Home goes for about $200, while Professional is $100 more. The Professional edition is a superset of Home. Every feature in WinXP Home is included in WinXP Professional. However, many of Professional's features were designed for a network administrator. But, there are also benefits to the home computer user or small business.

Let's suppose you are at home and want to do some work on your office computer. If your office computer had WinXP Professional, you could use Remote Desktop to access it. It allows full use of the office computer to check e-mail, work on files, and swap files with others just as if you're there.

All of this work is done over the Internet. It performs best with broadband, cable, or DSL. It will also work well with a dial-up account because only data from the mouse, keyboard, and monitor are being transmitted between computers. You can do all this from a computer running WinXP Home. The computer you're using to access the remote machine is called the "client."

Home comes with the client software installed on it. You can use any computer as the client as long as it is running Win 95 or any later Windows version. You simply have to install the client software from an XP Professional disk. But the remote computer, the one you're accessing, must have XP Professional.

Another advantage of XP Professional is encryption. Many laptops are stolen or lost. With WinXP Professional, you can encrypt files and folders. When you add files or subfolders, they will automatically be encrypted. Encryption can even be used on removable media, such as a CD or floppy disk.

If you're running a small business, you may need WinXP Professional. You can network computers using WinXP Home. It offers workgroup networking, in which every computer is on the same level.

Access can be restricted on an individual basis. In other words, Bill can give John access to his files, and deny access to Judy. Virtually everything is done on the individual computer level. This setup works best with only a few computers.

If you have more than 10 computers, you should set up a domain. This option allows you to manage permissions and other access issues from a server. Keeping track of passwords is much easier as computers are added to the domain. If you're a home user or have a small business, WinXP Home will be sufficient.

But, if you need to access that home computer from elsewhere or know that data encryption is a requirement important for your needs, then you should get WinXP Professional. If you already have WinXP Home or later find need for additional tools available only in WinXP Professional, then upgrade to this operating system.

Floppy Disk Maintenance
Here is good advice for computer users who have emergency boot floppies and rescue disks that Windows and other programs instruct us to have on hand. Foppies can accumulate bad sectors in a matter of weeks. To confirm that they still work, check them every few months by booting from the floppy or by evaluating them with a disk-scanning tool. In Win98/Me, select Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk. In Win2000/XP, choose Start, My Computer, right-click the floppy drive, select Properties, and click Tools, Check Now.

Folders
To open folders with a single click, open a folder, click Tools, and select Folder Options. Under "Click items as follows," select "Single click to open an item," and click Apply, OK.

Highlighting
There's a way to highlight and print sections of a document that are not consecutive. For instance, if you want to highlight the first paragraph, but want to omit the second paragraph, and then highlight the third one. Windows has an easy way of doing this task.

Highlight the first paragraph. Now, hold down the Ctrl key and highlight the third paragraph. That will leave both paragraphs highlighted. Continue on, highlighting just the paragraphs you need for your work. You can use the same procedure to highlight individual words or phrases. When you print, you have the printer select only the highlighted portions by clicking File, Print, Selection, OK.

System Restore
System Restore is present in WinXP/Me. It saves a picture of Windows' system state and can be used to go back in time if something makes Windows unstable. However, saving those pictures takes a lot of space. If you need to make room on your hard drive, delete old restore points. There are a few ways to perform this function.

In WinXP, click Start, Control Panel, double-click System, select the System Restore tab, click Settings, and move the slider to 1,000 MB (1 gigabyte).

In WinMe, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, double-click System, select the Performance tab, click File System, select the Hard Disk tab, and move the slider to 500 MB. Windows will delete old restore points to accommodate the new limits. That should solve your problem permanently.

You can also turn System Restore off, which isn't recommended because it takes away protection for your files. To disable it in WinXP, click Start, Control Panel, double-click System, select the System Restore tab, and click "Turn off System Restore on all drives." In WinMe, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, double-click System, select the Performance tab, click File System, select the Troubleshooting tab, click Disable System Restore, click Apply, Close, Close, and click Yes when asked if you want to restart the computer.

