gHacks technology news » windows 7 professional http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Windows 7 Editions 1: Windows 7 Home Premium http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/24/windows-7-editions-1-windows-7-home-premium/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/24/windows-7-editions-1-windows-7-home-premium/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:43:01 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=20463 Windows 7 Home Premium is one of three Windows 7 editions that Microsoft has designed for the mid to high end market segment (the other two are Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate). Home Premium is the first Windows 7 edition that comes with all basic features included (Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows 7 Starter both miss certain features like Windows 7 Aero, Windows Media Center or Windows Touch). This edition does lack several features that Microsoft has reserved for the more expensive editions Professional and Ultimate.

It is usually not that easy to evaluate all the different editions to find a suitable one. Even users who buy a pre-build PC system should make sure that the included operating systems meets all their demands. Windows 7 Home Premium’s main advantage is its price and the fact that it offers all features that Microsoft would consider essential. Here is a small overview of those features:

windows 7 home premium

Windows 7 Home Premium features that Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows 7 Starter do not have:

  • Full Windows Aero support: The graphical user interface and theme for most Windows 7 editions.
  • Home Group (Create & Join): Easy network creation (the basic editions can only join but not create)
  • Multi-Touch (touch capabilities for the PC)
  • Premium Games (Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, and Internet Spades.)
  • Windows Media Center

There are on the other hand features that are not included in Windows 7 Home Premium. Those are only available in the higher priced editions:

  • Backup and Restore Center (backup to networks)
  • Windows Server Domain support.
  • Remote Desktop Server support.
  • Location aware printing: Automatically changes the default printer based on the location of the user.
  • Encrypting the file system
  • Presentation mode: Presentation Mode is found in the Mobility Centre (Windows Key + X) and lets you control your machine’s behavior while you are giving presentations
  • AppLocker (Ultimate only): Helps eliminate unwanted and unknown applications within an organization’s network
  • BitLocker Drive Encryption (Ultimate only): Hard drive and removable media encryption
  • BranchCache Distributed Cache (Ultimate only): BranchCache offers the potential of being able to access large files stored on servers much faster.
  • DirectAccess (Ultimate only): Utilises IPv6-over-IPsec to encrypt comms over the internet between remote workers and the DirectAccess server
  • Multilingual User Interface Pack (Ultimate only): Ability to switch to other interface languages.
  • Virtual Hard Disk Booting (Ultimate only): Create a virtual hard disk image, install an operating system and boot it.

Finally there are also hardware limits in place. Windows 7 Home Premium supports a maximum of 16 Gigabytes of computer memory. This limit is raised to 192 Megabytes in Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. Windows 7 Home Premium seems to be the natural choice for most home users unless one or multiple of the features only included in Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate are needed to operate the computer system.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/24/windows-7-editions-1-windows-7-home-premium/feed/ 0 UK And US Students: Buy Windows 7 For $30 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/18/uk-and-us-students-buy-windows-7-for-30/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/18/uk-and-us-students-buy-windows-7-for-30/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:31:58 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=16463 Microsoft is keen on promoting their upcoming operating system Windows 7 in the best possible way. What better way is there than to hand it out to the decision makers of tomorrow for a price that is closer to zero than the price non-students have to pay for the operating system. Students from the UK and US can now buy one copy of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional for $30 (UK students have to pay 30 pounds instead).

Students eager to buy Windows 7 for this price qualify if they have a valid email address from their educational institution and if they are enrolled in coursework (proof may be required). Microsoft has setup a simple site for US and UK students to enter their email address. An email will be send to the entered email address with information if it is eligible for the reduced price.

US students can apply right away while UK students need to wait until September 30 before the form is activated on the website. It seems that the number of licenses is – again – limited which means they are served on a first come first served basis. Microsoft has intentions to provide the service to students from other countries like Germany, France, Canada or Australia as well starting from October 22 (that’s the Windows 7 release date).

It is also unclear why Microsoft is offering both Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional for the same price tag as there is virtually no reason to pick the Home Premium version which comes with less features than the professional edition (unless upgrades are an issue).

