Which Windows 7 version to buy?

[Clayton]

I was looking at the windows 7 upgrades and there are 3 versions, Windows Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional , and Windows 7 Ultimate. They all feature the 32 and 64 bit products together. Those of you that have windows 7, which do you reccommend and why? Reading about them I am not sure what the more expensive version offers you.

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, you won't go wrong with Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. After Microsoft got a lot of bad press with Vista Basic, they decided that even their most basic OS (Home Premium) would still be full-featured. And with the Anytime Upgrade feature, you can easily move up a tier if you later feel the need.

The bigger question is 32- or 64-bit. 64-bit is clearly an investment in the future of computer -- and an automatic choice if you're using professional software (like the CS4 programs). The jury is still out on Premiere Elements 8 on W7/64 though. A number of people seem to be having problems with it. Though the recent fix for Premiere Elements 8 seems to have fixed a lot of problems.

I guess the question is, What do you plan to run on it, Clayton?

[Clayton]

Well, I bought a new 300 GB raptor to install Window 7 on for a dual boot systemm, since I have XP now and am not ready to wipe the drive. I plan to install the 64 bit version and test things out on it (PE8 to start with). I have CS3 now but may go to CS5. Anyway I want to be prepared. I have 4 GB ram and have ordered 4 more. I just wasn't sure of the differences between the versions, but it looks like I can get the home edition and upgrade if I deem necessary.

[Steve Grisetti]

Sounds like a great plan!

Here's Microsoft's not-very-helpful explanation of the differences.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... ts/compare

But you'll also note that there's not a wide range in the prices either. So if you do decide in the future that you need the "BitBlocker" software, it won't cost you a fortune to upgrade to the Ultimate version from even Home Premium.

[Bob]

Actually, there are 6 versions. Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. But, as a consumer in the U.S., you can only purchase Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. Microsoft has estimated that Home Premium will have the lion's share of the consumer market, followed by Professional. I agree with that assessment.

Each edition contains the features of the edition before it with some additional features to target a specific audience.

There are two main differences between Home Premium and Professional. The first is that Professional is intended for the user that needs to connect to their business network and contains additional features to allow more secure connections to the business network and allow backups to the company if the company provides that capability. The second is that Professional supports "XP Mode". XP Mode is not the same thing as running a program in XP compatiblity mode, which Home Premium can do. XP mode is a separate download that you install that allows running Windows XP as a virtual operating system under Windows 7. It was intended to help businesses transition to Windows 7 by running their legacy business applications under a virtual Windows XP. It doesn't fully support all graphic capabilities or hardware. So, not all XP programs will run under XP Mode.

Ultimate contains everything in Home Premium and Professional and, in addition, adds BitLocker. BitLocker encrypts your hard drives. Ultimate also allows you to change the Windows 7 operating system menus, prompts, etc. to another language.

So, to recap, Home Premium will satisfy most users. If you need to use "XP Mode" or are a work at home user that needs to connect to the company network (and the company is using a Microsoft network compatible remote user product), you need Professional. If you want to encrypt your entire hard drive(s) or you want to change the OS prompts and messages to another language, you need Ultimate.

I went with Home Premium and have been very happy with it. I'm also using dual boot.

FYI, If you are going to dual boot, check the order that the drives are recognized by the bios. You should place your new drive in a port ahead of the XP drive. If you don't, the Windows 7 install will place the master boot record and the boot manager on the XP drive instead of the Windows 7 drive. That will make things more difficult for you if you should ever want to remove or format the XP drive.

[Clayton]

FYI, If you are going to dual boot, check the order that the drives are recognized by the bios. You should place your new drive in a port ahead of the XP drive. If you don't, the Windows 7 install will place the master boot record and the boot manager on the XP drive instead of the Windows 7 drive. That will make things more difficult for you if you should ever want to remove or format the XP drive.

Just so I understand you, do you mean after the drive is installed, go into bios and set the new drive to boot first and then install windows 7 on it. Is this what you mean by install in a port ahead of the xp drive?

[Bob]

No. I'm talking about the physical order that the drives are plugged into the motherboard. If you check your motherboard manual, there should be a diagram of the motherboard which identifies the Sata ports. On your ASUS board I think these are numbered 1 through 6, my motherboard numbers them from 0 to 5. The manual should also tell you which ports to use for a boot disk.

When I installed Windows 7 on my system the first time, I had the xp boot disk in port 0 and the new blank disk in port 1. I installed Windows 7 on the new disk. When finished, I found that the installer had modified the master boot record of the xp boot disk and placed the boot manager there as well. There was no master boot record on the new disk. I had to boot from the old disk. When I booted off the old disk, I got the boot manager screen which allowed me to choose whether to boot Windows 7 or boot the older Windows version. That worked fine.

That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be able to change the boot order in the bios to select which os to boot. (I also had a Vista boot drive which was my primary OS at the time.) I couldn't do that since the Windows 7 disk had no master boot record. I also wanted to be able to reformat the old xp disk when I was through with it. I couldn't do that if the boot manager and master boot record were there. So I restored the old boot disk from my backup image, Switched the old boot disk to port 1 and the new disk to port 0, and redid the install.

This time, the new disk had Windows 7 with a master boot record and the original xp disk was untouched. The boot manager did not pick up the old OS though. It always booted into Windows 7. I had to modify the bios boot order if I wanted to boot into one of my other systems. I could have edited the Windows 7 configuration to add the other disks to the boot manager so I would get the selection menu, but I chose not to since I would seldom be booting into the old system once the migration was complete and would eventually reformat the xp disk. When I was finished, I set the bios boot order to boot from the Windows 7 disk.

You are probably using the default SATA mapping as IDE. That may affect the order of disk drive enumeration. If so, your results may be different than mine. You probably won't have any problems, but you should be aware of the behavior of the installer so you won't be surprised.

[Clayton]

Thanks Bob for the explanation. I haven't installed my new drive yet and haven't received my windows 7. I will post back with results. I like the ability to select the drive from a boot manager though. Since at first I will probably be using XP mostly and my transition will be slow. This would be easier than having to go back anf forth to the bios. Expect some more questions from me as it progresses.

[Neale]

FYI, If you are going to dual boot, check the order that the drives are recognized by the bios. You should place your new drive in a port ahead of the XP drive. If you don't, the Windows 7 install will place the master boot record and the boot manager on the XP drive instead of the Windows 7 drive. That will make things more difficult for you if you should ever want to remove or format the XP drive.

When I was setting up dual boot for my Vista based machine with W7 Ultimate I just could not get a dual boot menu.

When querying on an MS forum the answer I received was that "if more than one drive is present W7 will, for security, automatically install to the drive not already containing an OS". I think this may be because of the additional security available to 'Ultimate'. The fix was simple - disconnect the second drive during the installation.

[Neale]

I was looking at the windows 7 upgrades

Do you have children in full time education and might they use the machine you are looking to upgrade?

If so you are likely to be eligible for the MS educational discount scheme. In the UK this meant that I could buy Microsoft Office Enterprise for $45 and W7 Ultimate upgrade for $90. Being that we always get ripped off in the UK I expect the US scheme to be even cheaper.

Note that for the W7 upgrade I had to pick 32-bit or 64-bit - you don't get both. But the 'upgrade' disk does allow a complete clean install.

[Bob]

When I was setting up dual boot for my Vista based machine with W7 Ultimate I just could not get a dual boot menu.

When querying on an MS forum the answer I received was that "if more than one drive is present W7 will, for security, automatically install to the drive not already containing an OS".

Security has nothing to do with it.

Windows 7 always intalls a master boot record (MBR) and a boot manager, but where (i.e. which drive) it installs them depends on the number of drives present and their enumeration order. If Windows 7 installs to a drive lower in the enumeration order than another drive with an OS, the MBR and boot manager install on the Windows 7 drive and there is no dual boot menu. If Windows 7 installs to a drive higher in the enumeration order, the MBR and boot manager will install on the other OS drive and you will get a dual boot menu.

Windows 7 does not use the boot.ini file to contain boot information, that is now replaced by the Boot Configuration Data store which can be edited by the BCDEdit command. When booting, the boot manager uses the BCD to determine whether to display a boot menu or not. If only one OS is defined in the BCD store, you won't get a menu. To get a dual boot menu all you need to do is use BCDEDIT to add the necessary entries to the BCD store. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that describe how to do that.

Windows 7 tries to simplify the installation process, but it does some funny things. I used the custom install option so I could control which drive would be used for the installation -- I had four drives, one with XP another with Vista, and two non-OS drives.

[Clayton]

I was looking at the windows 7 upgrades

Do you have children in full time education and might they use the machine you are looking to upgrade?

No, no one else who qualifies.

Windows 7 does not use the boot.ini file to contain boot information, that is now replaced by the Boot Configuration Data store which can be edited by the BCDEdit command. When booting, the boot manager uses the BCD to determine whether to display a boot menu or not. If only one OS is defined in the BCD store, you won't get a menu. To get a dual boot menu all you need to do is use BCDEDIT to add the necessary entries to the BCD store. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that describe how to do that.

Windows 7 tries to simplify the installation process, but it does some funny things. I used the custom install option so I could control which drive would be used for the installation -- I had four drives, one with XP another with Vista, and two non-OS drives.

I will probably try the BCDEdit method. This will be my sixth drive with only one with OS (XP).