Windows XP, home, work, wtf?
 

Ok, I have a serious question I keep seeing XP home, XP -insert- edition and all these special packages like SP2 and etc... What is the best for say, a gamer such as myself? I want to know cause I never ever used XP and I know there is more then one edition. Anyone care to enlighten me?

And if I am wrong that there is not more then one edition then I apoligize.

There's a billion different iterations of Windows XP; most of them are the best OSes for gaming as far as I can tell. The standards, Home and Professional, are most suited for the casual customer whereas most the others are just there for specific purposes.

SP2 = Service Pack 2. Microsoft releases these patches to update numerous things about the OS and give new functionality. It has no real bearing on which OS to choose; just know that you need at least SP1 for USB2.0 functionality.

There are 4 major versions of XP

XP Home
XP Pro
XP Corporate
XP Media Center Edition

There isn't much difference between Home/Pro/Corporate, other than support/lack of for multi processors, and remote connection support. Media Center Edition includes some extra stuff aimed at Media Center PCs...those ones that are like DVRs.

Just get yourself XP Pro, slap on SP2 and you're good to go. Or better yet, 2000 SP4 as it's XP without all the RAM cloging extra fisher price interface.

Thanks VG, I couldn't have been bothered to elaborate, what with the horse-race to 100 between Capo and I. ;)

Anything that saves you RAM from being chewed up is always good, but don't be surprised if someday you need Windows XP to play certain games (if the rumors about requiring Vista for Halo 2 are to be believed, it could end up being the same for XP someday...never know).

Also with Home you cannot join a domain. Not that the average user would ever be affected by this. Professional/Corporate is what I strongly prefer. It adds a lot more subtle functionality than Home seems to. Seems to run faster too.

Seems I was a bit off in my count. I forgot Tablet PC Edition (designed for Tablet computers, which are like laptops) and x64 edition, designed for 64-bit processors.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...n/compare.mspx

Comparison differences. (They list 5, but Pro/Corporate seems a touch difference in the registration.)

Russ, what do you mean by 'domain?'

And yes, I know many games that require only XP or 2000 which kicks me in the balls all the time since I have ME.

I think I may just go home edition to keep it simple.

A domain is basically something used for networking purposes. To put it bluntly, it allows a group of computers to network together, and they all act under one "Domain Controller". This is what corporations and most schools use to keep their machines together. If you go to school, have you noticed that you are (probably) able to log in using your identity from any machine in school? That would be a domain at work.

In a home environment, you'll never use them.

Oh, well I don't need a 'domain' or anything like that. Looks like home it is then. Thanks for the help.

I would chance to say that XP Corporate is the most widely used iteration of the OS out there, mainly because it is the easiest to pirate due to lack of a "registration" feature. If you're buying a legitimate version of the OS, however, Home has all the features you'll ever need outside of a large networking environment. It will also save you around $100 unless you're looking at purchasing a student edition.

Well, unless you're actually buying Windows, there's no real reason to pick one or the other. Pro/Corporate also offer a few other features--as compared to Home--that can be useful, like the group policy editor. (Pro does seem to run faster, though...)

Actually, Pro does not run faster. In fact, it might even run slower than Home, because it comes with a lot of useless garbage services running in the background.

Home is definitely the way to go for the average user, more so a gamer. You can essentially enable all of the "Pro"-features via registry hacks, if needed.

Also keep in mind that SP2 is mandatory if you're not a huge fan of security holes and malware.

Are there any specific differences in the corporate version that aren't in XP Pro? Or for example would stuff that runs fine on pro have any trouble on corporate? I'm just trying to understand what's so different about it. I don't think they'd just strip the registration function off Pro and call it a new version.

As far as I know, the only difference between Pro and Corporate is that Corporate does not require any registration/activation. The lack of registration saves a lot of time and effort registering every pc you deploy in a company, especially when you're deploying a lot of pcs.

I'm buying it when I go to purchase my new comp from tigerdirect. :X