XP Home or XP Professional?

[A.Partridge]

Need to find out what the difference is between Windows XP Home and Professional applications for my nephew who wants to set up a small web design business.

As well as web design he develops Excel VB applications and is unsure whether he will be restricted in selling these applications or Web pages on a PC using XP Home?

All help appreciated.

 

[johndoe64]

have a look here.

 

[SirOurs]

if you want to develop for the web using Microsoft Visual studio you'll need IIS. this doesn't come with Windows XP Home. Although you can take the IIS 5 DLL from Windows XP Pro or 2000 and manually install it yourself. I have done this before and it works. Take a look here if you fancy a dabble:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general/msg/97df7903d9b477d8

You can of course get other web servers and develop with them.

 

[A.Partridge]

SirOurs - thanks for your reply. I understand what you are saying about IIS. Do you know also if there are likely to be any legal or copyright issues when using XP Home rather than a product aimed squarely at the professional end of the market?

 

[SirOurs]

If you are asking does Microsoft allow users of the XP Home to write software for resale I'm pretty sure this would be yes. Does Microsoft support the tweek whereby you can install IIS on XP Home - absolutely not.

The Professional edition of XP is the same as XP Home but with a few extra components (IIS for one). This doesn't mean that XP Home cannot be used for commercial purposes. In my opinion anyway

 

[A.Partridge]

Thanks, that's very helpful to know.

 

[SirOurs]

You might want to also look at the express editions of Visual Studio (.NET 2.0). They doesn't require IIS as I remember and have web servers built-in. They are also free, take a look: [broken link removed]