Hello all: If I am going to BUY winXP full installation & am weighing the choice between "home" & "pro"........is there any reason from a Parallels perspective that I should choose one over the other? Right now I'm being guided exclusively by price......& seeing XP home full install for $80. Think I read, however, that home doesn't support dual processors. Does this come into play with the Intel Core 2 Duo machines? Thanks. TM
Win Xp is a shell running on NT (Vista too) so just get the cheapest OEM with Sp2 as if building a computer with your own new bought hardware Hugh W
see these http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/12476.html and http://www.pcuser.com.au/pcuser/hs2.nsf/lookup+1/78C003BD66F71A4BCA25715E0010F7E0 or for even more references you can google: xp home core duo
Home should be good enough. Professional does not offer anything more for the money except for some networking features you probably don't need. Don't waste your money. My 2 cents.
...but bear in mind that would put you in a bit of a licensing grey area. You won't get support from Microsoft and they could, potentially, refuse to re-activate it if you make a "significant hardware change"- which is very easily done with a VM - and they rumble what you've done. (I suspect that is (a) unlikely and (b) the worst-case scenario but I Am Not A Lawyer). PS: On the dual-core issue, in addition to the previous posts that suggest XP Home supports dual core, remember that, currently, although Parallels itself benefits from the second core, the "guest" OS only sees one. Even if multi-core support does get added then I suspect that this will be mostly for the benefit for those of us with quad-core Macs - and (unless you're a Parallels developer) its anybody's guess whether the guest OS will see "2 cores" or "2 sockets".
ok, dumb question time, why won't I get support from microsoft? Are you saying that they're supporting XP-pro to a degree that they aren't XP HOME? Just trying to fully grasp your point. thanks. TM ... but bear in mind that would put you in a bit of a licensing grey area. You won't get support from Microsoft and they could, potentially, refuse to re-activate it if you make a "significant hardware change"- which is very easily done with a VM - and they rumble what you've done. (I suspect that is (a) unlikely and (b) the worst-case scenario but I Am Not A Lawyer).
OEM versions are supposed to be sold WITH a computer, not as a "stand alone" full version. If your hardware is not the same as is supposed to be used with the OEM version then MS would be within its rights (legally that is) to refuse to give you an additional startup. This isn't about Home vs Pro -- it's about OEM vs "full distribution".
Don't get off track about what is possible and what is legal. You cannot use any form of Vista Home for a vm without violating the EULA and unless you're feeling lucky that's probably a bad idea. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp
I believe this discussion was concerning XP Pro vs XP Home. There isn't a "Pro" version of Vista -- it's "Business" now as the label, not "Pro".
I realized that after re-reading the post. There's been so many discussions of Vista the XP caught me snoozing. Thanks, Val.
Actually the plot is a bit thicker. In addition to the UI glitz in XP and Vista, each version of the NT line has incorporated a significant number of kernel changes & enhancements. A version rev has typically included several hundred new core APIs (the Win32 API is one huge beast). Win2k even added several new features to NTFS. To a kernel-mode dev, Vista, XP, 2k and NT are very different OSs. Having said that, the stuff atop the kernel represents the bulk of the changes, dwarfing the lower-level enhancements. In effect, MS continually tweaks the kernel for performance so that the new visual glitz will run better. For the end user this distinction may not be so significant. As for the XP Home vs. Pro argument, I think of Home as Pro with a few features missing - those that typically aren't important in a home environment (advanced networking, NTFS security, etc.). Certain apps require Pro, but these are things like SQL Server dev edition and the like.
Another alternative is to use Windows 2000 Professional SP4. Not only does this run considerably faster than later versions of Windows, it does not have any of the activation issues of XP. However, my requirements may differ from yours. I only use Windows for things that cannot be done natively under OS X such as updating Garmin GPS firmware.
