Xp Home or Pro ?

[poisontwilight]

Hey everyone,

I'm planning on buying either an imac or macbook pro and I'll have to use bootcamp & windows also. Based on your experiences, what would work best with the Mac - Windows Xp Home or Professional?

-Thanks-

 

[cal6n]

They're both as bad as each other. Home's probably cheaper, though.

 

[rds]

If you are asking the question, I'd hazard a guess for Home.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx

 

[blueicedj]

go for XP. Not pro, there really aren't any advantages to XP pro...You might want to consider XP Media Center Edition though. Just make sure with XP you will need to either buy it with service pack to on the disk, or run a windows update to have service pack 2 installed on it...your computer will run like crap if you don't have service pack 2.

 

[Maui]

If you aren't in a managed environment (which seems pretty unlikely), you don't need Pro.

 

[PShot07]

If you can afford Pro, then go for Pro. I think it is the same price as vista Home Premium though.. isn't it? In my opinion new Macs are excellent at running Windows Vista (why you would actually want to though? that's a whole other question). It's up to you though. XP for Solitaire, Vista for shiny Solitaire.

 

[PShot07]

go for XP. Not pro, there really aren't any advantages to XP pro...You might want to consider XP Media Center Edition though. Just make sure with XP you will need to either buy it with service pack to on the disk, or run a windows update to have service pack 2 installed on it...your computer will run like crap if you don't have service pack 2.

XP Media Center Edition is on two disks, so unless you have an external DVD drive.. you can't install it using Bootcamp.

 

[poisontwilight]

thanks for the replies, I've thought about vista but my brother's got vista on his PC and it's a bitch trying to get apps to run properly. But I guess I'll go with XPHome (it's $190) instead of Pro,($300)

1 more question ; how long does it take windows to boot up?

-
Thanks-

 

[psingh01]

thanks for the replies, I've thought about vista but my brother's got vista on his PC and it's a bitch trying to get apps to run properly. But I guess I'll go with XPHome (it's $190) instead of Pro,($200)

1 more question ; how long does it take windows to boot up?

-
Thanks-

If it is only $10 difference you might as well get PRO....on my MBP booting in XP Pro was as fast as booting on OSX.

 

[Maui]

Yah, depends on your machine. I use Fusion. On my MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz, 4 GB Ram) it takes about 30 seconds to boot. On my Mac Pro (4 core, 8 GB Ram) it takes about 20 seconds.

It is much faster than booting a pure XP machine, because you don't have all of the crap loaded that slows down an XP boot so much (virus checker, spyware checker, etc etc).

 

[cmvsm]

I've got a sealed OEM Windows XP I could sell you for cheaper than $190.

 

[blueicedj]

don't get Vista..my friend installed it through boot camp and he said it was really slow *this is just the nature of Vista...besides, not really any reason for having Vista, it's less compatible with everything.

 

[PShot07]

don't get Vista..my friend installed it through boot camp and he said it was really slow *this is just the nature of Vista...besides, not really any reason for having Vista, it's less compatible with everything.

Those are myths. The Performance update that just came out has brought performance back to where it should be. And compatibility is only an issue with drivers, and thankfully Apple has made theirs compatible. I have had no issues with Vista Ultimate on my MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.16GHz (2GB Memory). Now for a virtual environment, like Parallels, Vista just doesn't cut it. For Bootcamp, it works better than on a computer built for Vista.

 

[blueicedj]

Those are myths. The Performance update that just came out has brought performance back to where it should be. And compatibility is only an issue with drivers, and thankfully Apple has made theirs compatible. I have had no issues with Vista Ultimate on my MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.16GHz (2GB Memory). Now for a virtual environment, like Parallels, Vista just doesn't cut it. For Bootcamp, it works better than on a computer built for Vista.

what I was saying is that Vista IS a slower OS on any computer. It just requires more power out of your PC. As for the incompatibility remark I wasn't saying it wasn't compatible with bootcamp, but that a lot of software and games are incompatible with Vista

 

[poisontwilight]

what I was saying is that Vista IS a slower OS on any computer. It just requires more power out of your PC. As for the incompatibility remark I wasn't saying it wasn't compatible with bootcamp, but that a lot of software and games are incompatible with Vista

That's the same problem my brother had with Vista on his Toshiba notebook. After so many years of using XP compatible software it was a huge shock when almost all of those apps didn't work with Vista.

 

[CBAviator]

Hey everyone,

I'm planning on buying either an imac or macbook pro and I'll have to use bootcamp & windows also. Based on your experiences, what would work best with the Mac - Windows Xp Home or Professional?

-Thanks-

Neither. Just kidding.

If you are going to get one, then I'd go the HOME route. I have XP Pro only because I got it from my University for free, however, there really isn't much of a difference from home. The only noticeable difference with Pro is it's networking abilities. However, if you aren't running an intense network, then Home will suite you perfectly fine.