I called Dell support to find out if their aggressively priced ($120) Family Pack home premium upgrade could be used on an XP netbook.
The agent went away and came back and said that it cannot - an XP machine requires a full-price W7 license.
Then, someone on Aardvark told me they had upgraded their XP machine using a family pack product.
Can anyone clear this up for me with certainty?
An upgrade disk (family pack or whatever else it may be called) can be used to install win7 on a computer as long as you possess a valid qualifying, underlying OS. So if you legally own that win xp, you can do a clean install of win7 completely legally. Only technical issue is theres no upgrade path from xp to win7, you'll need to do a clean install i.e. format the hdd and wipe all data, then install win7. So make sure you back up all important data beforehand.
Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version
In case you are wondering, no, you cant do an upgrade even if you have the full version.
Bill,
Good to hear. I was aware of the problems moving from XP to 7 but was very unclear on this narrow question.....
NEXT QUESTION:
What do people think about upgrading a 2GB atom-based netbook to 7? Does that make sense? Will it run slower? faster? or no big diff but at least they'll all be the same os?
I dont know about people but personally I am fine with win7 on that netbook. 2 gb is the recommended minimum for win7 so you're fine. As for OS, all win7 editions have the same hardware requirements, the main question when it comes to netbooks is whether win7 (starter) or XP.
There are pros and cons of using either but I would go for win7- better driver support, continuing MS support by way of updates (remember xp support is set to be phased out) etc. Some folks have reported better battery life with xp but thats not universal and in any case depends on usage pattern.
Newmarket2 - I'm running WIndows 7 Ultimate on an Atom netbook (an MSI Wind U100 with a 1.6GHz N270, and 1.5Gb RAM).
In day-to-day use, it honestly feels much more responsive than XP ever did on the same unit.
Go for it!
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