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Can XP Home Work at Work?

L

Lightingguy

Member
Just trying to help a friend who wants to get a new machine for work, and is having IT Dept. headaches. She wants to use a new HP machine from Best Buy which comes loaded with XP home edition. Her IT people tell her it won't allow Domain Client/Server configuration. Her IT people do not yet support XP Professional for their client pcs, and 98SE and Win2000 don't contain the necessary hardware drivers. Of course, the PC manufacturer isn't about to supply drivers for the older OSs with the PC.

Is this IT Dept. correct about XP Home? And other than trying to configure unsupported hardware with an older OS (they do support 98SE and 2000) and drivers off the web, anybody got a good idea about how to get this resolved (other than forcing XP down the throats of the IT people)?

Note: I apologize that I first posted this on the Tech Support forum.
 
Why is she picking out the machine for work? IT should be making that decision! Is this going to be a VPN client at home or something?

Just curious.
 
If you enter the domain name in the workgroup box on a XP home machine, you can get a little functionality out of it. You will be able to browse the network, but each time you want to use a resource (folder/file/printer, etc) you will have to authenticate using an account you have set up in the domain for that purpose.
It's not really practical, but in a pinch it will work.
I would ditch the home version if at all possible. Pro is superior in almost every way.
 
Thanks for your comments. This is one lame IT dept., who have problems migrating client machines and supporting both modern and legacy applications. Their choices in new desktop machines are anemic SDR P4s, and this individual does hi-res digital photo work, and wants something better than an older P3-800.

While capable IT professionals exist and ably serve clients and organizations, this clearly is not the case here (they should just upgrade the machine to XP Pro).

I'm sure my friend has done her best to consult with the IT people, and they are doing their best to help her.

I suppose that she'll either end up with an older OS on the machine or XP Pro, if she's lucky. Or another machine with 1 of those OSs pre-installed.
 
There are a million and one reasons why IT guys do what they do.In some environments (poor ones) the often don't get to make the final choice when it comes to software/os Upgrades.
I'd love to work with XP clients at work, and some guys consider me lucky just to be working with 2k and not NT.... it's all relative.
Remember, it's tough to make excpetions for users in a large network. Uniformity is an administrator's ally. Only VIP's who can make a big stink get things like XP when others are still on 2k, etc. That's life.
 
We are having trouble with the 2 XP boxes we recently brought in. We have a 2000 network, but a very poor implementation of Active Directory. XP really wants to ONLY be part of an AD domain. Our owner is very progressive, but we are playing hell to keep him on 2k, he wants to have XP. Getting to play with the new toys is great, but it keeps you on your toes. We have a small network (about 100 machines), and we are constantly upgrading or buying the newest stuff. It goes back to old addage.

Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.

As Saltin pointed out, go easy on the IT staff; they have a tougher job than most people realize. When things are going well, it looks like you are doing nothing. When things go badly, all eyes are on you!
 
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