I was thinking about it, and a lot of people kept wanting to install Home Basic, or Starter, on their netbooks etc. Now if my understanding is correct, they're all the same install, just the avaliability of features is determined by the license. A windows anytime upgrade only takes a few minutes, as it is merely switching on features within the OS. I don't see anything in terms of performance difference either, the only issue is the price. So my question is, is there any reason NOT to run Ultimate?
No, not really. I only see advantages besides the price.. It has all the features and everything etc, doesnt consome that much more space or power from the computer either.
Yeah, thats pretty much my point. All the features are in all editions of Windows, just the software protection platform governs which ones you get, I assume.
Use other versions to conserve hard drive space and if you are running on a machine with 512mb of memory.
Any reason? One might be if they obtained legit keys for the Pro version from a source such as ACM. (Ultimate keys not available). They could retain the keys for use later, in the event other methods later fail. Couple this with an older laptop that can not be Bios modded. Sure, you could install Ultimate, then later downgrade to Pro later if you needed to use a specific Pro key. But if Pro is already installed, it is a simpler task of changing from an OEM key to Retail.
I've already explained this: The features etc are all there you just cant use them in lower editions In Ultimate you can switch them off if you don't want them
Yeah, one might want to use Pro has it has the options of MAK, KMS (in addition to OEM:SLP, of which there's more matching BIOS:key pairs than Ultimate), plus a lot of legitimate places to get keys. Wanting to run Home basic or starter is just stupid. Particularly if you have a netbook with a SLIC 2.1 already in it. If you get an HP netbook with 7Starter, just put in HP's Pro or Ultimate key in anytime upgrade and be done with it.
@Hazar ... I agree, install Ultimate to have all features (if you don't want some features to run, just disable them). Installing the "lesser" editions because you think they will perform better if you have less ram etc, is not the case ... all editions require the same basic minimum hardware requirements to perform. So many folks insisting on installing Win7 with "512mb" ram etc. are kidding themselves ... it won't run, it will walk. Folks should just upgrade ram ... memory sticks not very expensive these days. Install Ultimate every time.
I don't want allot of those features available to my kids. Sometimes the simpler you can make it the better things will work out in the long run. Oh, and the premium key was cheaper.
As few as possible, one is 5 the other is disabled. DirectX support for games, mozilla with addblock and noscript, Parental controls with live essentials web filtering, an old version of powerdvd that works well, virtual clone drive, lots of hard drive space to hold images. Someone really needs to make a kid friendly GUI. I realize that most features can be shut off but I find Premium to be a better place to start.
It isn't a matter of abuse, examples would be my 4 year old telling me to "fix the castle game", the castle game turned out to be MSE, Disabling right click on the mouse for young kids, removing media center, backup, access to printers, control panel, all these things that popup and get in the kids way of using his PC the way he needs to. Gets a little old closing windows and dialog boxes that get in the way. None of this is really a version specific issue, it is just that Premium has less to disable and he will never need the more expensive licence for windows 7. By the time windows 8, 9 or 10 comes out he will probably be ready for more functionality. Another issue is this, I use ultimate but many of the ultimate features don't get used because I a third party version works better, disk imaging for example.
hmm, ultimate edition has applocker, i would assume that it would be better to use ultimate to get more protection for kids by locking out certain apps from them. i thought that the win7 pro would run faster than win7 ultimate, but on 2 identical netbooks i saw no difference in speed between win7pro and win7ultimate
Ofcourse there's no difference in performance. Its still the same OS (with the same requirements) but with more features (altho all features are in "lower" versions, you just cant activate them).
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL That's not what I meant. All features are in all editions its just which license you have unlocks them so all editions are just versions of Ultimate with features restricted