Edit: Sorry for the long post, please bare with me. i'd really like to hear more about your XP Home/ LAN success stories.
Yeah, I hate the idea of paying any more than I have to for an OS too. I wish MS never made XP Home and just gave us Pro for $99 or less. I just buy the lic. now for spare systems, so it's $60 for home, $95 for Pro. But yes it's $85 and $125 on other builds for the full oem. But yes I too hate spending my little income helping Gates increase his infinite one.
Yes I agree to both of you most of the time it's a network configuration problem or the MS firewall is on or zone alarm is running, etc. But what machines seem to have the most configuration problems, whether easily solved or not? IMO, XP Home. We have never seen an issue once like this on XP Pro or Win 98se systems. I am very surprised if you have never seen an XP Home machine either fail to find a game, disconnect from a game, or fail to see other computers on a multi OS network. I have only seen it maybe 3-4 times where say just in 1 game, and after playing many other games fine, a computer has an issue that is very hard to figure out. And when it has happened it has always been on XP home and on different systems, not just one persons system and not during the same game. A couple times it seemed if an XP Home machine connected first it was fine, but once many machine wre already in, trouble started. I don't attend or host LAN parties often, so when I do, I like to game not diagnose someones issues while they game on my machine or worse, while people who know little about computers start getting bored because the games have been delayed. Our parties are small, usually 8-10 machines, so everyone games. And 98% of the time, things run great and it's a blast. But I find it easiest to just have a spare machine ready so if someone has an issue, not much down time and the 2 geeks in the room can keep playing instead of working on someones issues. If I attended weekly LAn parties, I wouldn't mind sitting out helping others instead of gaming the whole time. Anyway, good for you if everyone who attends your LAN parties has perfectly configured machines and you have no down time spent helping someone connect or get configured. That would be nice. I realize that XP Home would be red flagged from the big parties if it had major issues. But Seriously, if XP home is 100% as good as XP Pro and Win 98 SE for large LAN Parties, I'd like to know. If any LAN issues can't be blamed on a lite XP Home, please let me know.
Even if what your saying is accurate, I can't believe that here on an enthusiast site, you guys prefer XP Home. XP Pro is far more powerful, better security, better networking for large networks with domains, etc. Look at how many kids went off to college with their new XP Home based Dell and found that they can't connect to their schools network. Only to call tech support and be told XP Home is intended for use on small networks of 5 computers or less... you'll need XP Pro to connect to large domain based network. MS blows for making XP home that way!
<A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/evaluation/overviews/joindomain.asp " target="_new">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/evaluation/overviews/joindomain.asp </A>
<A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp" target="_new">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp</A>
ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pauldh on 03/09/04 08:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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