So to choose, here are the main advantages of Professional over Home Premium: With Windows 7 Ultimate 'only' costs $120 extra (over the full version of Home Premium), and there's no promise for extra's that may or may not show up. With Windows Vista, Microsoft promised unique functionality/applications for Vista Ultimate, which in the end turned out to be a red herring & disappointed greatly for the price paid ($160 over the Home Premium full version price at release). Most users will have to choose between Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. These versions will only be available with a new PC purchase, and as you can see above, are missing quite some useful functionality. So which version should you choose? Again as with Vista you should avoid Home Basic (or Starter). Virtualization rights (Can be installed in a virtual environment) Support for multiple user interface languages Windows SideShow (secondary display support)

These are not available in retail packaging you can only get these pre-installed on a new PC (or with a service contract for the Enterprise edition).Īll 32-bit versions support up to 32 processor coresĪll 64-bit versions support up to 256 processor cores. As I did with Windows Vista, I'm providing a listing of the differences between the products.įirst, let's list the versions and their estimated retail pricing as announced by Microsoft last June.īesides the above editions, three more additions are available: Home Basic, Starter and Enterprise. Like Windows Vista, Windows 7 includes a number of product versions that make it difficult for users to know which version they should choose.

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