Most retail stores have XP Home for $200 and XP Pro for $300. Much better deals can be gotten on say Ebay (50% off) but many look like OEM licenses gone astray, etc or not legit Does anybody know of a legit online dealer who sells XP at nice prices (especially if they are located in New York City and allow walk-ins)?
The only OEMs you should avoid are the ones that are from Hardware bundles (Dell, HP, etc.). An OEM package for whitebox builders is just fine. From NewEgg, you can get XP Professional OEM for $138 and XP Home for $88 . EIther will work just fine with Parallels, be legal, and cost you less than the retail versions of XP. The price difference is from the fact that Microsoft doesn't provide phone support for OEM versions, and you can only use the license on one machine (ever).
>Either will work just fine with Parallels I understand that Home has less capability(?) than Pro w.r.t. networking, are there are limitations that presents to installing and using it with parallels? (we've only ever had XP Pro come with our machines, so never using XP Home directly.)
Yes. You have to buy some hardware. I believe newegg bundles some screws (hardware) with the OEM software.
It used to be that you had to buy hardware, but microsoft changed the license. Now you just don't get support and can't use copy with more than one machine. If you don't need to connect to an NT Domain (usually a corporate network), then XP Home sould do everything you need.
Interesting, I did not know that. We won't need domains, just workgroups. Does XP Home support the "Add a network place" wizard and such? If not, what is the XP Home alternative?
I actually don't know. If you're mostly using XP Pro on your network, then you'll want to stick with that for Parallels. Otherwise, Home should do. (The better distinction would really have been Home/Office--not Home/Professional).*
Wait I just bought new 2 OEM XP Pro copies and both came from DELLs. Why are the branded copies a problem?
Thank God school gave me a copy with UNLIMITED ACTIVATIONS no matter how many times i have installed it or updated parallels. It never says No
Again: An OEM version is perfectly legal, without hardware as well. Microsoft tried to stop this but failed in every country so far. Just make sure it is not a "Recovery CD" for any hardware vendor like Dell, HP etc. - These are not a full OEM Version. I would not buy OEM via eBay - chances are high you dont get what you paid for. If its Windows XP SP2 get it at some of the mayor online shops, it should be quite affordabel by now. And I would take the XP Pro version.
I've always bought OEM copies of MS software from DirectDeals.com, who took the stance "We're not going to babysit you. You know whether or not you're using this software legally, we don't care. If you get in trouble for illegal usage, that's your problem." Same went for academic software. I read someplace that Parallels would only work with Retail Full copies, not OEM, so I expected problems with my Boot Camp installation (which was an OEM unbranded SP2 slipstream copy.) Other than the crashes I mention in other threads, the installation of Parallels went fine. -Z
Not in all cases. If all the OEM did was relabel the CD (like slapping the Dell logo on it) then the CD is usually okay to use on any system (and I have used Dell XP CD's to install Windows onto non-Dell systems, usually because I was unable to find the CD that came with that system.) AFAIK, Microsoft no longer allows OEMs to modify the Windows installation CD. Recovery CD's, onion other hand, are hardware locked to only work on specific systems. The difference between the two is that a Recovery CD will restore your hard disk to the way it was when you bought it, all drivers and applications included. A Windows XP Installation CD will only install XP - you're responsible for loading the drivers and bundled applications. -Z
Well, true, but what are the chances you will land on one of those off of a typical on-line store and not the locked versions. Slim.
