gHacks technology news » windows xp upgrade http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 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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