Students from various countries (including the US, UK and France) can furthermore buy a copy of Microsoft Office for $59 over at the Ultimate Steal website.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/18/uk-and-us-students-buy-windows-7-for-30/feed/ 3 Windows 7 Price, Upgrades And Preorders http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/25/windows-7-price-upgrades-and-preorders/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/25/windows-7-price-upgrades-and-preorders/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:02:19 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=13864 windows 7Microsoft has finally revealed information about the pricing scheme and upgrade options for their upcoming operating system Windows 7. Many websites have already reported about the prices and how they compare to Windows Vista. In short, most editions of Windows 7 will be cheaper than comparable Windows Vista editions. Most notably are the Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate editions which will sell for $40 and $80 less than their Windows Vista counterparts.

The Windows 7 upgrade editions will save the user the same amount of money. Here is a table that is outlining the prices of Windows 7 and Windows Vista editions:

windows 7

The price for the Windows 7 editions with a full basic feature set range from $200 for Windows 7 Home Premium to $320 for Windows 7 Ultimate. More exciting than this is a pre-order program for Windows 7 that is offering Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional at greatly reduced prices. Users who have the intention to buy Windows 7 should make use of the pre-order program as it will make Windows 7 Home Premium available for $50 and Windows 7 Professional for $100 which means that buyers save $150 when pre-ordering Windows 7 Home Premium and $200 for Windows 7 Professional.

The price is similar in all Windows 7 launch countries. Take a look at the table below for all information about pre-order prices:

windows 7 preorder

Opportunities to pre-order Windows 7 will start on June 26 for users from the United States, Canada and Japan while users from the UK, France and Germany will have to wait until July 15. The pre-order period lasts until July 11 for US and Canadian users, July 5 for Japanese users and August 14 for users from the UK, Germany and France. Pre-orders will be available in the official Microsoft store but also at selected retailers such as Amazon.

Microsoft has also revealed another interesting aspect of the launch of Windows 7 in Europe. You may have heard that Microsoft is going to offer Windows 7 without Internet Explorer in Europe. Windows 7 E will be sold exclusively in Europe and one of the side-effects is that Europeans will not be able to upgrade to Windows 7. That’s right, no Windows 7 upgrades will be sold in Europe. But that’s good news apparently as Microsoft has made the decision to sell Windows 7 full versions with the upgrade price tag in Europe.

The best time to get a legit version of Windows 7 begins tomorrow (or on July 15 if you are from Europe). Big question, will you pre-order the operating system or buy Windows 7 later? I personally think that the price is really attractive considering that you get the Home Premium edition for $50.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/06/25/windows-7-price-upgrades-and-preorders/feed/ 15 Windows 7 News http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/04/windows-7-news-2/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/04/windows-7-news-2/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:57:23 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/04/windows-7-news-2/ It has been some time since we last posted news about Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 7. Microsoft has made some important announcements in the past few days. The first big news which hit the online news sites today is that Microsoft will provide the options to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7. The term upgrade might cause some confusion as it refers to the possibility for XP users to purchase Windows 7 at reduced prices rather than allowing them to upgrade their operating system to Windows 7 which is apparently not possible. So, legit Windows XP users will be able to purchase Windows 7 at a reduced price but need to do a clean install to actually use the operating system.

The second interesting news story is that Microsoft decided to reduce the editions that Windows 7 will ship in when compared to Windows Vista. The so called edition chaos was one of the major reasons for confusion for prospective Windows Vista customers.

Windows 7 will basically be distributed as Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. There are other versions but those are designed for different markets. Windows 7 Home Premium will be the equivalent of the Windows Vista Home Premium featuring a solid set of features. Windows 7 Professional will be the successor of Windows Vista Business which includes all features of Windows 7 Home Premium plus some business features like group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities or network-based backup features.

Windows 7 Ultimate will include all features of Windows 7 Professional plus all supported language packs (something that the other editions miss and users have to pay for), BitLocker whole-drive encryption and capabilities to boot from vhd.

It basically comes down to three Windows 7 editions. It should also be noted that there are no talks yet about Windows 7 Ultimate extras, something that did not work as intended in Windows Vista as well as several users felt cheated by the lack of and quality of the extras.

Most of these information have been taken from our own Windows 7 blog which covers all the latest news about the upcoming operating system. A well visited Windows 7 Forum is available on the same site.

Do you think that those two strategic decisions by Microsoft are good ones? Will they convince Windows XP users to switch to Windows 7?

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