Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade
by Microsoft Software
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List Price: Our Price: $90.00 You Save: $29.99 (25%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade
Customer Review: Shortcoming you should know about
Summary: 3 Stars
I spend a lot of time on my computer organizing pictures I have taken. I like to open up a file of pictures, select 'thumbnail' view, and then drag and drop pictures in the order I want. For some unfathomalbe reason, Microsoft has removed this capability from Win7 and files within directories can only be auto-arranged alphabetically, by date, or a few other options. If you like to use this capability, you'd better stick with Vista (or even better - XP, as there seemes to be bugs with rearranging in Vista). Otherwise there are some usefull feature that seeme to work well. Just don't count on the upgrade from Vista to be as straight-forward as the reviewers seem to think. My USB no longer worked consistantly and to fix it took hours on the phone with Microsoft and finally downloading an untested patch that they have not released yet.Customer Review: No big deal
Summary: 3 Stars
This was an upgrade from Vista. I was promised it would be much better. Not so. 7 also has some little annoyances, as did Vista, so you are swapping one set of little annoyances for another.Customer Review: Have been preferring it to XP lately
Summary: 4 Stars
After my Windows Vista experience (returned 2 computers within 2 weeks of buying them), I committed to moving away from Microsoft operating systems and software. Have spent a lot of time becoming proficient with Ubuntu Linux over the past 2 years. For issues that require security, I always reach for Linux. For video and running mapping software, it's Windows...for now. For certain tasks, Windows is still tops between the two o/s. But I suspect that gap is going to close.
It boots faster and shuts down faster than XP. The user interface is snappy and good-looking. I thought file management was a little quirky in the beginning, but have come to like it. I also like the search feature by just typing in a few letters of the file you are seeking. Driver support for an older Epson Photo 785EPX printer and 2400 scanner was excellent. It even recognized and installed the driver for an old SIIG PCMCIA to USB 2.0 adapter that would sometimes give me fits with XP and the SIIG driver (Linux ALWAYS recognized this card with no problem). Started with 32 bit in beta thru RC and switched to 64 bit for the final version. From my experience with the beta and RC, I ordered several copies during the pre-order as gifts for those who were having Vista issues. I am really miffed that I have to spend another $130 min. to be able to use it with another language. I help others overseas do more with their Windows operating systems and being able to help them in their native language is essential.
I cut my video editing teeth on Windows Movie Maker in XP. On W7, I also use the Movie Maker 2.6 (XP-like) in addition to the Live Movie Maker. The auto movie feature produced some very impressive results from a series of nearly 800 photos and a 38 min CD of Austrian alpine music from a recent trip to Austria. Photos I might have otherwise tossed took on new meaning with the auto movie feature DVD. For most circumstances, Windows Movie Maker (both versions) serve me well. For special situations, like AVCHD, I use Nero 8.0 (still on XP).
XP Mode worked on everything I had except an Honestech analog video capture device, but seemed to be slower. Will have to stay with XP to use that device. XP mode was intended for business (accounting and such) use anyway, instead of graphics intensive applications.
I use mainly free security software for Windows. There was no AVG free for 64 bit, but AVAST worked. In XP, I use Zone Alarm firewall. Haven't bothered to try it on W7. The W7 firewall has been OK for what I do.
Networking between two w7 computers is a snap. W7 and anything else is a little more work. Frankly, with a mixture of XP, W7 and Linux boxes in the house now, I prefer to keep them separate, anyway.
Customer Review: As Expected
Summary: 4 Stars
After reading other reviews, I decided to try the upgrade. My Vista was not performing as I had hoped. It is an improvement over the Vista. I don't have a TV Tuner, so I can't take advantage of that feature, but there are other features & it seems to be working good. I had to call for tech support shortly after I installed it & they were real helpful about getting rid of error windows that kept popping up for no reason. They also helped me clean up unwanted files to get my computer to respond quickly. Overall, I am satisfied with the Windows 7 Operating System. It seems as though, all of the systems improve very little each time & this is how I saw the Windows 7 improvement rating also and that is why I rated it a 4 star & not a 5 star.Customer Review: W7 Upgrade from Vista
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been toying with W7 now for about 2 weeks. I have 3 HP computers. 2 desktop and 1 laptop. All three came with Vista pre-installed. Instead of just upgrading though I used an old XP installation disc and re-partitioned my hard drives. I installed Vista on one drive and W7 on another. Vista has quite a few programs that I would lose if I had simply upgraded. So now I have the ability to switch back and forth between the two. And believe me, W7 is a much better OS than Vista is. I have not had one Windows Update with W7 yet and with Vista it's every other day. W7 does everything so much faster also. With Vista my hard drive was always in overtime. Not so with W7. Vista has, on an average, 57 programs running all the time on my computers. With W7 it's about 27. At idle on Vista the CPU is using about 4%. With W7 it is using 0%. It did take a while to get used to W7 though. But that's with any new OS. I never got used to Vista though. Click on the Start Menu and sit and wait until it opened. With W7 you click on it and it's there. My AVG anti-virus does take some off the speed when running the scan but not nearly as much as it does with Vista.
The main system requirement to running W7 is to have a fairly new computer, less that a year old I'd say. I tried installing it on an older computer and forget about it. It's not going to happen.
I am quite happy with W7. I very seldom go to the Vista side. I use a lot of third party programs and so far everyone of them has worked on W7 without any hitch. If you're on Vista do yourself a favor, upgrade to W7. Give it a few weeks. You'll be glad you did.