Windows 98 se, the best os in the world.

Mac OS X 10.4.5 Tiger, the OS of champions.

Too bad most newer programs don't run on Win98, they all have gone to the lands of Windows XP.

I'm using Windows XP Home Edition SP2,of course is better than Win98 or WinME

Too bad it's unstable on anything faster than a 500 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM.

My main computer runs Windows XP SP2. Every other computer I touch is pretty much the same. Unless you count what I usually use at college, which is some version of Sun Solaris using some version CDE.

I have Windows XP Home SP2 on my desktop, and my laptop has Windows XP Professional SP2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 both stuffed onto one 40GB drive. My parents' computer runs Windows XP, too, and my old desktop runs Windows 98SE.

Nothing weird and exciting like Solaris or OS/2 or anything, sorry.

XP Pro, would be using 2000, but Battlefield 2 won't let me. :(

I'm using Windows XP Home Edition now, but I used to use Winsdow 2000.

Windows XP Home SP2 for me. I should have got Professional instead. But since I'm just playing games, doing some light codings and posting on online forums, I don't think I think special OS.

I'm running OS X 10.4 and occasionally XP Pro in a virtual machine.

Will likely be adding a PC sometime, and it'll either be running XP Home or Media Center. Now, assuming that this is just going to be a regular machine, is there any advantage/disadvantage to getting the media center edition instead of home? I'm going to get whatever comes with a 'good buy' computer anyways, and thus a Pro edition isn't an option.

No, you WANT Pro because Home is a heaping pile of useless shit.

Unless you don't want any flexibility in configuring your computer what-so-ever.

I don't know if Media Center is based on Home or Pro, but I'm leaning towards Home.

Media Center is based on XP Pro 2002. As I said earlier it's a 'fun' OS to play with, but not as stable as XP Home or Pro. If you want to be able to use your PC like a DVR/DVD and record/watch TV/DVDs with it, MCE is the OS for you. It was built for multimedia purposes. The downside is all the neat little gadgets that come with MCE hog background resources, so you'll want a PC thats at least 2+GHz and has 1+GB of RAM if you plan on playing games with it too. I can post some screenshots if anyone wants to see what the Media Center interface looks like.

Also, alot of OEM PCs w/MCE come with problems out of the box. Theres a hardware glitch that causes MCE to crash/freeze while you're watching TV/Recorded TV and no one knows a real solution to fix it. Theres a Windows Update that claims to fix this problem but for most people it makes it worse or doesn't fix it at all. My PC came with this problem and I wasn't able to fix it until after reinstalling MCE for the third time and reinstalled the update.

It is based off of XP Pro, however MCE still lacks the ability to join an Active Directory Domain like XP Home. This is something to consider if you ever plan on joining a domain.


Anyway, I'm running XP Pro on my main desktop and my laptop. I gave up trying to use Linux as a desktop OS. I found it completely counterproductive and usually spent more time trying to get Linux to do something I needed it to do than I spend worrying about security issues with Windows XP.

I'm well aware of Pro's advantages over home. The reason it's not an option when buying a new machine is because any oem I'd be buying from would not change the OS that comes with the bargain machine. Thanks for your input, but my query was only with regards to which OS of the two available would be better or if anything would really be different. It's a stop gap measure until I put a better, more costly OS on it.

Double Post:
Guest, Cetra, thanks for your insight on MCE, as I've not used it. Sounds like home is the way to go at the same pricepoint. Neither is going to do anything I care about over the other, and if I'm using a mediocre OS (home), it might as well have a few less headaches than the other mediocre OS (MCE).

All depends on the sales though. ^^

You do realize you could easily download WinXP Pro, most online versions don't require activation (this version called the Corporate or Volume Licensed Edition). And there's a very easy way to get past the Windows Genuine Advantage check that comes with manual usage of Windows Update and downloading from the Microsoft site.

I don't pirate software anymore, hence, not going to do that. The XP Pro I'm using in virtual PC is not a legal copy, but I'll remove it when I get a real PC. I appreciate the thought though.

On my main comp I run Windows XP Pro SP2 Int. My Laptop runs 2000 Pro because anything else would make it explode.

I have copies of the December CTP of Vista, I might have the February CTP but I don't think so. I have Intel's Tiger 10.4.5 also. I plan on testing them as soon as my external decides to work again.

I actually have shitloads of valid XP keys, just not for Pro, only Home. I also have valid keys for older versions of Windows too. Might have a 2000 Pro one, have 98SE, and countless ME serials.

Well I guess you could just save for Windows Vista when it comes out. Unless you really tweak Windows or use Windows in a businesslike environment, you're not missing out on too much by using Windows XP Home (plus why pay an extra $100 for an OS very similar to the one you already have?).

I use Windows 2000 SP4 for the most part. A few months ago I installed Windows XP64 just to see how well it performed on my system (which is supposedly ideally suited for it, with a couple of Opterons on the motherboard). Performance was a little bit slower, but I appreciate the PowerNow! support which can stop my ears from bleeding due to fan noise, unlike in Windows 2000 where I need to use RMClock to get a similar effect and it tends to be unreliable anyway.

Woo! It's Spring Break! I left my PC at school and am now running Tiger on my 400Mhz Macintosh G4. I can't wait until the Intel version of OS X is stable enough to install on my PC, because I definitely prefer it to Windows (although the Terminal leaves much to be desired).

Are you saying Terminal leaves much to be desired compared to Window's command line? If so, what?

Only issue I have with it is that when switching between DOS and Unix command lines I will often mix up commands. It's amazing how poorly ls works in Windows. You can try, and try, and try. ^^

Double Post:
I do a great deal of networking, so it's going to run 2000 server, 2003, Vista etc. So testing an XP Pro environment is something I'm going to be doing. The Home vs. MCE issue is only because I'm going to get one for 'free', so it might as well be that which is most suitable in the immediate future.

lol, of course not. I rarely, if ever, need to use DOS in Windows. But OS X's Terminal doesn't seem to read extended keys properly. I normally use Home and End to go the beginning and end of a line instead of the top and bottom of a document. Actually, you can set them to do that, but for some reason it doesn't work in vim. And then when you set it so it works in vim, it doesn't work on the command line. I'm sure there's a solution, but it's probably better to just get used to the default layout.

Hahahahaha, have you ever used some of the things that Windows XP Pro has that Windows Home doesn't?

And I'm not talking about domains and shit, I'm talking about the stuff they don't tell you that's not in Home that's in Pro.

Have fun trying to create users other than Administrators or Users, sharing your things over the network with any decent control, or otherwise, administrating your computer decently.

And any XP doesen't handle these jobs decently to begin with. From what I've heard, the Home and Pro editions are actually just a few registry changes apart, is that true?

More or less, here a list of things that windows xp pro has over windows xp home:

- SMP support (multi-processor support)
- Roaming user profiles
- Remote desktop
- Access control
- Encrypting file system
- Offline files and folders
- Remote installation service
- Windows server domain support
- Group policy
- Software installation and maintenance
- Multi-lingual user interface support