Upgrade to Professional or Ultimate (for free), or stay at Home Prem.?

[RunRunRun]

Hi all,

I have a new Thinkpad T530 that came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64. Through my school, I have a free upgrade to either Professional or Ultimate. Should I upgrade to either?
I've looked through the thread here on the differences, and of the features that Pro and Ultimate have that Home Premium does not, I honestly don't know what any of them mean.
My question is will I see any difference, good or bad, if I upgrade? Since there's no charge to me, should I just go with Ultimate, or will the added features just take up space and cpu ussage without giving me any noticeable benefit.

Thanks.

 

[gregrocker]

You can check the few extra features in the higher versions to decide if you need them here: Compare Windows 7 Editions - Windows 7 Forums

Otherwise the OS's are identical.

If you decide you want to upgrade just insert the Product Key in Anytime Upgrade, even a retail key will work for the higher version: Windows Anytime Upgrade - How to - Windows 7 Forums

 

[roboticarm]

If you decide to upgrade, choose Ultimate though you won't be treated with any added performance or benefits, but only some new features you probably will not be using. Although there are some good features like Bitlocker drive encrytion, group policy editor (which can be used for some special system/application tweaks), etc which you might miss.

Rest, it's your wish.

 

[maccaquacker]

They are all pretty much the same, the group policy editor can be useful for little tweaks if you start getting more advanced. Other than that it's just cooler to have it say "ultimate" on the lock screen
Also, the ability to switch languages that comes with ultimate is pretty cool also, and may interest linguists?

There are no negative effects, so just go for Ultimate

 

[Faladu]

The upgrade should be painless, I would hope, just like doing a Windows Update, and not a full wipe and drop.

Since free, might as well Ultimate it.

Pro and Ultimate both get the XP Mode (for apps, no Direct-X support) beware, probably separate downloads, but it's easy install, however actually using it, more of a chore.

 

[Kari]

As a multilingual Windows user I would like to recommend Ultimate edition to all especially younger users who

1. Are planning an IT career or education
2. Are interested / studying one or more foreign language

The Ultimate edition gives you language packs. Install as many as you want to, create new user accounts for each installed language. Now simply switch to Spanish user account to learn and use Windows in Spanish, swap to French account to do the same in French, return to your main user account in your native language when you want to.

Kari

 

[strollin]

The 2 major benefits of Ultimate and Pro, IMO, are XP Mode (provides a fully licensed copy of XP running in a Virtual Machine) and the ability to join a domain. If you don't need the ability to join a domain then XP Mode is the major benefit.

Since you can get Ultimate for free and it's a painless upgrade, you might as well do it then you can explore the added features at your leisure to see if any are truly useful to you. As others have stated, other than additional features, there is no performance benefit.

 

[gregrocker]

In addition I'd save a Win7 backup image of Home Premium so you have an easy path back, and an image of the upgraded Ultimate/Pro so you never have to reinstall.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup