W7 Pro - Ultimate

[Chan]

Looked through recent pages but didn't see any answer,

Going to be getting W7 shortly, for entertainment use (aka gaming/DVD etc) which is recommended?

Can get the OEM Professional for £100 vs £140 for Ultimate (64-bit) but unless theres any performance advantages don't want to giving microsoft any more than necessary!

[Singh400]

Stick with Professional mate, Ultimate is a waste of money unless you can get it for free or really cheap.

[0iD]

+1 on that.

Ultimate is prettymuch a waste of money unless you really need the minor additional features it has.

[CaptainCrash]

I'd have thought even Professional was unnecessary for your purposes to be honest - why not get Home Premium and save a few more quid?

[dirky]

check out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...e/default.aspx

main thing for ultimate is bitlocker, which is easily replaced by free alternatives
main thing for prof is xp mode and rdp

[0iD]

XP mode is handy if you need to use lagacy software for any reason

[Chan]

XP mode is handy if you need to use lagacy software for any reason

Yes, thats basically why I was deciding between pro or ult, looks like pro it is.

thanks!

[Singh400]

XP mode is handy if you need to use lagacy software for any reason

I've got Ultimate and the only time I've used WXPM was just to test it out. Worked fine, but every app I used on XP works fine on Windows 7.

[smargh]

I use* Ultimate Win 7 with XP Mode for just Office 2003. Works fine. The only quirks I've noticed are that printer sharing sucks in terms of drivers if the host is 64bit - I gave up after 20 minutes of messing with 'additional drivers' trying to get my Laserjet 4100 to connect to the shared network printer. Eventually I settled with changing the network connection to bridged & did it as you would any regular TCP/IP printer. Also, you can for example associate .xls files on the host to the XP Mode published app, but the first instance of double-clicking causes an error saying that the "the virtual application could not be found" with the subsequent retry working fine.

New Technet subs are around £213.

[* - I use my technet subscription for testing only, of course]

[Bugbait]

As above, just get Pro. I use Ultimate because it doesn't cost me any more than Pro. Really no other reason.

[barry2811]

Yes, thats basically why I was deciding between pro or ult, looks like pro it is.

thanks!

You can use XP Mode on Home Premium if you already have an XP license spare. Just install Virtual PC and install your licensed XP in the VM before installing the integration features and the XP mode plugin for the VM.

I used a spare OEM XP license and it worked fine with full integration to the Win7 start menu and everything else.