Win XP home considering XP pro

[PuterDoctor]

I am using XP home on my laptop and am considering putting XP pro on it instead.It seems like home doesn't use all my memory.I have 512 MBs of memory and it seems as if it still uses the swap file constantly.Would pro use my memory better.Is there settings I am overlooking that would force it to use RAM instead of the swapfile?
Thanks

 

[PrincessGuard]

WinXP Pro has the same memory management as WinXP Home.

WinXP will always use your swap file regardless of how much RAM you have. Stale pages are swapped out and free memory is used for the filesystem cache.

 

[Heisenberg]

The only major difference between pro and home are some network functions that are only really important in a corporate environment. The swap issue is due to the fact that windows still has crappy VM management even with XP.

 

[NogginBoink]

No, there's no difference between XP Home and XP Pro memory management.

And there's lots of ignorance floating around here about how NT/2K/XP handles memory and virtual memory. I recommend "Inside Windows 2000, Third Edition" by Solomon and Russinovich for anyone who cares to actually educate themselves about this subject.

The memory manager in NT/2K/XP is actually quite sophisticated and there's good reasons that it behaves in the manners it does.

 

[skyking]

remote desktop connection is the big difference between the two. You can get home to do the networking things pro will do, after a great deal of work, but the windows remote desktop connection is only available in pro.
Unles you need that feature, I would not recommend changing to pro, unless you are getting it as a gift or something.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: skyking
remote desktop connection is the big difference between the two. You can get home to do the networking things pro will do, after a great deal of work, but the windows remote desktop connection is only available in pro.
Unles you need that feature, I would not recommend changing to pro, unless you are getting it as a gift or something.

Bingo. The other major difference is that XP Home can't join a domain.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Heisenberg
The only major difference between pro and home are some network functions that are only really important in a corporate environment. The swap issue is due to the fact that windows still has crappy VM management even with XP.

Actually the memory management is very good, people just don't understand how it works and use incorrect metrics like 'PF usage' to gauge what is happening.

I am using XP home on my laptop and am considering putting XP pro on it instead.It seems like home doesn't use all my memory.I have 512 MBs of memory and it seems as if it still uses the swap file constantly.Would pro use my memory better.Is there settings I am overlooking that would force it to use RAM instead of the swapfile?

What are you basing this observation on?

Bill

 

[Tates]

All you wanted to know about WinXP: Home vs. Pro, but were afraid to ask

 

[Heisenberg]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: Heisenberg
The only major difference between pro and home are some network functions that are only really important in a corporate environment. The swap issue is due to the fact that windows still has crappy VM management even with XP.

Actually the memory management is very good, people just don't understand how it works and use incorrect metrics like 'PF usage' to gauge what is happening.

So you're saying Windows' VM is as good as for example, FreeBSD?

 

[PuterDoctor]

I am basing it on the fact that if I have several IE pages open switching between them makes the harddrive click a lot and it is SLOW to switch between them.It does it when there are only 3 pages open as well.Not just that but it seems to do that with everything -open a program and switch to an IE window does the same thing.

 

[bsobel]

Actually the memory management is very good, people just don't understand how it works and use incorrect metrics like 'PF usage' to gauge what is happening.

So you're saying Windows' VM is as good as for example, FreeBSD?[/quote]

In what context, used as a home OS? A gaming platform? A server platform? Yes, the memory mangement is very good considering the wide range of uses it must manage. BSD's problem is actually much easier

I am basing it on the fact that if I have several IE pages open switching between them makes the harddrive click a lot and it is SLOW to switch between them.It does it when there are only 3 pages open as well.Not just that but it seems to do that with everything -open a program and switch to an IE window does the same thing.

Something else is going on. Possibly a IE plugin that is making an expensive check of something. How big is your IE cache set to? Try clearing it and setting it to no more than 100 meg, does the problem repeat?

Bill

 

[Bleep]

Bingo. The other major difference is that XP Home can't join a domain.

I dont think that you can be a power user in xp home.

Bleep