Differences between basic and ultimate

I voted 'Not buying', but will be using Ultimate from the freebie event.

Can someone explian to me what the upgrade version means? Do you ony have to have a legitimate copy of any windows operating system to upgrade from? Like can you upgrade from XP?
And if your hard drive fails do you then have to insert the xp os disc first then your upgrade dvd? And if so how mny times can you do this? I only ask because I like the idea of having a full OS disc. And is ther going to be a limit on how many times you can activate it? Since their seems to be a more than usual amount of new hardware coming out to choose from and upgrading it as one can afford to usualy means a clean install. So I'm leaming towards win7 home premium at 199.00 preorder full dvd from Amazon is alot cheaper than pro at 299.00 and ultmate at 319.00. Full version dvd's. Also Amazon s listings don't even tell you if your buying a 32 bit or a 64 bit OS http://www.amazon.com type in windows 7. For preorder releases.

thefabe said:

Can someone explian to me what the upgrade version means? Do you ony have to have a legitimate copy of any windows operating system to upgrade from? Like can you upgrade from XP?
And if your hard drive fails do you then have to insert the xp os disc first then your upgrade dvd? And if so how mny times can you do this? I only ask because I like the idea of having a full OS disc. And is ther going to be a limit on how many times you can activate it? Since their seems to be a more than usual amount of new hardware coming out to choose from and upgrading it as one can afford to usualy means a clean install. So I'm leaming towards win7 home premium at 199.00 preorder full dvd from Amazon is alot cheaper than pro at 299.00 and ultmate at 319.00. Full version dvd's. Also Amazon s listings don't even tell you if your buying a 32 bit or a 64 bit OS Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more type in windows 7. For preorder releases.

You can upgrade from XP, Vista and Melenium also I believe.
EDIT: MS took off all but Vista and XP!

It's not clear if you will have to re-install XP (or?) before using the Win7 upgrade for a win7 re-install. Some say yes others say it will be like Vista.

Seems that the 32bit and 64bit are going to come with each version, or that's the rumors anyway.

No one knows for sure yet.

Professional for me. :)

Sorry if this as asked before in this thread, 'search this thread' didn't find it. But is the DATA on the DVD the same for each platform (x86 & x64) the same, it's just the ei.cfg that is different for Home/Professional/Ultimate?

Joshatdot said:

Sorry if this as asked before in this thread, 'search this thread' didn't find it. But is the DATA on the DVD the same for each platform (x86 & x64) the same, it's just the ei.cfg that is different for Home/Professional/Ultimate?

Different disks for 32-bit or 64-bit.

Is this what you're asking?

No, I know the bits/data are different for 32bit & 64bit. I am asking is the only difference from a Home Premium DVD, Professional DVD, Ultimate DVD is the ei.cfg?