Thinking Of Getting Windows 7

Ya I know, I'm always the last one to jump ship lol I'll get right to my main question.

Is there anything to know between the flavours of 7? Home/Pro/Ultimate?
Not really sure which one I should go for.

I wouldn't call myself a hard core gamer by any means, but I do play some with my brother from time to time. If that helps anyone.

Just a standard network at my place here. Nothing special.

Than you just need the Home Edition. All other Editions you just need for big Networks.

how I feel about windows 7

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare

The only reason I would go for Ultimate is the language packs but I am not english - other than that, home edition works fine on my PC and haven't had any need to have anything better.

I went with Pro, just because I think it was on sale at newegg when I was ordering my computer.

And Lynx you may not like 7 but remember it could always be worse...

And what about an OEM version? Found a cheap Win7 64bit OEM on tigerdirect.ca . I've read that you can do normal upgrades as long as your motherboard stays the same.

I got the oem when I bought all the parts for my comp they gave me win 7 64 bit pro for 100 bucks. It is the own and I've used it on multiple comps with 0 issues what so ever if u can get it cheap it's just as good

Oem* god I hate this iphone

sweets, might be getting 2 of them in the long run then. Seeing as how my brother is thinking of building new too.

Silly question, could I buy 1 OEM and install in on both our comps? It says it's 1 user license, but you mentioned multiple comps.

One user license means one computer. You might have registration issues or have the Windows genuine tool bark at you if you try to use it for 2.

Maybe I'm ignorant to the benefits of Windows 7, but so far I still prefer XP, Windows 7 just eats uses up chunks of RAM to run silly novelties and refuses to run many programs of a few years in age. Don't even get me started on the UAC -.-

Maybe somebody can elaborate on the positives, but don't get too excited about upgrading.

first off what is your computer's current hardware/os, if you have less than 4gb of ram and have no intention of upgrading or unable to go above it there's no point in a 64bit OS, it's more headaches than it's worth.

If your hardware currently runs XP sp3, then there's no point in paying to "upgrade" if you're running vista, wipe the SOB and get 7 (or XP if you can).

Don't get home, get pro.

The advantages of ultimate over pro are pretty much negligible, but pro at least lets you do backups over a network, and will let you login to a domain, if you ever want to fiddle with networking, it leaves you the option. Also it's not much more.

As for the OEM, yes you can get the OEM version for 1 pc, non transferable, you should be able to replace components if something fries without having to buy the OS again, unless they've changed the amount of items that can change.


If you want it on 2 computers you need to buy 2, or just buy the Retail package, I think they still say you need to have it on one computer, but it usually doesn't ***.

Windows 7 has a few nice features here and there, but the Aero eats up resources and causes compatibility issues with some games, according to my friend it accesses hardware faster due to improvements in the HAL, but whether or not that's true idk.

I personally prefer XP when I can get away with it, due to not having to tweak every piece of software I have to get it to work.

one of the things I like about 7: Freecell let's me ctrl-Z unlimited times, yeah I'm a Freecell addict, wanna fight about it?

like I said, home is pretty much garbage, Pro has features people could use if they had them.


(like if you had 1 computer on your network with a lot of storage, you could have your laptops set to auto backup to it, you can't do that with home).

UAC can be disabled. Just type UAC in the search box when you hit the start button and lower it to the lowest point on the bar. Most settings can be tweaked to restore the way you like things but generally change takes getting use to. Some people just don't like to change how they have used a computer for 10+ years with XP. I loved XP and didn't upgrade till about 2 years ago. Win7 was the first OS that was able to pull me off XP.

Win 7's greatest benefits are compatibility with newer software and hardware. You'll never get the best out of the latest computers without upgrading. Newer games and such are the same way, but the downside is that older things don't work as well because they weren't designed for the system. While win7 is typically pretty compatible with older stuff, most of it takes some tinkering to make it work properly. FFXI just to name one.

Rumor has it, it was my idea.

Been running a Windows7 OEM edition on a build I put together for over at least a year. Have had 0 compatibility issues. Depending on what you use your computer for and what hardware is in said PC, I would say not using Win7 these days is detrimental for games and a lot of hardware that is made with Win7 in mind.

You get some pretty nice improvements to system stability running Windows 7, and it is more secure than Windows XP. I went with Windows 7 Ultimate, but I have an MSDN account so I didn't have to pay any extra for it.

That said, Windows 8 is just around the corner, and is possibly the best desktop OS developed to date. You may just want to wait for that as opposed to spending the money on a Windows 7 license.

Windows 7 is the best OS for gaming and work atm. I noticed a lot of frame rate increase @ ffxi and other games as soon i switched to windows7 (used to be a heavy winxp user). It's very stable and secure/more automatized and user friendly, as soon you get familiar with the GUI.

I never got a bluescreen or boot corruption as soon i switched. Directx 11 is a huge improvement as well, windows xp only uses directx 9. You need at least a dual core proc with 4gb? of ram. Anyways if you are going to upgrade just get windows home premium or any higher version than that.

Haven't read too much on Windows 8 lately, but I would hope you can switch back to a Normal looking desktop. The default win8 looks like it would be better on a tablet. ^^

You can, there is a desktop mode available on Windows 8.



I know Windows 8 might be around the corner, but for the sake of argument I vastly prefer Windows 7 over XP. Sure it eats up more RAM, but just make a few adjustments here and there and its all dandy. Love it really lol

For what it's worth, we are in a world where RAM is cheap enough for even the casual user to have 4-8GB of RAM and an i3 processor at the very least. That's why 7 and 8 eat up so many resources. Because most people have them, and if you don't then you're not the sort of person who should be using microsoft anyways and should just install ubuntu.

while I'm an advocate for open source, why would they be a "sort of person" if they only have 2gb of ram?


and 2gb of ram will run 7, maybe not well, but it will make it go.

as for windows 8, ha...

Microsoft's track history proves it's best not to pick up every other OS, I doubt they've learned.

Also: it is meant for touch screens, as it will be their tablet OS as well as it will have native ARM support.

Depends on what you call work. If you use excel every day then, it's debatable. If your company has its own software implemented using Windows executables, then yeah it's pretty important. If you're a Sysadmin then you'd probably be better off running a unix environment. If you're a graphics developer, Macs are certainly a viable option.

If we're only talking about the Windows line of OSes, I'd agree that Windows 7 is probably at the peak currently.

it's sad that people still perpetuate the myth that macs are still best for graphics, it's sad. while granted they do have some software that's mac exclusive, other than that they aren't.

Also depending on what you're doing as an admin, if you want to administer a bunch of Windows computers, you'd want server, if you want to manage particular services, linux would do.

anyone even run low end machines with Unix on them?

As much as you critique what others say about your words, you should be able to read what I'm saying.

"Macs are certainly a viable option" != "Macs are best for graphics"

So instead of re-iterating how "sad" it is that people perpetuate the myth, attempt to read what I said.

Then why pay for less? something that comes with less hardware for a higher price cost =/= a viable option in my book.

So you implied by it, the myth.

Otherwise I don't see why you would mention it.

Seriously dude, one day you will learn you aren't always right, and sometimes you can step back and go "sorry, my bad"

anyway, not to detract, if you want to play games, get windows 7.

If you don't care about that, or as many sold software packages, download a linux distro for free.

Ubuntu is a good distro for a beginner, I've been looking into Debian lately myself though.