<p>is it worth it to shell out an extra $300 or more for windows xp professional instead of just windows xp?</p>
<p>No. Get Vista.</p>
<p>Get OEM Home XP on newegg, pretty cheap.</p>
<p>There's some additional security features in pro which should be standard for all OS's but Microsoft is lacking in the innovation department and thus had to keep those out of the home version just to entice people to spend the extra cash on pro.</p>
<p>Anyways, extra $300? I would hope an O/S would cost less than that. (I've gotten all mine from school or pre-installed on computer). Don't waste the money.</p>
<p>I agree with the first person. Get Vista. I've had it for nearly a month and it's great.</p>
<p>Vista has too many compatibility issues so you might not want to get it. But I love it.</p>
<p>your gonna pay for XP? haha I haven't paid for software in years. I'm using vista ultimate and it's fantastic.</p>
<p>vista sucks</p>
<p>XP will be phased out soon, so I'd get vista.</p>
<p>I believe I read somewhere that Windows XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft as of January 1st.</p>
<p>I haven't had Vista compatibility issues that everyone is talking about. I had one game not install, but that game was made for like Windows 98 so it doesn't really surprise me that much. Other than that, I haven't had any issues with Vista and it works great!</p>
<p>Vista is horrible, just read around on the internet for five minutes and you'll figure that out.</p>
<p>It's horrible when you have a *****ty system.</p>
<p>I reccommend just getting XP Home. XP Professional is needed if your going to connect to a domain (the server of a network), but otherwise isn't really necessary. Pro has better user management controls (comes with the attaching yourself to a domain), but not necessary.</p>
<p>Most programs will work on Vista...but it's really hit and miss and unless you have a reason to move up I wouldn't. Even though I use it and love it, I'm a computer technician and am pretty good at making everything work smoothly ha Some people are going to make vista work awesome, some have bad experiences. It really comes down to the manufactures of your hardware and how good of driver support they offer.</p>