Quick question about Windows 7 "XP Mode" Ultimate or Pro version???

J

Johnysmoke

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Hello All,

I kinda need a little guidance or advise. I am about to buy Windows 7 in a couple of days and i can't decide which version to get. I'm currently running Windows 7 RC 64 Bit and have been for the past 6 or so months and it rocks. But March 1st is creeping up fast. I am very happy with the RC and i am trying to find out if i need to spend the extra money for Ultimate or not. No matter which version i get it will definitely have to be the 64 bit version because of CS3 and 8GB ram.

Can someone please tell me the main difference between the Ultimate and Professional and Home Premium versions? Also is there any real need for XP Mode? I have been running Windows 7 RC for a long time and all of my programs work just fine on the Windows 7 RC. As far as i know i haven't even used "XP Mode". I would really like to get the Ultimate version but so far i can not tell the difference and i would love to be able to save the extra money for some other goodies if at all possible.

I am not much of a gamer. I mainly use this machine for Photoshop CS3, Video Editing, PP Photography work, and general use Etc. I have never even tried Bitlocker and i can only speak English, if any of that helps. Oh yeah, also does anybody know where to get the best deal on Windows 7 OEM at the moment? zipzoomfly.com has Ultimate 64bit for 164.99 after Rebate.

Thank You very much in advance,
Jason
 
The only thing Ultimate offers over Professional is language packs. If you need your OS gui to be in another language, buy Ultimate, if not Professional has everything else.

The difference between Home Premium and Professional is allowing the PC to attach to a domain network and also Professional supports XPM, which is a virtual machine to help run programs that are compatible on XP, but don't run on 7, to run on 7. I've used it a little bit to play around with Nero 6. The thing I don't like about XPM is it doesn't offer cd burning to a virtual drive.

I personally feel that Home premium is good for around 90% of Home users, Professional about 9% and Ultimate 1%. Obviously if it is a computer to use at a business, you would use Professional or Enterprise edition.
 
get Pro, as said only 1 reason to get ultimate.

hardcore gaming, i heard the XP mode is actually very slow, also, unless your playing very old game, your games will perform fine under win7 directly.
 
Thanks a lot for the quick response. Thanks to you guys Professional it shall be and 40 bucks saved to go towards a new video card or some lens filters:D. I certainly don't need the language packs because English is the only language i can speak. You all made several valid points that made it much easier for me to make up my mind. Thank You very much,
Jason
 
The only thing Ultimate offers over Professional is language packs.
Click to expand...
That's not true. There's also Multi-Mon Remote Desktop (which I find quite useful but may not be for everyone), Remote Desktop with Aero, Windows Media Player audio redirection (which is quite useful), Bitlocker, and VHD booting. Do most people need Ultimate? No. But it DOES offer some compelling features over Pro as opposed to just language packs.
 
MrAgmoore said:
As a hardcore gamer, XP mode would be vital for me.
Click to expand...

Sorry to burst your bubble but XPM is not meant for gaming. It is mean to run general / business software that would otherwise not run in Win 7.

Looks like it's Home Premium for you.
 
MrAgmoore said:
As a hardcore gamer, XP mode would be vital for me.
Click to expand...

Wrong:

octoberasian said:
Windows XP Mode DOES NOT HAVE 3D ACCELERATION WHATSOEVER.
Click to expand...

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1483348

In rare cases, you might need to use the Windows XP compatibility mode (which you set in the .exe properties window and comes with Home Premium and up at least), but so far I have not had to do that with Win7 64bit, even on games as old as Planescape Torment.
 
Arainach said:
That's not true. There's also Multi-Mon Remote Desktop (which I find quite useful but may not be for everyone), Remote Desktop with Aero, Windows Media Player audio redirection (which is quite useful), Bitlocker, and VHD booting. Do most people need Ultimate? No. But it DOES offer some compelling features over Pro as opposed to just language packs.
Click to expand...

source on that? far as i know only things that Ultimate have over pro is bitlocker and UI language packs
 
dont see any thing in there about the one thing that sounded good Aero Remotedesktop
just bit locker and ap locker and some enterprise level stuff i dont need
 
XP Mode is not for any modern gaming. It would have to be for some old Windows 98 game or something that still ran on XP but not Vista/7.

I'm going to repeat what others have said. XPM is NOT the same as XP Comaptibility mode. XPM was a stupid name for this reason, there's to much confusion about the differences. XPM is a virtual machine and it consumes a lot of memory. Initial configuration of software means working within the VM. Once you install the applications, you can access them through your Windows 7 Start Menu/Virtual Machines/XPM and they launch as if they were part of 7, however the VM is running in the background, silent to the user.
 
MrAgmoore said:
I'm still using Windows XP but the second link helped me figure out which version I would need:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions


As a hardcore gamer, XP mode would be vital for me.
Click to expand...

I have yet to find a game that just won't work on windows7 64-bit, unless it has 16bit installer. and even then, there are workarounds.

XP mode is not meant for gaming, it doesn't even have 3d acceleration.

If you want to run 3d games on a virtual machine then Virtualbox or vmware are better alternatives.
 
Home Premium can not be used a RDP host. In other words, you can not connect to Home Premium with RDP. It can only be used as a client connecting to other RDP hosts.
 
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