not be able to since my computers are XP Home?

Thanks in advance.

There are a couple of esoteric (for non-sysadmins) management abilities Pro has over Home, but the main advantage is being able to connect to a Windows domain or Active Directory controller (business-class network servers). If you’re just sharing info on a home network, aren’t doing any serious web development and don’t need super-tight security, you don’t really need XP Pro.

In addition, I’d say remote desktop, offline folders and encrypted file system are only supported in XP Pro (particularly offline folders, I don’t think I can live without them)

Should you like to use the multilingual user interface, if I remember correctly, then you are fix on Pro.

Regards,
Marcelo

heres a more indepth comparison if you need it

with xp home your able to use remote connectino (client) just not act as a server.  based on your specs you should be ok with home

Thanks.  Yeah, it sounds as if the home edition is just fine for my little home networking purposes.

Thanks again!