It looks like both home/prof versions will work, however ESRI is tweaking it
for the upcoming 8.1.2 version. XP home uses FAT32 and can be setup on a
small network, XP Prof uses NFTS and has  better networking tools and
abilities.

My responses...

Thanks to: Philip Bermingham, Dana Trethewy, John Linehan, Barry Waite

I'm the XP Release Manager and was forwarded your message.  I have been
installing ArcGIS 8.1 on XP (Professional) for the past 7 months and haven't
had any install or functionality problems.

The official stance from ESRI is that 8.1.2 will support XP.  This is
because there are some cosmetic problems, which makes ArcGIS look different
on XP compared to 2000 or NT.  However, we have had no problems with the
functionality on XP (Home or Professional).

I would evaluate Home and Professional in terms of what your organization
needs from an operating system.  ArcGIS (8.1, SP 1 and the not yet released
8.1.2) will run on both Home or Professional; but there are large
differences between Home and Professional in terms of user security, network
security and networking.  Have a look at Microsoft's XP Home Page (
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/ ) for further details on the
Home/Professional differences.

Networking issues:
Pro has NTFS file system, which has permissions, there Fat32 on the home
version does not, making it less secure

If you're on a network, you'll need XP Pro. That's one of the few
differences, though it's a big one. XP Home does not allow you to connect to
a domain. I'll be curious to see how 8.1 runs on XP. It should crash less.
It may be slower than Windows 2000 though. XP's performance is not as good
as 2000 overall according to the trade journals. The new features look good
though. I'll take a hit on speed for stability.


Original question:
>Has anyone tried to install ArcView 8.1 on a PC using XP? I say they said
>it's coming soon in 8.1.2 but I was wondering if my current version of 8.1
>will run. I also noticed there is a XP home and professional version. Does
>it make a difference on which one it will run under?
>
bchappell@enter.net
610-381-6441
bill@poconoGIS.com
www.poconoGIS.com