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Question, Windows 7

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PAUL161

PAUL161

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I know I asked this before way back, but I'm curious about the licensing of windows 7. If I pay $319.00 for a full blown edition of it, am I clear in the fact that I can only put it in one computer?? Sounds crazy to me to have to pay that much money and then be so restricted on it's use. Any clues on the subject? Thanks, PJ
 
Yes, you can only use it on one computer. You will get an "official" authentic license with holographic seal with a license key on it. After installation you'll have a grace period of 30 days to activate Windows with Microsoft. If you try to use the same key on another machine you'll have to activate it also, which will cause problems. The activation process looks at your system - and if the system doesn't match the previous activation (as it would in a reinstall) then you'll be asked to call customer service.

Can you cheat the system though? Sort of. If you try to install on a different system every several months then you <span style="font-style: italic">might</span> get away with it. You might have to call for activation, but they might let it slide. Whether or not the updates or various add-ons that require a check of your operating system's authenticity will work is another question.

Why pay that much though? Right now Win-7 Home Premium OEM is $99. "Pro" OEM is $139 - from Newegg. The "ultimate" version is more, but there's very little reason for most people to need the "ulrimate" version, and I'd guess most people really don't even need the "pro".

The non-OEM upgrade-versions (assuming you have a legal copy of XP or Vista you're upgrading from) are $200 for the PRO and $120 for the Home Premium.

OEM means you can install it on one machine and you're not supposed to be able to even remove it and install it elsewhere...but I've done it with XP, other folks on the 'net have a history of changing their hardware on a regular basis and haven't had much trouble but be forewarned of the license's intent. It also means you don't get official support from MS but with the amount of unofficial (and usually better) support online why bother. I've never called MS about anything, ever, so I'll take the lower-priced OEM version any day.
 
If you can use an upgrade version, there's a "limited time and quantity" Family deal. You can get Windows 7 Home Premium with 3 licenses, and the prices range from about $130-$150 depending where and when you go. That would allow you to install on 3 different PCs.
 
I just saw that. Newegg's price is $149.99.

Bottom line - that's the same price per-license that I paid for my laptop upgrade from XP with the pre-order special.
 
Just ordered mine (family package that is) from Sam's Club. Total $141 and change with tax and shipping.
 
All my hacker/gamer pals are already runnin' it. They swear it to be far superior to Vista and any MS O/S before it. My opinion is yet to be finalised. It boots in a comparative eyeblink and seems to have lost the ability to EAT any available RAM, so it gets a guarded nod for now.
 
I installed the ultimate version this afternoon on a fresh hard drive. I went strait from xp to 7 as vista sucks. So far I'm pretty happy. It installed quickly and so far its been stable and fast. The only issue I'm having is getting a vatsim program to work right but since my machine is dual boot it's not a big deal to switch back to xp.
 
Minimum requirements are far higher than XP, so I'm assuming it will run slower if upgraded to an existing machine. Of course it could run much more efficiently so I suppose anything is possible...
 
A lot depends a lot on the particulars. I put it on a 5 y/o 2.4ghz Pentium-4 laptop and it was very good, solid, and I think better than XP.
 
Here's another little tidbit I probably <span style="font-style: italic">should have known</span>: I just put Win7-64 on my main desktop machine. The "upgrade" version never, not once asked me for the original XP keys. In other words, there doesn't appear to be any difference between this and a "full" version.

One other comment: I was pretty sure I'd need to go buy another steering wheel for my iRacing stuff. My wheel is an old Microsoft wheel/pedal set that originally came with driver disks for Win95 and 98. When XP came out it took forever to get the thing to work properly with the old drivers - it'd work but the pedals weren't quite right and the updated drivers would crash, blah blah.

Ok - point is, I plugged it into Win7-64 and POOF a driver was there, everything worked perfectly.

It's a small insignificant thing I know, but after the bellyaching about lack of support for Vista I was really surprised I didn't have to do <span style="font-style: italic">anything</span> to get the driver for Win-7 and in 64-bits to boot.
 
Well I'm currently installing it on my laptop and I must say if your going to install it do so on a fresh hard drive. Fresh hard drive it was very very quick (less than 20 min) but upgrading from vista to 7 takes forever(over an hour so far and going)
 
there isn't aero, I bought the family pack and put it on this machine last nite and will do another tommorrow. so far very very good. this is what Vista should have been. MS has had this critter in beta for 15 months so they have the bugs out. my only regret is that none of the free firewalls work with it, zonealarm is testing one that may be out soon.
 
Stewart said:
Well I'm currently installing it on my laptop and I must say if your going to install it do so on a fresh hard drive. Fresh hard drive it was very very quick (less than 20 min) but upgrading from vista to 7 takes forever(over an hour so far and going)
Click to expand...

I noticed this when I did the upgrade during the Beta testing. On the other hand, you won't spend hours reinstalling and reconfiguring like you have to on a clean install.

On the other hand, I couldn't do an upgrade of the beta to the retail, so I decided since it had to be a fresh install, might as well install the 64 bit version, so I can go up to 4 GB RAM if I want to in the future. Only problem I've run into is finding some drivers, but with a little bit of googling, I finally got everything installed.
 
My son is a big gamer. He says because of this he needs the Ultimate version.
What is the thoughts on that?
 
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