fishhyren's Full Review: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Full Version for ...
All the buzz right now is about Windows 7. Microsoft is talking about it, Apple is talking about it; but is it any different than Vista or XP? Let’s discuss that now. Many changes have been made to make choosing the version of Windows 7 easier. First thing you will notice is that unlike Vista’s original 9 flavors, Windows7’s US consumer market comes in 3: · Windows Home Premium · Windows Home Professional · Windows Ultimate One might be inclined to think Ultimate is the best, and naturally you want the best, but do you need Ultimate or can you get by with Home or Professional? Let’s see what the difference are shall we? Here’s a list of things Windows Home can’t do: · Cannot join a domain, so if you want to join a domain, you will need either Professional or Ultimate versions. · Cannot remotely connect to your machine using RDP. So if you plan to use RDP to connect to your machine remotely look at Pro or Ultimate. · Cannot schedule your machine to automatically backup to an external drive or attached network drive with the Home version (Again, look to Pro or Ultimate for this). · If you have older applications or devices that are no longer supported in Vista or Windows 7, you will want to purchase Pro or Ultimate to take advantage of the WindowsXP Virtual PC (more on this later).
Okay, so you need to do one of the things above, so should you use Professional or Ultimate? If you are extra concerned about the data on your machine, that you’re willing to jump through a couple extra hoops to keep it secure, then you can use BitLocker to secure your encryption with a unique key or a USB key. NOTE: If you lose this key, you WILL lose your data. To make use of BitLocker you must have the Ultimate version. If you don’t need this feature, save the extra money and get one of the other versions.
All three versions now come with Media Center and Aero so don’t be concerned with that.
What’s the difference between the 32bit and 64bit version and which should I choose? Using Windows7 will feel exactly the same whether or not you have the 32bit or the 64bit version. If you use the 32bit version you will be limited to 3.5GB of usable RAM. If your computer hardware is capable of using more than 4GB of RAM (and you plan on having more than 4GB) you will want to get the 64bit version to take advantage of that extra RAM.
What do I need to upgrade to Windows 7? The system requirements are as follows: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver If you’re unsure if your computer is capable of running Windows7 then you will want to run the Windows Upgrade Advisor which can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx
Let’s get into some of the other new features to Windows7 · You can now use a TV tuner card to watch digital cable with QAM in the clear. This means if you have a digital TV Tuner card or USB device for your computer that is capable of QAM you can now watch those channels in Media Center on Windows7 to record and watch your TV shows (This is not possible with Vista without the TV Pack upgrade). · You can run XP applications in a Virtual PC instance in Windows 7 (separate free download required). This is a little like Apple’s “Parallels” in which you can run a WindowsXP application on a copy of WindowsXP without having to make your computer boot into WindowsXP. · People who like keyboard shortcuts can rejoice! Windows 7 brings a bunch of WindowsKey shortcuts to make your experience faster! Here are just a few:
o Win Home: Clear all but the active window o Win Space: All windows become transparent so you can see through to the desktop o Win Up arrow: Maximize the active window o Win Down arrow: Minimize the window/Restore the window if it's maximized o Win Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor (If you've got dual monitors, adding Shift to the mix (e.g., Win Shift Right arrow) will move the window to the adjacent monitor.) o Win T: Focus and scroll through items on the taskbar. o Win P: Adjust presentation settings for your display o Shift Click a taskbar item: Open a new instance of that application
· Along with keyboard shortcuts there are now a few mouse “gestures” that just make using Windows easier, such as: “Shake” which hides/retores all other programs but the one you are controlling.
· Zoom in and out on the screen with Win ( /-): Zoom in/out If you use your computer on your TV, you can now easily zoom in and out to help you see the small text on a website or even inside of a program. The Task bar is now cleaner by collapsing programs in the bar in a clever, clean manner. Now you quickly see a pop-out window preview of what programs are running, making it much easier to find a specific window you might be looking for.
The installation: You can upgrade from Vista to Windows 7… BUT* You can upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 but you can only go from like versions. For instance, you can only upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate if you had Vista Ultimate. You also can only upgrade to Windows 7 64bit versions if you were running a 64bit version of Vista. If upgrading doesn’t sound like an option, don’t worry, the fresh install is fairly painless! I opted to do a fresh install because I like to get rid of any clutter or outdated programs I have and start clean. Installation took approximately 30 minutes on my 2.26 Intel Quad core 4GB RAM, 1.5TB RAID 5 HDD machine. The first screen during install just sits there, with nothing but a blue background and a mouse cursor. It has not frozen! It may sit there for up to 10 minutes appearing as if has frozen, but it hasn’t. The rest of the installation went smoothly and quickly!
After it completes its installation restarts the first thing I realized? No driver prompts!! The Experience: Windows 7 did a great job of detecting and installing my drivers with no interaction from me! My video card, network card, and sound card all worked great right away! After a couple small windows updates I was fully ready to go! Everything seems snappy and quick. Restarts appear faster and everything just seems to work!
I noticed the User Access Control or UAC (That annoying pop-up screen asking you to OK every system action) can be more finely controlled on what it bugs you about! Items seem to be more quickly indexed for searches in Window 7 than they were on Vista.
Wordpad now opens DocX (MS Word 2007) Documents! That's right, you don't have to go out and buy Word if you only casually get emails or attachments from friends/family that are written in Word. This is a nice feature! Email program and messenger, WHERE ARE YOU? You will notice there is no Windows Mail or equivalent when you install Windows 7. This is not a big deal and keeps bloat and clutter down. If you need this, you can still download from Microsoft if you use one. It also asks gives you the option now of making Gmail or Hotmail your default mail client for links. AWESOME. MSN/Live messenger is the same (must be downloaded).
And that WindowsXP mode I mentioned earlier? After 500MB download from Microsoft I was able to boot into a virtual machine instance of WindowsXP. I was then able to use a webcam I hadn’t been able to use in years since I was on WindowsXP! It was great to see how Microsoft integrated this to TRULY make old applications and hardware compatible (I should note I could only use the webcam in the Virtual Machine instance and not in the Windows 7 side). Overall the Windows 7 experience is HANDS DOWN better than Vista and more friendly and easier to use than WindowsXP! I think they did something right with this OS!
With Windows 7 Professional, fewer walls stand between you and your success. You can run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and ...More at Staples
Learn more about this software. Discover new levels of productivity with Windows 7 Professional. This multifaceted new operating system boasts an arra...More at Best Buy ®
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