I need a new home computer for the family and was looking at a Dell that comes pre-installed with Win XP home. I want to be able to network it with my trading computers in my basement office, which run win 2000. I'd like to have access to my files and programs from the living room rather than going into the office in the evening. I've heard that there might be issues or difficulties networking these two OS's. How hard is it, what limitations are there? Thx, Corey
I just bought a DELL with Window XP Pro and I am networking it at home with two Win98SE computers and a Windows 2000 Pro computer and I have had no problems. Good luck.
AFAIK, XP _HOME_ will not network. If you need to network, you need to move to XP Pro. Attempting what you are doing is trivial. Make sure that you consider wifi instead of CAT5 ethernet - that will allow you to stick computers where you want them thru out the house without having CAT5 cable spaghetti all over the place. If you go wireless, get the higher bandwidth versions 811a not 811b - they are more expensive, but they have a slightly greater distance capacity. Although there are very few differences _technologically_ between the different companies that offers wifi, in your position I would strongly consider Netgear. They have OUTSTANDING technical support that will actually walk you thru this stuff. On top of it, they are inline with price with the competitors. I also noticed that Microsoft has entered this market - that is probably not a bad choice - again, it is not about the technology, it is about the service... For trading computers, I would only use CAT 5 ethernet. wifi would be OK if the receiver was close by with a strong signal, but I would not want to be in a trade and have the signal go bad on me. nitro
XP Home is perfectly suitable for home networking but does not support some features essential for corporate environment. See more details here: http://asia.cnet.com/itmanager/tech/0,39006407,39039863,00.htm
im runing win2000 and XP home, wirelessly networked and its great. sometimes i do loose a connection, dont know why, but a simple reboot does it. But i am thinking about doing both machines in xp pro which i have, jsut never got around to put it on. it might make things simpler. BTW, it was a pain in the ass for me to set it up (xp and 2000) but it was only the wireless conection that gave me issues, the wired worked fine through the router. so yes, it can be done!