Buying a New PC with Win 7 Home Version. How about Pro?

[W. eWatson]

It looks like the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs provide the
Home version of Win 7. Do they have an option to upgrade, or does one
have to buy a regular upgrade from the store? Would there likely be a
difference in price? For example, might it happen that HP would give one
price and the store another?

If I go up to pro this way, am I inviting a problem if I have to
re-install for some reason? For example a HD crash that wipes out Home.
I'm pretty sure HP or whomever does not provide a CD/DVD to restore
Home, so how would one prove to pro that the Home version exists for the
PC?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

It looks like the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs provide
the Home version of Win 7. Do they have an option to upgrade, or
does one have to buy a regular upgrade from the store? Would there
likely be a difference in price? For example, might it happen that
HP would give one price and the store another?

If I go up to pro this way, am I inviting a problem if I have to
re-install for some reason? For example a HD crash that wipes out
Home. I'm pretty sure HP or whomever does not provide a CD/DVD to
restore Home, so how would one prove to pro that the Home version
exists for the PC?

This is not really a Windows XP issue. ;-)

As far as what "the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs" offer - ask
them. They are there to sell to you. You may believe you are there to buy
from them - but you are the one with the power. You don't *have* to buy
what they are offering on this web page, this special at csome chain
electronics store, etc. You can customize your order on most of their web
pages or call them and customize it that way - and often get a better price
than you would have gotten with a lesser machine from one of their package
deals.

If you decide to go with the pre-packaged and marketed deal instead of
customizing and then you want to upgrade (most have no reason to upgrade -
let's be honest) - the only issue you might have is if you don't keep all
your products keys and installation media in a safe place - and have copies
of it all in another safe place.

Also - when you are purchasing a computer - please, make sure it comes with
external and actual installation media for whatever you are buying. If it
comes with Windows 7 _____, make sure you are getting an actual installation
DVD for that - not a 'restoration' or 'recovery' set that restores some
image from the DVDs/another partition on the hard disk drive. Make sure it
also comes with a way to re-install all of the applications (office suites,
drivers, media editiing applications, etc) that you are purchasing. And the
corresponding product keys so you can activate/use said software.

 

[VanguardLH]

It looks like the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs provide the
Home version of Win 7. Do they have an option to upgrade, or does one
have to buy a regular upgrade from the store? Would there likely be a
difference in price? For example, might it happen that HP would give one
price and the store another?

If I go up to pro this way, am I inviting a problem if I have to
re-install for some reason? For example a HD crash that wipes out Home.
I'm pretty sure HP or whomever does not provide a CD/DVD to restore
Home, so how would one prove to pro that the Home version exists for the
PC?

The Microsoft community for Windows 7 is found at:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro

 

[smlunatick]

It looks like the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs provide the
Home version of Win 7. Do they have an option to upgrade, or does one
have to buy a regular upgrade from the store? Would there likely be a
difference in price? For example, might it happen that HP would give one
price and the store another?

If I go up to pro this way, am I inviting a problem if I have to
re-install for some reason? For example a HD crash that wipes out Home.
  I'm pretty sure HP or whomever does not provide a CD/DVD to restore
Home, so how would one prove to pro that the Home version exists for the
PC?

As previous stated, you have posted to the wrong group.

It should be noted that you will need to look at purchasing a
"business grade" laptop which should come with Windows 7 Professional
installed. All your problems will then be solved because with Windows
7 Professional, you should have downgrade rights to Windows XP Pro.

 

[W. eWatson]

As previous stated, you have posted to the wrong group.

It should be noted that you will need to look at purchasing a
"business grade" laptop which should come with Windows 7 Professional
installed. All your problems will then be solved because with Windows
7 Professional, you should have downgrade rights to Windows XP Pro.

Yes, and amazingly I took the advice.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It looks like the general mfgers, HP, Dell, Gateway, of PCs provide the
Home version of Win 7. Do they have an option to upgrade, or does one
have to buy a regular upgrade from the store? Would there likely be a
difference in price? For example, might it happen that HP would give one
price and the store another?

I can't tell for sure about all of them, but I can tell you that Dell
gives you your choice of which Windows 7 edition you want, with
different pricing for each. I would expect all the others to do the
same. So you shouldn't upgrade, just start with whatever edition you
want.

If I go up to pro this way,

The most important thing to consider is *why* you might want to go to
Professional. For most home users, Home Premium should be fine, and
going to a higher-level edition just provides extra features you don't
need or want, so Professional would just be a waste of money.

am I inviting a problem if I have to re-install for some reason?

No.


For example a HD crash that wipes out Home.
I'm pretty sure HP or whomever does not provide a CD/DVD to restore
Home, so how would one prove to pro that the Home version exists for the
PC?

They all have to provide some means of restoring. These days, most
OEMs provide a recovery partition on the hard drive, and also provide
information on how to burn the contents of that partition to a DVD.

 

[W. eWatson]

I can't tell for sure about all of them, but I can tell you that Dell
gives you your choice of which Windows 7 edition you want, with
different pricing for each. I would expect all the others to do the
same. So you shouldn't upgrade, just start with whatever edition you
want.

I now have a HP with 8G of memory and a 750G drive. Home Premium.
There's some sort of apply for upgrade any time that's available. In my
case going to Pro would cost $80-90. I've been using pro for something
like 8 years.

The most important thing to consider is *why* you might want to go to
Professional. For most home users, Home Premium should be fine, and
going to a higher-level edition just provides extra features you don't
need or want, so Professional would just be a waste of money.

This gives an indication of why.
<http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare>

"In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions,
you can back up to a home or business network." might be a good reason.

 

[smlunatick]

I now have a HP with 8G of memory and a 750G drive. Home Premium.
There's some sort of apply for upgrade any time that's available. In my
case going to Pro would cost $80-90. I've been using pro for something
like 8 years.





This gives an indication of why.
<http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare>

"In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions,
you can back up to a home or business network." might be a good reason.

The Backup and Restore "feature" can also be done with "other"
software that can also be a better system. I am using Acronis True
Image.

 

[Doum]

The Backup and Restore "feature" can also be done with "other"
software that can also be a better system. I am using Acronis True
Image.

The Windows7 Backup and Restore feature works fine, you can create images
to recover from HD failures.