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For the home user/gamer, is there any real advantage for Ultimate over Professional or Home Premium, such as security and performance? Or is Ultimate just 'everything Pro/Home Premium have plus the Enterprise programs, for the individual user'? I of course recognize the need for separate antivirus/antimalware, but I'd rather get the right version as the first step.

See the comparison chart on Wikipedia. Consider your needs (and wants) and then choose.

Thanks for the link, hadn't seen it earlier. In that case, has anyone heard of any gaming performance decreases due to the Enterprise/Ultimate stuff, or are they necessary for greater security compared to Home Premium/Professional without being actively used?

Edward Yee wrote:Thanks for the link, hadn't seen it earlier. In that case, has anyone heard of any gaming performance decreases due to the Enterprise/Ultimate stuff, or are they necessary for greater security compared to Home Premium/Professional without being actively used?

No, right now the choice is for the home user do you want XP mode or not. If you do you need Professional, if not then go with Home Premium. Enterprise/Ultimate stuff if for those who have their own home servers. And not like running a second linux box to host your own Teamspeak/Vent server or maybe a L4D server. But someone who has as noted several computers that need to talk to each other and not in the home network setup but as in business or server based side.

*Edit
On XP mode, it is useful from time to time, very much so with certain applications. I run Win 7 Professional version myself and despite having XP installed on the HD, there's never been a time when I needed to boot into XP to run something. At current prices online OEM Home Premium and OEM Professional is 30$ to 40$. Get the OEM version always with Windows as the difference between retail and oem is normally a 100$ manual and box. Seriously Home Premium OEM is 100$ online and Retail its 200$. All you get with retail is a pretty box and a very skimpy manual. You can get the manual online free and if you want something pretty, I'm sure you can find something nice with the 100$ you saved. Go buy a painting, support your local artists.

Mr Bean wrote:No, right now the choice is for the home user do you want XP mode or not. If you do you need Professional, if not then go with Home Premium. Enterprise/Ultimate stuff if for those who have their own home servers. And not like running a second linux box to host your own Teamspeak/Vent server or maybe a L4D server. But someone who has as noted several computers that need to talk to each other and not in the home network setup but as in business or server based side.

But does all that extra (for the home user) stuff end up as bloatware in terms of reducing performance with games/high-def video? (i.e. video editting)

At current prices online OEM Home Premium and OEM Professional is 30$ to 40$. Get the OEM version always with Windows as the difference between retail and oem is normally a 100$ manual and box. Seriously Home Premium OEM is 100$ online and Retail its 200$. All you get with retail is a pretty box and a very skimpy manual. You can get the manual online free and if you want something pretty, I'm sure you can find something nice with the 100$ you saved. Go buy a painting, support your local artists.

Did not know this, thanks a million! My dad's wary of OEM hardware after an OEM DVD burner seemed to no longer read discs, but we saved about $40 after it turned out to be a faulty hardware connection. Glad to know that the OEM difference is that great price-wise.

EDIT: I should note for FWIW, that computer would have 32-bit, mine I would want 64-bit for. Any problems for file/printer-sharing?

Edward Yee wrote:But does all that extra (for the home user) stuff end up as bloatware in terms of reducing performance with games/high-def video? (i.e. video editting)

No it's more control, lots more control that you can use, not extra programs running in the background. Again server/dozens of computers level of control.

Edward Yee wrote: Did not know this, thanks a million! My dad's wary of OEM hardware after an OEM DVD burner seemed to no longer read discs, but we saved about $40 after it turned out to be a faulty hardware connection. Glad to know that the OEM difference is that great price-wise.

EDIT: I should note for FWIW, that computer would have 32-bit, mine I would want 64-bit for. Any problems for file/printer-sharing?

64 Bit backwards compatibility with 32 bit is excellent since it's programs not data where the 32/64 bit thing comes in. I have two external hard drives one an old FAT32 formatted 80 gig external from my Windows 98 SE days which is just a temporary A/V storage while my newer 250 gig FAT drive both work fine with Windows 7. I am running Windows 7 64 Bit Professional at home at the moment and everything works fine with it. Windows had yet to crash, blue screen or have any other major issues in two months of usage.

If anyone's interested, and a student at a US college, you can get Home Premium or Professional for $30 here: http://www.win741.com/

Mr Bean wrote:

Edward Yee wrote:But does all that extra (for the home user) stuff end up as bloatware in terms of reducing performance with games/high-def video? (i.e. video editting)

No it's more control, lots more control that you can use, not extra programs running in the background. Again server/dozens of computers level of control.

Oh thank gosh. On my XP Pro SP2 install the bloatware is enormous, and without the "description" column in the Vista/7 versions of Task Manager I have no idea what most of them are.

64 Bit backwards compatibility with 32 bit is excellent since it's programs not data where the 32/64 bit thing comes in. I have two external hard drives one an old FAT32 formatted 80 gig external from my Windows 98 SE days which is just a temporary A/V storage while my newer 250 gig FAT drive both work fine with Windows 7. I am running Windows 7 64 Bit Professional at home at the moment and everything works fine with it. Windows had yet to crash, blue screen or have any other major issues in two months of usage.

Sounds perfect, thanks for the advice. I understand that Windows 7 networking doesn't interface (i.e. file/printer-sharing) with Windows XP, glad to know that 32-bit/64-bit also isn't an issue.

Edward Yee wrote:Sounds perfect, thanks for the advice. I understand that Windows 7 networking doesn't interface (i.e. file/printer-sharing) with Windows XP, glad to know that 32-bit/64-bit also isn't an issue.

It can do old style file/printer sharing, it'll just grumble about it and want to use homegroups instead.

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to make the two work together just yet, though Windows XP/Vista can do file-sharing just fine without changes.

The price difference between OEM and retail non-upgrade versions is indeed not worth it.
However, the difference between OEM and retail upgrade versions is.

My own Windows 7 install was straight off of a retail upgrade disc ($50 because I pre-ordered it in June) onto a newly assembled PC.

I thought I'd have to resort to the double install or registry hacks in order to make it work, but as Paul Thurott noted in his blog 'it just worked' and activated with no problems on the first try.

The advantage to retail upgrades is that they come with DVD's for both the 32bit and 64bit versions.
OEM versions only come with either the 32 or the 64bit edition.

Something else to consider is that if you own a major brand PC (Dell, HP, etc.) and it's new enough to have the SLIC 2.1 encoded in the BIOS, you can install Win 7 any version from an SLP disc for that brand and not worry about activation.

A buddy of mine bought a Dell laptop that had Vista preinstalled but came with the coupon for a free upgrade to Windows 7.
His laptop had the SLIC 2.1 on it, so he installed Win 7 from a Dell SLP disc he downloaded and used his upgrade key to install it on his homebrew desktop.