Windows 7: Buying new desktop - Windows 7 Home or Professional Operating System

Old desktop with Windows XP dying. Have a choice of buying today a desktop with Windows 7 Home OS (8GB) or Windows 7 Professional OS (4GB) - same price. I have a small business - lot of old data, spreadsheets, accounting software. Won't be using it for gaming. Have heard Windows 7 Home makes it difficult accessing XP files and Windows 7 Professional would be more user friendly for this?
Have to make a decision today - your thoughts?

Hello there & welcome to Seven Forums.
I'm assuming the 4GB & 8GB is referring to the quantity of RAM, right?
As it will be used for a small business & using old data & applications, Win 7 Professional would be the perfect choice.

I went with windows 7 professional. the Ultimate didn't seem to have features justifying the extra money. You can look here..and don't pay those prices...it's a lot cheaper on Tiger or the egg.
Whatever you buy, if you go with the 64 bit, go with 8 GB of ram. It's dirt cheap these days and trust me you won't be sorry.

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I'm unsure why getting to files with the HOME edition would be harder than it would be with the Professional Edition. If you had a business with a domain....it would be better without question to have "Professional" as you could join that machine to the domain...where you cannot with XP HOME.

Windows 7 Professional would give you the ability to use XP Mode...which is more or less a free copy of Windows XP SP3 that you can run as a virtual machine on your Windows 7 box. You do not get this with the Home Version.

Here is a good breakdown, only you can make the end choice as to which is better for you;
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