[Loser]

I got this question a lot back when I was doing onsite computer support for home and small business Users. Here's my typical answer.

If you have Win2k there is no real need to go to XP (termination of support had not yet occurred). If you have 98SE, and your machine has sufficient power (we recommended 750+ MHz, 256 Mb RAM minimum) then XP where you want to go. If you have ME then you need to get something, anything, else on there right away. What a dog.

I always disabled the automatic update. If you disable this, nothing will ever be installed without your specifically choosing to install it.

If the user was interested in performance I would disable all the shiny-happy crap in XP, it ended up looking like 2k.

Activation was trivial. You either connect into them over the internet, use one of their dial-up numbers, or even just made a phone call and read strings of letters or numbers to the rep, who then gave your letters or numbers back (I don't remember the specifics of their codes).

XP Home is fine, as long as you do not need to log into a domain. If I recall correctly, the only differences between Home and Pro was that Pro could log into a domain, could be accessed remotely with that keen built-in feature, and could support file-level sharing. I think that was about it.

I hope Thermo hits this thread. He always has informative things to say about Microsoft's products.

My XP Pro box does not crash. Ever. My Win98SE file server is in desperate need of yet another reload (I think this time I'm going to put that super-GUI Linux distro, Xandros, on it), my old Win98, 98SE, and 95 machines crashed all the time, and ME was purged from the house only a month, or so, after it was introduced. Heck, even the Win2k 'guest machine' is having problems, though that is more likely related to what the 'guests' have been doing to it than inherent vulnerabilities in the OS.

[edit: that should be file-level permissions, not file-level sharing, and I should add that Home and PRo use the same kernel: other than a few features, they are the same OS]

[ November 27, 2003, 13:13: Message edited by: Loser ]