Windows 7 - Which Flavor?

I am planning to go ahead and purchase Windows 7. The two editions I am considering is Home Premium or Professional.

Professional has the Backup Utility I have been using in XP Pro for quite a few years. I have five DVD's full of backups that I can go back if I need. Professional also has an XP compatibility mode. I assume this is for picky software?

I have Acronis True Image that I purchased, but rarely used. This would give future backup ability to Home Premium, but my old backup sets would be useless. At this point, I could probably just scrap them. I've not looked at any of them in over a year.

I downloaded and ran the Compatibility Adviser from Microsoft. Only one piece of hardware I cannot use: An older ATI TV Wonder Pro. It's like eight years old, at least. I can replace that. Some of my older software it didn't like: Acrobat 6, PowerDVD 5, and a few other lesser products.

My video is onboard. nVidia GeForce 7050. I also have an nVidia GeForce 8400 GS adapter that I do not currently have installed. The adapter has 512 MB of video RAM. The onboard video borrows from the system RAM, I would guess. I don't know how much RAM it uses.

So, I am looking for comments and suggestions...


:)

My laptop came with Win 7 Professional installed! Need to buy the disks though if I want to installed it on my pc. I suggest buying Professional if your system can handle it.

3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM
500 GB SATA HD
Lite-On SATA DVD Drive


That's the highlights. The system uses 250 MB of RAM for it's own use. This may be the video I mentioned.

I'd go with Pro. If you want to build websites you have IIS7 in Pro. That's probably not in Home Premium. I have Windows 7 Pro and like it. Much more trouble free than the launch of Vista.

I'd go with regular instead of the bold font. And at least Pro Windows ;)

The Pro, it'll cost a bit more but you have the extra features that help you in the long run. Windows 7 is pretty good with drivers, it was able to pick up drivers on a 5 year old laptop so it should pick yours up as well. Even if it doesn't, you could head over to the NVidia site and look for the drivers there. NVidia has improved recently in terms of their drivers-for-the-latest-OSes. For example, I found this which supports your driver:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...7.45_whql.html

If you've got extra cash, get a bit more RAM for yourself. You may also want to consider going 64 bit rather than 32 bit.

IINM, you should be able to change how much RAM the onboard graphics uses in the BIOS, so have a look there.

Home Premium is great for the usual, standard user. However if you're more of a power user or a programmer, I recommend Pro or higher. In your case it sounds like Pro has more of what you need than Home Premium does.

I've decided to go with Pro. There's a little more cost, but I would rather pay that than to have problems.

This made me think about all the problems my sister has had with XP Home. I use XP Pro and didn't have any of that.

It's time to start shopping around to see what I can find.

Here's what I found:
Windows 7 Professional Full
Windows 7 Professional Upgrade

I ordered 7 Pro from TigerDirect. I have been doing business with them nearly a decade. They're relatively close by compared to other vendors so that helps with shipping costs a lot.

Now, I have to do the prep so I can wipe the HD. He's my main concern: Backup. I am almost certain the folder structure is different on 7. "My Documents" is actually C:\Documents & Settings\User Name\My Documents in XP. If this is different in 7, then I won't be able to use the Backup utility in XP.

I can use an archiver, like WinRAR or WinZip, to make sets for each folder. I have a large external USB hard drive to store them on.

I could use a little direction...

In Win7 it's C:\Users\User Name\Documents, which is different than WinXP

I don't use the backup utility, but there may be an option to tell it in Win7 that it's comming from an XP backup and it'll redirect the backup into the Win7 directory structure.

I didn't have a problem when I went from Xp to Win7 because I had everything on drive D (the OS installed on C:) and that included the My Documents and My Music folder, my Windows account had it pointing to a Documents and Music folder on d:\ instead of my user account folder in c:\ docs & settings

My Win7 account points to the same folders, respectively, on D:\ like XP did.

Okay. I see. They took the "My" off the front. This is the only one I'm concerned about getting in the right place. There's a lot in that one and a lot of subs attached. All of my other folders are nested one level below the parent (root), with subs if needed. Those are ones I created for different things. I don't like putting everything in the "document" structure. Sort of like the eggs in one basket deal.

I'm going to put the nVidia adapter card back in and remove the ATI tuner. The nVidia has a DVI connector which my monitor also has. I've got a cable here somewhere.

Take a backup of your files to some other location or an external hard drive. Windows 7 has the concept of libraries, so your 'Documents' library, for example, can point to three different folders (C:\users\storm\documents, d:\documents, e:\documents). Which in turn means that you don't have to store it in a specific place, you can store it wherever you want.

The icon you'll get in your taskbar is for libraries and it's libraries that you'll most often be going to when you need to get to your 'stuff'. I've attached a screenshot of what my libraries windows looks like (from the crappy code icon, you can see that you can also define your own libraries). Each of those libraries, when opened, enumerates files from the various folders that you've added to it.

