OT: Upgrading to Windows 7 Home Premium (Full or Upgrade?)

[SKYLANE]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1184

EXCERPT from link above...
From a licensing point of view, your installed copy of Windows is irrelevant. What matters is the sticker on the side of the PC. If you have a Certificate of Authenticity for Windows XP or Windows Vista on that computer (or a certificate of authenticity from a retail copy of Windows that has been assigned to that machine), you qualify for an upgrade license to any edition of Windows 7.

***************************
***************************
I have the following two computers:

Dell GX 280 (purchased from work surplus)
Sticker of Authenticity for XP Home Edition
XP Home Edition loaded (I believe disk is Enterprise version)

Mac Book Pro (Boot Camp Partition)
Loaded XP Home Edition Upgrade (Retail Version)
(Loaded XP HE Upgrade with Window ME disk attached via FW CD-ROM)


I am under the belief after reading link above that I can use a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade disk (not Windows 7 Home Premium Full) to upgrade both computers??? Of course, I believe I need to purchase two upgrade disks, one for each machine???

Contrary to the above article, Best Buy rep today told me that Win 7 Upgrades were valid for only Vista. Windows 7 Full required for XP and earlier. I don't believe this is true???

*************************
BTW, I have been using a Window 7 Ultimate RC for the Dell GX280 up until now (dual boot with XP Home). If I decided to stick with Ultimate for this computer by getting license for it online, any disadvantages over buying a retail Ultimate copy at the store??? I do not think I will do this since I believe I would be nailed with the Windows 7 Ultimate Full version retail price.

[Ironhorse]

Even this is complicated...

[SKYLANE]

... my sentiments exactly! :-)

[deckeda]

Ow my head hurts. No wonder the masses just buy a new computer whenever they want a new version. Surely there's a flowchart somewhere. An if-then decision tree matrix. Something.

[olnacl]

I had a 3 GHz XP machine on which I installed a beta version of Windows 7, on a separate drive. Then I installed retail Windows 7 Home Premium after removing the Beta version. The issue about upgrading is that (in my layman's terms) the boot record is changed since Vista so Windows 7 won't "upgrade" an existing Windows version older than Vista. I believe you can still install from the upgrade disk as long as you own a previous version of windows but it will have to be a "clean" install rather than an "overinstall."

And, yes, it can be complicated. My Windows 7 install now needs a new video card to drive my 22" monitor which worked fine with XP. Max resolution I can get with the MS driver is 1280x1024 and no Vista/Windows 7 is available for my video card.

Others will chime in with more detailed info as once I learned of the issues with the video driver, I pretty much have left the PC alone in disgust. I may even go back to XP and wait for SP1.

Here's a link that explains it better. Google is your friend (except in the case of Windows...)

[SKYLANE]

I believe I am going to be just sticking with XP too. I really have no driving need to head off to Windows 7. I am ticked that the Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack pricing of $150 went away. Plus sifting through the nuances for upgrading is annoying too. So, I think I just decided to stick with XP and be a happy camper for awhile longer. Most my time on Mac anyway.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

olnacl wrote:
And, yes, it can be complicated. My Windows 7 install now needs a new video card to drive my 22" monitor which worked fine with XP. Max resolution I can get with the MS driver is 1280x1024 and no Vista/Windows 7 is available for my video card.

I commented before, is there a driver for the Mac version of your card in OS X 10.6? It might be possible to hack the 9500 Catalyst driver to recognize your card (or maybe flash your card to say it was newer) but this is the wrong forum to ask that on. There also might be a way to hack the default driver to add the resolution you want.

[olnacl]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
[quote=olnacl]
And, yes, it can be complicated. My Windows 7 install now needs a new video card to drive my 22" monitor which worked fine with XP. Max resolution I can get with the MS driver is 1280x1024 and no Vista/Windows 7 is available for my video card.

I commented before, is there a driver for the Mac version of your card in OS X 10.6? It might be possible to hack the 9500 Catalyst driver to recognize your card (or maybe flash your card to say it was newer) but this is the wrong forum to ask that on. There also might be a way to hack the default driver to add the resolution you want.
Thanks for that, but I don't believe there's a Mac version of my card, an ATI FireGL 8800 and so far nothing has turned up on the AMD site for it - stops at ATI FireGL 8650. Lots of posts complaining that there are no drivers for Vista or Win 7 though. I'm just going to stick my 19" 1280x1024 monitor on it for now and think about just putting a clean install of XP Pro back on it. I use it so seldom that, other than wanting to know if the Win 7 hype was real, I have no use for Windows other than to set up a TB SATA drive for my TiVo. I can't even remember the last time I used Boot Camp on my MacBook - just wasting 30 GB of disk space in my opinion.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

olnacl wrote:
Thanks for that, but I don't believe there's a Mac version of my card,...

There was no exact Mac version. The closest Mac version (the same generation GPU) of your card is the Radeon 8500 according to the hardware info I can find, this could be wrong though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_...eGL_series

OS X 10.6 does not support any Mac motherboard with an AGP slot, so Microsoft supports more hardware options with Windows 7 than Apple does with its most current OS.
It might be possible to build a Hackintosh with an AGP slot that works, I leave that as an exercise for the interested student.