Re: OS? Home or Pro?

[S V G <vsyevolod@yahoo.com>]

     Another slant on Home vs Pro:

     Living here in Seattle, I have many many friends who work for 
Microsoft.  One of them saw
Steve Ballmer address a large group of MS employees and say: "I would 
rather see all your friends
and relatives own a copy of XP that you got for them via your employee 
discount rather than see
them obtain an illegal copy."  Basically encouraging very inexpensive 
versions of the OS to
circulate legally among friends and relatives of the company.  MS 
employees purchase software "at
cost" which is around $30 for XP (home or pro) due to the expensive 
packaging that they dress it
all up in.

     Also, a little known fact about the lifespan of the MS OS 
registration files: Microsoft keeps
the registration for a total of 4 months.  This means that you can sell it 
4 months after you buy
it and it will be a clean and new version.  What they are trying to 
accomplish here is to keep the
unscrupulous PC reseller from installing XP on 300 different computers and 
selling them for more
money than they would otherwise get.  Even with that being said, you can 
buy a copy of XP and
install it on 2 or 3 of your computers at home within a week of purchasing 
it and you still most
likely won't raise any red flags at Microsoft when you register your copy. 
 I haven't actually
tried that out, I'm just going on what my MS friends tell me on that point.

     This of course makes the whole Home vs. Pro debate rather 
inconsequential.  I installed Pro
about 9 months ago, just because I could not because I needed it.  I have 
had far fewer system
freezes than ever before.  I also beefed up my RAM from 512 to 1 gig so 
that probably weighs into
the stability as well.  As far as stability is concerned, I am as happy as 
a clam with my uses of
Windows XP Pro on my HP desktop computer.

     Some of my friends are running beta versions of Vista right now as 
well.  The word on the
street is that they would not purchase a copy of Vista when it first comes 
out, preferring to let
it sit on the market for half a year or more until the bugs get more and 
more ironed out.

     Stephen



















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