Travel Technology - Installing Windows XP Professional On ASUS Eee PC 1002HA, Active Directory MGMT MMC

Hi,

I just ordered an ASUS Eee PC 1002HA which looks like a good quality lightweight netbook, except it ships with Windows XP Home :(.

I frequently need to connect to a corporate VPN, and run various MMC based utilities like
Active Directory Users and Computers
as well as the
Exchange Management Tools.

I am not sure that these tools will run under XP Home even if you supply credentials? One limitation of XP Home is that you cannot join the machine to a domain.

Does anyone know if you can install Windows XP Professional on this netbook? If yes, are there any limitations or glitches, or things that won't work? E.g. the Asus power management tools?

Does anyone know another work around to having to do a complete Windows re-install which my only concern is that it is going to take quite some time?

I wish they just sold it for another $50 or $100 installed with XP Pro but I ordered it from Amazon will get it tomorrow but with the XP Home.

Thanks.

MS won't let them license XP Pro to install because they only want to sell Vista now.

I'm pretty sure that you can install XP Pro, but you'll need all the drivers and whatnot. There is nothing different in the actual OS codebase between Pro and Home; the limitations are set by MS but they use pretty much all the same files.

You could always put a VM of XP Pro on it and use that when you need the management tools. But you cannot install them on XP Home.

I seriously don't remember if my PC1000HA came with a setup disk but you can download all the BIOS/drivers/utilities right off the ASUS website.

Just in case you do a full re-install.

I purchased the ASUS 1000HA with WIN XP at the end of December. I also remote into a corporate VPN and the main reason for the purchase was to use it to remote into the server.

I've had no problem with the VPN or any of the remote functions. I own an insurance agency and my office server is located in the corporate office headquarters so anything that I do on the server is via remote.

I did swap the 1 GB RAM card for a 2 GB card which is the only change I made to the hardware - it was well worth the $28 and 5 minutes of time.

The computer is sweet!

Install Windows 7 on it. I did that on my 1000 and it works perfectly, and is actually much faster than XP. Every Asus driver is supported on the default install, and you can install the whole thing off a USB key in about 20 minutes.