Finally departing from the operating system tips, the best way to share digital photos is to publish an album on the Web instead of e-mailing individual photos. That way you can e-mail family and friends the web site so they can view them at leisure without the hassle of downloading individual pictures.

Most Internet Service Providers give you some server space and the tools to upload Web pages easily. PowerPoint has a command that lets you create a photo album. It includes tools that let you jazz up your photos with frames, layout effects, and captions. Best of all, you can quickly save everything in HTML format for publishing on the Web.

The command is Insert, Picture, New Photo Album. PowerPoint displays the Photo Album dialog box, where you can click to add photos. If the image files are already on your hard drive, click the File, Disk button. Locate your pictures in the Insert New Pictures dialog box (Ctrl-click to select more than one) and click Insert.

To insert pictures directly from your camera or scanner, click the Scanner, Camera button instead. In the "Insert Picture from Scanner or Camera" dialog box, choose your device from the Device drop-down list and select Custom Insert.

The next dialog box will look slightly different, depending upon your device. For example, when inserting pictures directly from a camera, chose "Get Pictures from Camera." In the Get Camera Pictures dialog box, click the picture name in the left pane and click "Add to List" to move the picture to the right pane.

Next click OK, then Close to return to the Photo Album dialog box. Back in the Photo Album dialog box, you'll see your pictures' file names displayed in the "Pictures in album" list. Click any file name to see the image in the Preview window. At this point, if happy with the pictures, you could click the Create button to tell PowerPoint to create the slide show. PowerPoint will allow you to create frames, captions, text slides, layout changes, and photo enhancements.

The New Text Box button in the Photo Album dialog box lets you add a text slide to your photo album at any point. Click that button to insert the slide, then edit it later, just as you would any other PowerPoint text slide. Beneath the "Pictures in album" and Preview panes, you'll find a row of buttons. To move any picture in the album, click it, and then click the up or down arrow. To remove a picture (or a text slide), select its name in the list and click the Remove button.

The next three sets of buttons let you rotate, adjust the contrast of a photo, or adjust the brightness of a photo. To experiment with these settings, just click any photo's name in the "Pictures in album" list and click the appropriate button. You can watch the effects in the Preview window.

At the bottom of the Photo Album dialog box, in the Album Layout section, you'll find a couple of great tools: "Picture layout" and "Frame shape." Both of these commands display a mockup of your layout in the space to the right. The "Picture layout" drop-down list lets you choose how many pictures will appear on each Web page for: one, two, or four pictures per page.

You can also determine whether a photo will include a title. Titles will make it easier for friends/family to browse, so it's best to include them. In the "Frame shape" list, you can choose from seven frame options.

To enhance your layout, you can choose a PowerPoint design template using the Design Template's Browse button. There are other fancy touches which are available to you. For example, in the middle of the Photo Album dialog box, you'll see two more options: They are "Captions below ALL pictures" and "ALL pictures black and white."

If choosing a layout other than "Fit to slide," you can include captions beneath all your photos. The black-and-white option works only in PowerPoint. On the Web, color photos will appear in color. It's a good option if you don't plan to publish your photos on the Web.

Once you're satisfied with your photo album, click the Create button and PowerPoint creates the album and closes the Photo Album dialog box. At this point edit your album as you would any o t h e r PowerPoint presentation. To change text, such as captions and titles, just click the text and edit. You can click a picture and drag to reposition it or click one of the corner "circles" and drag to resize the picture.

PowerPoint includes a title slide at the beginning of your album. Click the slide's text to change the message. To preview your photo album, choose File, Web Page Preview. If you're not happy with it, select Format, Photo Album to return to the Photo Album dialog box and make changes.

All that's left is to save your album in HTML format and post it online by choosing File, Save as Web Page. When the Save As dialog box opens, click the Change Title button, give the album a logical title, and click OK. Next, type a file name (no spaces) in the File Name text box and be sure to use the HTM or HTML extension, e.g. "name.htm," and click Save.

PowerPoint creates an HTML photo album, along with a folder of all the graphics you'll need for your album. You must upload both the HTML file and the accompanying folder to your Web site to preclude problems with your photo album.