Share a single computer with everyone in your family? Now you can each access your own accounts without having to close each other's applications or restart the computer.

   In many homes, more than one person uses a single computer. The result: a somewhat compromised experience for each user because everyone has to share the same configuration and settings. Windows XP Home Edition makes it easy to create individual profiles with customized settings for everyone who uses a computer, allowing you to switch profiles without shutting down your applications and completely logging off. With Windows XP Home Edition, it's easy to keep everyone's files and preferences separate, and switching between accounts has never been easier.

   The Welcome screen can be personalized to make it fast and easy to share the same computer with your friends and family. Each individual can create a unique account, during Setup or from the Control Panel. You can personalize the Welcome screen by adding a different photo or illustration next to the account name you choose for yourself. You also have the option to set a password on your account if you want.

   User Profiles allow everyone who uses the home computer to create a configuration that has all of their favorite settings saved. This means that when you log on, you'll find your choice of wallpaper on the desktop, the sites you've chosen in the Favorites folder in Internet Explorer, your preferences for viewing folders, and more. You’ll even have your own My Documents folder, which holds only your files.

   With Fast User Switching, you don't have to close the applications you're working on when someone else needs to use the computer. You simply switch out of your account and let the other person log on to his or her own account. For example, if you are working on a spreadsheet and someone else needs to check for an important e–mail, all you have to do is log off your account and let them log on to theirs. When they are finished, just log back on and your spreadsheet and the other applications you were using will still be open and waiting for you.

   The clean, simple design of Windows XP puts the features you use most often up front and center, so you can get to them quickly.

   The new task–focused design of Windows XP Home Edition lets you view all of your Windows options as they relate to your current task. For example, if you are working with Microsoft Word, a dynamic menu appears that lists appropriate commands—such as cut, paste, and copy—for the Word document. Similarly, when you are in the My Computer folder, you can quickly and easily initiate system tasks from the dynamic menu on the left–hand side of the window.

   Arrange your files and folders according to what makes sense to you. Thumbnail images of your most important documents let you scan through your folders easily.

   The new Category View in Control Panel makes it easier to navigate to common settings and control panels and includes integrated Help. The new Category View uses a task–centric approach, which highlights common and problematic tasks. It displays 10 top–level categories, along with a clear navigation path to the settings you want to change. If you prefer to use the classic Control Panel design, it is always just a click away.

   Windows Media Player for Windows XP gives you a single, easy-to-use place to play DVDs, organize music, burn CDs, and more.

   Windows Media™ Player for Windows XP is the true all–in–one way to enjoy music and video on your computer. Windows Media Player for Windows XP maximizes your system resources, creating high–quality audio and video files that take just over a third of the storage space as MP3 and other media file formats. That means you can store and enjoy more music on your computer. With Windows Media Player for Windows XP, you can:

   Windows Messenger is the easy way to communicate with your friends and family in real time. You can see who is online and choose to communicate through text messaging, voice, or video with excellent performance and better quality than ever.

   Because staying connected is more important than ever, Windows Messenger in Windows XP Home Edition provides features that let you communicate online with your friends and family any time, anywhere. Now it's easier to contact anyone, whether they're just across town or all the way on the other side of the country. What's more, Windows XP has improved the way audio and video are processed and transmitted across the network, delivering an improved experience.With Windows Messenger in Windows XP, you can:

   Windows Movie Maker lets you capture, edit, organize, and share home movies on your computer, whether you made them with a digital video camera or an analog camera.

   With Windows Movie Maker, Windows XP Home Edition delivers great software that helps you create, edit, and share the home movies you make with either an analog or digital video camera. When your movies are complete, you can view them and share them with family and friends using Windows Media™ Player for Windows XP.Windows Movie Maker lets you:

   Windows Media Player for Windows XP is a great way to view and share your videos. The true all–in–one way to enjoy video and music on your computer, it makes it easy to watch videos, organize your media files into personalized playlists, and more. With Windows Media Player for Windows XP, you can create high–quality video files that take just over a third of the storage space of similar video formats.

   My Pictures is the place to work with your digital photos. Here you can organize, preview, and even order prints of your pictures via a Web service.

