Greetings: I plan to purchase Window 7 family pack to install on my 2 desktop and one laptop. Assuming that I want to upgrade to Win 7 Pro or Ultimate in case some of my XP Pro programs won't work with Win 7. Do I have to purchase each upgrade individually or I can go by with just one upgrade? Your input is greatly appreciated.
While you can convert any Win 7 retail DVD into whatever version you want, (i.e. pro, ultimate, home etc) you will be limited by the keys you get with the family pack purchase. Those will be retail keys limited to the version you purchase, such that if you get the home premium pack then even if you install pro or ultimate the keys won't validate. As for XP apps not running under Win 7, my experience has been every program I've used, even old win 2000 legacy programs run better under 7 than vista or even XP without using the Windows 7 XP virtual mode of Ultimate or Pro. take care
Thanks for your input. After installing the home premium version on all three pc; if I want to upgrade two PC to ultimate version, do I need to purchase two upgrades or one upgrade will work on two pc?
Your best approach would be if you are going the family pack route would be after installing home premium on all your machines would be to use the Windows Anytime upgrade option on the machines you want to upgrade to Ultimate and use the OEM:SLIP method to activate them. Search the forums for the procedure to do this. Were you to purchase upgrade keys from Microsoft they would charge you for EACH Ultimate upgraded machine as there are no family packs except home premium. Thus buying the family packs in that case does not give you any cost savings at all and would not be recommended if cost is your aim. As I said before however, for the majority of users there is no benefit to Pro or Ultimate except to say they have it take care
You cannnot upgrade from retail using oem:slp method. If pwangdel had slic 2.1 in bios he wouldn't even need to but familly pack to start with.
Thank you all for your valuable input. I will go with the family pack and don't bother with either Pro or Ultimate then. Do you happen to know if this upgrade will work if I don't have the original OEM XP key? I bought 2 used desktops a couple years back and I don't see any XP OEM key label outside the case. May the coming year bring you and yours family health and happiness.