Outlook-Exchange access from XP Home

It’s not a big deal but I was a little surprised that I could setup my XP Home laptop to access Exchange. I even got it to communicate via the Internet using RPC. I thought that I had to have XP Pro and to be joined to the domain at least once. I guess that since I was using an existing Exchange userid the problem was moot. Then I was pretty sure that I would have difficult with the certificates. It ended up to be pretty simple. Just follow the directions on your SBS website! I am not sure what XP Pro buys me in the notebook case where most of the access is via the Internet.