I think that disrimination to OS is unfair as it means that if you have a peice of software / hardware you cannot garuntee it will work on 100% users systems. If ASP runs of proffessional then I will be mad, as if it runs on the lesser windows (98, 95 ect...) then XP Home should work. that is plain stupidity IMHO, what is ASP and why does it not work on XP home?

like you can have any Microsoft OS be running as a web sever. Even Windows 9x (the good days) I do not know if they had ASP, PHP back there but now if you found Windows 9x. Installing Apache and PHP it will work.

In Home Edtion to see if you can host, go to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Componets Find somthing > IIS.

Go back on topic...

I do not think Microsoft made Windows XP way to fast... First was ME, then Windows Server 2000, then XP which had the all most the same stuff as XP then Server 2003 ( or did that come before ) Server 2003 is like XP but with short cuts. When you log off the screen turns black, The Start menu is the same, My Computer.. icons are hidding. So i might just get linux and wait to LongHorn Beta 1 comes out and i'll test it out...

Well, all your opinoins are way cool and appriciative that youve responded to this post. I felt I just ahdto go and buy the friggen thing to see for myself. BUT...I will keep this thread alive and give a comparison from my opinions. Maybe this will answer our questions and opinions. Who knows. Stay posted, peace!

AFAIK by default Windows XP Home Does not come bundlined with IIS support.

well this is surely unfair. you cannot be penalised just coz ur using the home stuff. i think that every software that comes into the market should be able to run on ALL os that are already on the market.

Why? Why should an OS intended for HOME use be able to serve web pages? Get XP Pro for that, or get Server 2003. Or better yet, dual boot with Linux/BSD.

If you know you're going to be serving web pages, you should know what OS you'd need. Just because you can run IIS or some other webserver on a 9x system doesn't mean you should. It will be full of security holes, and it's bound to be unstable.

It's like saying, "Sure, I might be able to pull a boat with a Yugo, but is that going to be the best choice to do it?"

good point. Although many people just buy it because its bundled with nearly every modern PC and because they dont know much about OSs - thinking XP pro is too expensive to touch! If I was to become involved in comercial software again I would DEFINITLY make it compatable with as many as possable. It makes sense as people are starting to realise the potential of alternatives to MS windows. Anyways if this ASP can run on any except win xp home then why not find a windows OS cheaper than home? what about ME?

Windows XP Pro is not that expensive, esp if you buy OEM 150 isn't much

even 300 isnt much for a 3-5 year investment in a computer.

Here's what you have to look at. You're coming from the perspective that everyone who uses a computer plans to do some development type work, or build web pages, etc. Fact is, "many people", as you put it, don't care-- they just want to be able to get on the web, get email, and send instant messages to their pals. They don't need capabilities to run ASP.NET.

What it boils down to is that if you're doing this type of work, you should know that Windows XP Pro would be requisite for your job. There's no point in bundling a feature on a home users system, be it XP Home or ME, that they'd never use, and would probably get in trouble with, anyways. The reason it could run on 9x/ME systems is because those OSes are set up differently from an NT/2k/XP machine-- they have absolutely no security. This means that if an exploit in IIS or ASP were found, you could thoroughly trash a 9x system. At least in theory, the NT line of the systems were supposed to be designed with some security in mind. There's supposed to be a concept of users and groups with varying priviledges so you can run things with more secure permissions. Since a home user would never use any of those features, they're all disabled by default.

You have to look at it from a couple of perspectives if you bring other OSes into the picture like Linux. In the Enterprise desktop arena, of course Microsoft will want to make their desktop OS (XP Pro) as robust and capable as Linux can be. It's the same story with the Home operating systems, but there are different requirements-- even on a Linux system designed for home use, you'd be less likely to find Apache running on the system, as home users simply don't need it. There's no need to include a feature that nobody's really asking for, especially if that feature is in another one of your products that doesn't cost an incredible lot more than your base offering.