All else equal, any reason to not get Win7 Pro?

I qualify for the 30$ student upgrade of Vista to 7. I noticed that it's 30$ regardless of whether or not I get the Home Premium version or the Professional version.

I wanted to know if there's any downside to getting Professional? Does it take up more HD space? Will it take up more resources? Does it idle at a heavier load?

I have heard that installing Professional requires a clean install? Is this true? Does absolutely nothing carry over with Professional? And would it carry over with Home Premium?

I have a version of Microsoft Office that's been marked that illegal. I'm not sure why because we paid for it. My dad said he'd take a look at it when I go home. But the question I have is this: will upgrading remove my MS Office because it's been marked as illegal?

Lastly, does upgrading to 64 bit mean that every single application I download needs to be a certified and signed 64 bit program? Even a 2 Mb download from Cnet to check my battery status or something like that? I have a 64 bit able computer but I don't want 64 bit Windows if that means I can't install any program that is not specifically 64 bit.

Thanks.

The driver enforcement is for drivers, not apps. Personally I would go for Ultimate, but each version of 7 is a superset of the previous version, so Professional has all the features of Premium and more, and Ultimate has everything. As for x64, your cpu needs to support 64-bit extensions and 4GB is a good starting point for RAM. Download HWInfo32 and see if your current cpu has support, or fill in your hardware specs.

Glue said:

I qualify for the 30$ student upgrade of Vista to 7. I noticed that it's 30$ regardless of whether or not I get the Home Premium version or the Professional version.

I wanted to know if there's any downside to getting Professional? Does it take up more HD space? Will it take up more resources? Does it idle at a heavier load?

I have heard that installing Professional requires a clean install? Is this true? Does absolutely nothing carry over with Professional? And would it carry over with Home Premium?

I have a version of Microsoft Office that's been marked that illegal. I'm not sure why because we paid for it. My dad said he'd take a look at it when I go home. But the question I have is this: will upgrading remove my MS Office because it's been marked as illegal?

Lastly, does upgrading to 64 bit mean that every single application I download needs to be a certified and signed 64 bit program? Even a 2 Mb download from Cnet to check my battery status or something like that? I have a 64 bit able computer but I don't want 64 bit Windows if that means I can't install any program that is not specifically 64 bit.

Thanks.

According to the official upgrade matrix:

Deciphering Windows 7 Upgrades: The Official Chart | Walt Mossberg | Mossblog | AllThingsD

you can only upgrade-in-place Vista Business to Win7 Pro. All other versions require a clean install. (That can be done with an upgrade license, though.) There supposed to be ways to hack the installer to permit an upgrade-in-place, but I've not tried them.

I don't know about a copy of Office that has been flagged by WGA. I doubt that would affect any upgrade, not that you can easily upgrade-in-place anyway.

Your applications won't be 64 bit, for the most part. (Very few 64 bit applications exist.) Most 32 bit applications will run normally on Win7 X64. All of your drivers must be 64 bit, though. All of the drivers must also be signed. (That doesn't mean that they have to be WHQL certified. I play with beta drivers frequently.) Also, you won't be able to install any old 16 bit programs, and some 32 bit applications use 16 bit installers, so there could be a problem there. Win7 Pro supports running XP in a virtual machine, via a free download, so that's a fallback position.

I wouldn't bother with 64 bit unless you want to install more than 4GB of RAM, though.

Huh, actually, I gotta admit that I understood "signed drivers" to mean certified. What's the main difference. I'm on a laptop so my video card, an 8600M GT, gets an official new driver about once every 2 years so I pretty much exclusively use forceware. How's that work?

Another thing I didn't consider was that a clean install might be a good thing. But you're right, it would be like getting a new machine. I've never used Easy Transfer before. Does it save programs as though they're already installed? Or should I just make a list of everything I need to reinstall?

And is there a reason to use Easy Transfer over just burning everything onto a DVD as a data disc?

Also, there seems to be conflicting opinions about x64. Admittedly, I only have 2GB of RAM. But I specifically put 2 GBs on 1 module stick so that I could upgrade in the future when my setup got out of date.

Lastly, I looked into it some more, and the upgrade paths for Win7 is really limiting. The only way you can upgrade to Professional if if you had Vista Business. I had Vista Home Premium so I can either move horizontally to Win7 HP or up to Ultimate. At least, that's how I understood this to work:

Windows 7 Upgrade Paths

Btw, Win7 Ultimate is excluded from the 30$ student upgrade. Not too bummed out, it's still a good deal.

My specs are as follows:

Motherboard: No idea. I have a Sager NP2090 that I bought online from xoticpc.com. I didn't assemble it. However, HWinfo32 tells me that the CPU is installed on a P socket.

CPU: Core 2 Dueo T7300 2.0 GHz. It's been a while but I think it's either a 2MB or 4MB L2 cache.

Videocard: nVidia 8600M GT 512MB

RAM: Transcend 2MB DDR2-SDRAM 333MHz

Do I qualify for 64 bit?

Oh man, wouldn't it suck that after I decide that I want 64 bit, I learn that I can't even run 64 bit. Blissful ignorance. Because now, I can't say "w/e I didn't even want x64"

Just to be certain,

Clean Install Windows 7

That's the upgrade guide I should be following correct? To recap, I am getting the 30$ student upgrade and I have a NON oem version of Vista HP. I want Win7 HP x64