   Windows XP is the best Windows operating system for working with digital photographs. You’ll find support for digital cameras and other imaging devices, easy ways to view and manage image files, and lots of interesting ways to share photos with friends and family—including sending them by e–mail, posting them to a Web site, or printing them.With Windows XP, you can:

   Internet Explorer 6 includes new and better features to simplify Web browsing tasks, increase reliability, and help keep your personal information private.

   Here are the major features that make Internet Explorer 6 the most private, reliable, and flexible Internet browsing experience.

   Privacy Tools: Gives you the tools to protect your privacy and allows you to control the personal information Web sites collect about you. These tools support the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), a standard under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

   Fault Collection: Enables users to extract information about an Internet Explorer problem and upload the data to Microsoft for analysis. This information can help identify potential issues Microsoft needs to address in future Internet Explorer Service Packs.

   Image Toolbar: Allows you to quickly and easily save, e-mail, and print pictures that you find on Web pages, as well as view all your saved pictures in the My Pictures folder. When you point to pictures on Web pages, the My Pictures toolbar appears giving instant access to My Pictures functions.

   Media Bar: Provides a user interface for locating and playing media within the browser window. You can play music, video, or mixed-media files without opening a separate window; you can also control the audio volume, choose which media files or tracks to play, and access different media on your computer or on the Microsoft WindowsMedia.com Web site.

   Auto Image Resize: If pictures are too large to display in the browser window, the new automatic picture resizing feature resizes the pictures so they fit within the dimensions of the browser window.

   Updated Browser Look With Microsoft Windows XP: New stylized buttons in the browser toolbar, more colorful menu background and toolbar areas. Directly integrates the Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional look into all visual aspects of the browser window, including dialog boxes, menus, scroll bars, list boxes, and toolbars.

   Outlook® Express 6.0: An updated version of Internet Explorer 6 e-mail component, Microsoft Outlook Express 6. This version includes new security features that can help protect your computer from harmful e-mail and blocks potentially harmful attachments.

   The Internet Explorer DHTML Platform: Provides DHTML features to build a powerful user interface for your Web based applications. Includes the developer features in Internet Explorer 5.5, including significant enhancements to the support for key Web standards.

   Full CSS Level 1 Support: Provides full support for Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1 (CSS1) including borders, padding, and margins which are now supported for inline elements. It also adds dotted and dashed border effects to your HTML documents, the ability to lay out articles in the same style used by newspapers and magazines, and display text vertically on Web pages.

   Full DOM Level 1 Support: Provides enhanced support for standards-based applications and development of informative content for users. Fully compliant with the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1, an interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update document content, structure, and style without platform or language restrictions.

   Enhanced SMIL 2.0 Working Draft Multimedia Support: Provides continued support for the developing synchronized multimedia integration language (SMIL) 2.0 working draft in progress at the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), most notably in the area of transitions, allowing the application of filters and effects, such as fading an image, transitioning between text or media elements by using wipes, and applying a graduated color background to an element, all at designated times, without the need for script.

   Content Restricted IFrames: IFrames display HTML content to provide Web-based e-mail applications or build browser applications. Developers can make it more difficult for malicious authors to launch e-mail or content-based attacks that catch users unawares.

   Mouse Wheel Events: Introduces a new set of events related to the use of the mouse wheel. These events enable your content or application to better react to user input.

   XML: Includes support for Microsoft XML (MSXML) 3.0, providing better performance and up-to-date XML standards support.

   .NET Integration: As part of the WebService behavior, makes integration of server and client side code easier, and enables applications to call functions on the server asynchronously. You can use this behavior to avoid page navigations and to retrieve data from the server using XML and SOAP.

   Automatic Ellipses for Text Overflow: Provides support for ellipses when text content overflows the bounds of its container. Microsoft is working with the CSS Working Group at the W3C to incorporate this functionality in future enhancements to the CSS specification.

   Remote Assistance lets you allow a friend or support professional who is also running Windows XP to remotely control your computer to demonstrate a process or help solve a problem.