The install went great. It took only 25 minutes.

The exact path to "My Documents", in my case, is C:\Users\User Name\My Documents. However, in Windows Explorer, a category called "Documents" is shown near the top with a note that says it exists in two locations. I had to move my archive contents to the proper folder. Other than that, no problems.

I used Acronis TrueImage to make a partition image on an external hard drive of the basic setup before I started adding anything from the archives I made yesterday. I am glad I made them because there is no way to have restored any XP System Backup archives. I see something in 7 called "Sync Center". Beyond that, nothing. No big deal, I will continue to use Acronis.

The only piece of hardware that required any real attention was the Kodak Printer. I had to download a new driver/software set. Everything else was picked up okay.

So far, I am quite pleased with it.

:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

Home Premium is great for the usual, standard user. However if you're more of a power user or a programmer, I recommend Pro or higher. In your case it sounds like Pro has more of what you need than Home Premium does.

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I think Ultimate is more suitable for networking because of the extra functions.

A minor issue I had earlier was getting the system out of standby mode. I managed to get a mouse pointer back, but nothing more. I had to do a hard reset, button on the case front, and restart it.

The wide screen monitor I have likes to run at its native mode, a high resolution of 1680 x 1050. With XP, I needed a magnifying glass to read it. I could take the resolution lower, but the text looked horrible. I am pleased to see that this was taken care of in 7. My eyesight is not so great and every little thing helps.

There's a Magnifier feature in Windows 7 that I discovered not too long ago. It can come in very handy. I found that it's good to click the little cog wheel and adjust it so it only zooms in or out 25% at a time. If you don't see it click Start and search magnify or magnifier.

I haven't read all the replies, but Win 7 Pro is the minimum version with Win XP mode(virtualization). So you can run Win XP within windows 7.

I'll also be buying Win 7 Pro in the near future.

I just downloaded and installed VB 2010 Express. On the surface, not much appears to have changed. I haven't gotten in to it much yet. 7 seems to have slowed just a tiny bit with nothing running. I expected that. VB 2010 loaded a lot of things during its install process.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by storm5510

I just downloaded and installed VB 2010 Express.

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Storm, I've been having trouble downloading VB 2010 Express.

I've tried to d/l it here: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Dow...0-Visual-Basic

and here: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Dow...0-Visual-Basic

I've tried with Opera, Firefox and IE, but nothing happens when I click on the links.

I even created a thread about it here, but had no replies: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=612653

Where did you d/l it from?

Thanks in advance.

I got it here with no problems at all:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/dow...0-Visual-Basic

This gives you an internet installer. If you're not on a high-speed connection, then this probably will not work very well.

vbforever23 if you know someone who has a high speed connection you could have them save the download to a CD for you and install from that. I have a dial up connection and I was able to download and install VB 2010 Express ok. I think it took something like 10 hours for me. The transfer rate sometimes was 0 KB/s(that's as slow as it gets) and other times only 1 or 2 KB/s. I challenge anyone to find a transfer rate below 0 KB/s.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EntityX

vbforever23 if you know someone who has a high speed connection you could have them save the download to a CD for you and install from that. I have a dial up connection and I was able to download and install VB 2010 Express ok. I think it took something like 10 hours for me. The transfer rate sometimes was 0 KB/s(that's as slow as it gets) and other times only 1 or 2 KB/s. I challenge anyone to find a transfer rate below 0 KB/s.

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You mean like 200 bytes/sec? Back when I had dialup, I used to see that all the time.

I would not have downloaded this on dial-up. Being on cable, it took about 20 minutes.

There was some things in the install that I didn't want and will never use. A lot of SQL modules, mainly. The framework update sort of worried me. I thought Windows Update would have taken care of that separately.

I sort of doubt one could get express editions on a CD from Microsoft...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by storm5510

I would not have downloaded this on dial-up. Being on cable, it took about 20 minutes.

There was some things in the install that I didn't want and will never use. A lot of SQL modules, mainly. The framework update sort of worried me. I thought Windows Update would have taken care of that separately.

I sort of doubt one could get express editions on a CD from Microsoft...

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Well they offer the dvd image file here: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-All

All you'd need to do is burn it to an actual disc, or use a program like Daemon Tools to mount it in a virtual dvd drive and use the ISO image as a real disc.

It's 694 megabytes. I usually download these in case there is a problem and I have to reload. Way too large for dial-up. It was suggested that a friend with a high speed connection could burn it for someone. That's the way to go in this case.

I've d/loaded VB 2010 Express, but when I try to run the help(Ctr+F1/Tools->View Help), I get this error window popping up.

Anyone else getting it? I've already download the VB Help files(approx 200Mb) from within VB.

I've already set for IE to be the default browser, from the Control Panel. I am using XP Home.

Thanks in advance. :)

EDIT: Well, I rebooted the computer, and Help now runs. :)

I didn't download the help files. I set it to go to their internet site instead.