Upgrading from Home to Professional

[BobTheMad]

Is it possible to upgrade from XP home edition to XP Professional? I now find out that the professional edition supports dual-processor machines, while the home edition does not.

Also, can one expect similar performance from multimedia applications (read: games) on the professional edition when compared to the home edition?

Thanx in advance Thought for the day: Beware of Gods who cannot laugh...

 

[rjkrash]

There is an upgrade available. Check MS site. Performance characteristics re: graphica is the same on both editions. These are really a factor of systemmemory and the graphic adapter and its memory.

The recognition of a second processor is true for Pro vs HE. However, software must be designed to take advatage of a second processor. I'm not really sure how much XP uses 2 processors itself but I do know most standard applications don't "know" how to use multiple processors. You usually find multi-processor "awareness" in server level products like SQL servers or Transaction servers. Maybe some engineering or CAD apps might be designed for multi-processor use, not sure. I'd suggest you research multi-processor pros and cons before spending your money.

The only real difference between HE and PRO is the ability to participate in a Domain (Corporate Network), and the ability to use NTFS which brings additional file security for the system.

All that being said I bought PRO but it was for the file security(I share a computer with my children!). I'm not sure what the $ "penalty" is for going HE>Pro vs starting with PRO. It was $99 diff between HE and PRO at initial purchase.
The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

 

[Masterpjz9]

Actually Home supports NTFS and file permissions, but doesn't support encryption

 

[dilettante]

The other big reason to go Pro is for the servers (IIS primarily) and software development in general.

For example, parts of Visual Studio won't install on XP Home, mostly because of the lack of IIS support. THis doesn't mean you can't do web development, but to do it well means using another server for IIS, and then some of the debugging facilities don't work while others are clumsy.

Most people who actually run more than one application will benefit from a 2 CPU system. But the majority of us simply run user-driven desktop applications that sit idle most of the time awaiting user attention, so there is little gain.

I'd expect identical game performance on XP. If the game was designed specifically to use two CPUs there would be a gain, as rjkrash says. However, if you want to run a multiuser game server on your desktop and play the game yourself at the same time you would see a big improvement too. Windows should try to dispatch tasks to use both CPUs.

 

[rjkrash]

Masterpjz9,
You are right about NTFS, of course . I was remembering all the issues we see here about HE users who have not installed NTFS and then want to set file permissions.

dilettante,
Do you have a reference to a discussion of how XP will/can use dual processors? I'd like to read up on it.

rj
The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

 

[Masterpjz9]

the only problem with home and ntfs is the file permissions aren't really that good. You can only make things private in your home folder.