   You can take advantage of the comprehensive, up–to–date information and resources provided by both Microsoft and participating computer manufacturers. You can also invite a friend or a computer professional to help you troubleshoot while you’re online.

   If you're having a problem and need help, use Remote Assistance to invite a friend, family member, or professional computer expert also running Windows XP to give you a hand—and it doesn’t matter whether they are in the same room with you, the same building, or on the other side of the globe. With Remote Assistance, once you give your designated expert permission to access your computer, they can use the Internet to view your computer screen and even share control of your computer to help you fix the problem.

   In addition to Remote Assistance, the new Help and Support Center lets you:

  System Restore actively monitors system file changes, so that if something goes wrong with your computer, you can restore your system to a previous state without losing data.

  Not all software programs work well together. If you’ve ever upgraded or installed new software and afterward found that your computer's performance was actually worse, Windows XP Home Edition was designed to makes sure you never have to worry about that again.

   If the thought of upgrading or installing new software makes you anxious, System Restore should put you at ease. Functioning like the “undo” command in a word processor, System Restore automatically monitors and records key system changes on your computer. With this information, if you change a system setting and then discover a problem, you can easily reverse the change. When new installations affect the performance of your computer adversely, System Restore lets you revert your system back to a previous state. System Restore creates easily identifiable restore points both on a daily basis and when you install a new program or make other significant changes to your system.

   If you change hardware or software and then have trouble starting your computer, the Last Known Good Configuration feature can help. Last Known Good Configuration saves your configuration settings after each successful startup. Then, if your system won’t start, it uses these “last known good” settings to re–launch Windows XP so you can troubleshoot the new hardware or software.

   Sometimes when you update a driver for a device you may find that the new driver doesn’t work properly. The Device Driver Rollback feature in Windows XP keeps a copy of the previous driver file in a special directory. If a new driver does not perform properly, you can easily restore the previous version.

  Network Setup Wizard makes it easier than ever to set up your own home network so all the computers in your house can share printers, devices, files, and an Internet connection.

  In many households, more than one person uses a single computer. Whether you have one computer or a whole network, whether your peripheral hardware includes a single printer or a wide range of devices, and whether you connect your devices and computers with conventional cables or new wireless technologies, Windows XP Home Edition helps everyone in your home access all of the resources they need, from printers to the family photo collection. Designed to be the best operating system for home networking, Windows XP supports a complete set of home applications along with the infrastructure to support even richer experiences coming in the near future. Windows XP makes it easy for every computer on a home network to share a single connection to the Internet, to access peripheral devices including printers and CD–ROM drives, and to make files such as digital music or photos accessible to everyone. Windows XP supports wireless and home phone line network (HPNA) connectivity, which means you can set up a home network without having to drill holes and run cable. What's more, Windows XP Home Edition can be used as the server for Windows XP Professional, so you can take your work laptop home and plug it right in to your home network.

   User Profiles allow everyone who shares a home computer to create a distinct profile that has all of their favorite settings saved. Now, when you log on to your account, you'll find your choice of wallpaper on the desktop, the sites you've chosen in the Favorites folder in Internet Explorer, your preferences for viewing folders, and more.

   The Welcome screen can be personalized for everyone who uses a home computer. When you create a User Profile, either during Setup or from the Control Panel, you can personalize the Welcome screen by adding a photo or illustration next to your account name. You can also set a password on your account if you choose.

   With Fast User switching, you don't have to close the applications you're working on when someone else needs to use the computer. You simply switch out of your account and let the other person log on to his or her own account. For example, if you are working on a spreadsheet and someone else needs to check for an important e–mail, all you have to do is log off and let them log on. When they are finished, you just log back on—your spreadsheet and the other applications you were using will be open and waiting for you.

   When you're ready to set up your own home computer network, the Windows XP Network Setup Wizard walks you through all the steps, making it easier than ever to link computers and devices. With a home network you can share files (including music and pictures), multiple printers, CD burners, and more.

   The Internet Connection Sharing feature in Windows XP lets you share a single Internet connection among all of the computers on your home network. That means no more waiting for your turn when you want to use the Internet. In addition, the new Internet Connection Firewall helps keep your home network safe and secure.