Although only the Home and Professional editions of Windows XP are covered in this book, there are actually six editions of Microsoft Windows XP:
Windows XP Home
Windows XP 64-bit[3]
Although all these editions of XP are similar, only the Home and Professional editions will be of interest to end users, while the others are intended for use in large corporations (Enterprise) as high-end server platforms.
The Home and Professional editions of Windows XP are nearly identical; the only differences are additional features found in the Professional edition that will appeal to power users and small businesses. The primary differences, aside from the price and the color of the packaging, are shown in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1. Differences between Windows XP Professional and Home editions
|
Windows XP Home |
Windows XP Professional | |
|---|---|---|
|
None. |
Single and dual-processor systems are supported. | |
|
Built-in support for peer-to-peer networking for up to five computers. |
Built-in support for peer-to-peer networking, plus support for joining a Windows NT domain. | |
|
No. |
Yes, plus Automated System Recovery (ASR). | |
|
No. |
Yes. |
In addition, Windows XP Professional also includes the following tools and accessories (all documented in Chapter 4):
There’s nothing that Windows XP Home edition can do that the Professional edition can’t do; in other words, the Professional edition is a superset of the Home edition.
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