When you first think about buying a desktop or workstation, some big questions necessarily come to mind. The answers are different for every system you buy simply because you buy each system for a different purpose.
The operating system is at the heart of your system's capabilities and the OS choice you make affects what software you can run on your system as well as your options for security, maintenance, and manageability. Your most common OS choices for business desktop PCs are Microsoft® Windows XP® and Linux.
Windows XP is available in Home and Professional editions. The Home edition is less expensive than the Professional edition, but it also offers fewer tools and utilities to support your daily work. As a general rule, choose the Professional edition for your office desktop PCs so you can take advantage of the networking wizard to more easily share resources, use the remote desktop to remotely control a computer from another location, use the encrypted file system to protect your data from hackers, and more.
Linux is an open source OS, which means that it doesn't have a licensing fee associated with it, but it also doesn't necessarily have the same level of support and easy-to-use resources that you'll find with Windows. Also, common office applications may not run on Linux, although you can find similar open source applications to meet most office needs. Linux is a good choice if you have the IT staff to support it and you have a collection of systems that don't need to run a wide array of office applications. Call centers and software development houses are two good examples of the kind of businesses that might benefit from Linux-based desktops.
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