Forums Scaring me Away?

charkzilla20 said:

Thanks guys so much :)
I get that now. The Hospital metaphor is great btw.
To answer a couple of your questions, I already have a fresh copy of Windows 7 Professional.
I don't plan on tinkering around with it much besides some visual things like themes and skins, icons and such.

I feel a lot more confident about going ahead with this purchase and build :)
Thanks everyone!

Glad we were able to help ease your tensions.

Good luck

Peace

You can do your relative a big favor by ditching the Dell preinstalled Win7 with all the bloatware and useless duplicate utilities which have better versions built into Win7. The practice you'll get doing a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 for her will help assure you also get a perfect Install on your new build.

At the minimum I'd Clean Up Factory Bloatware.

bobafetthotmail said:

charkzilla20 said:

seeing all these issues on here is kind of scaring me away from building and using a windows 7 PC. I don't know what to do or think. :/
Am I basically guaranteed to experience problems by using a windows 7 PC? My aunt has been using a cheap dell laptop, and it runs pretty badly. :/
Help!

While this being a tech-support forum does skew a bit the userbase on people having issues, and the fact that 99% of the world's computers run Windows does skew again perception, it's true that windows 7 requires more thought and understanding than a Mac.
It is able to do so much more things and operate so much more different devices and components.
My opinion is that windows 7 is a ROCK. It's stable as the best linux distros I've used. Of course a Mac is more stable, but only because its hardware choice is very limited to a few Apple-approved things. And again because software you can run on it is limited to a few titles.
Anyway, you found a good place to get tips and learn how to make and use a stable PC.
Following advice from here will make your windows experience pretty smooth.

While we are at it, you may want to check out Linux offerings as well. You can install Virtualbox on your Mac and try out some of the best distributions recommended by our people (there is a thread about it in a private section of the forum, start a new one in Chillout section to get their recommendations) in the linux thread. This tutorial teaches you how to use Virtualbox to install Ubuntu (but works fine for most of Ubuntu-derived linux systems as well), the interface is the same on mac as Virtualbox works the same on Mac.
As long as you don't need heavy gaming (being a mac owner I think you don't), Linux is better (mainly for future-proofing) and way cooler for a normal user.

Also, you may want to try windows 7 on your mac, if it is new enough it will support it, by using Apple-approved tool called bootcamp, here. Don't activate it during install, and take advantage of the 30 day trial period.
Technically if you can install windows, linux can be installed on it easily as well.

one of the primary reasons for making this build is so I can have a gaming machine as well, so I'm going to stick with Windows for now. I might in the future try a Linux system. :)

I haven't thought of trying windows 7 through bootcamp on my Mac. Are you sure I won't have to activate it?
I don't want to run out of activations when I do get my PC.

charkzilla20 said:

I haven't thought of trying windows 7 through bootcamp on my Mac. Are you sure I won't have to activate it?
I don't want to run out of activations when I do get my PC.

Though I've never did used a Mac, or ran bootcamp, I'm pretty sure you still have to activate Windows once you install it. I really can't see why this wouldn't be the case.

That said, you can always remove it and install it on the other machine. I've been down that road many times. It may require a phone call to MS to get it re-activated. If so, the activation process will tell you what to do, and provide the phone number if necessary.

If you're really worried about it, just wait to build the gaming rig. I'd probably do that if I'm seriously going to be building the gaming rig, and know that the Mac isn't going to be adequate for gaming anyway. In short, why install the OS if the hardware isn't suitable for the task?

Good luck.

Is this an OEM or RETAIL version (license) of Win 7?

An OEM license can only be used on the original PC it is installed/activated on. It can't be transferred to a different PC.

A RETAIL license can be transferred to a different PC.

I don't think it's an OEM. It was purchased at a MicroCenter 4 years ago, and it's only been installed once. It has all the packaging and shiny labels and windows guides and stuff in the box.

Look on the COA sticker which came in the packaging, the one which contains the Product Key you'll need to enter to reactivate the reinstall. What version does it say exactly?