Win 7 Home Premium - A Rant

[GRoston]

It was time to upgrade the old XP machine that had been our server for years. In order to preserve useful licenses, I decided to use Win 7 Home Premium. What a huge mistake - this OS should properly be named Win 7 Crippled.

Want to manage local users and groups - sorry, no can do.
Want to change security settings on certain directories - sorry, no can do.
Remote desktop - can do with a hack

Here's the bottom lime - if you are a power user who wants/needs to optimize your system, stay away from this piece of junk. Luckily, I had a Win 7 Ultimate license and did find a description of how to upgrade without using anytime upgrade (on this forum, of course). Assuming the upgrade process proceeds smoothly, all should be good.

 

[logicearth]

Was all your own fault for not reading what is including or not included in the home version. It is called a home version for a reason.

 

[Dwarf]

There is nothing wrong with Home Premium, so long as you recognise its limitations. Describing it as a piece of junk (your words) can be construed as an insult to those who use this version and are quite happy with it.

The options you list aren't included with Home Premium (although there are workaraounds for some, but not all, typically involving registry editing) since these are options which are intended for used by businesses and organisations and not the average home user.

 

[GRoston]

No place in the documentation do they say that manage local groups and users is disabled from within computer management.

 

[Layback Bear]

I have two computers with Windows 7 Home Premium and the big clue to me when I got them was the word (Home). Except for a glitch every now and again they both work quiet well for my (Home) use.

 

[Dwarf]

No place in the documentation do they say that manage local groups and users is disabled from within computer management.

For the most part, the tools for managing user accounts work the same in all Windows 7 editions. The core Control Panel application for managing user accounts works slightly differently on computers that are joined to a domain compared to those in a workgroup; only Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions can join a domain. A few account-management tasks are most easily performed with a console called Local Users And Groups; it's not available in Starter and Home Premium editions.

As I mentioned previously, this is because of the intended target audiences of the different editions.

 

[Carl Lawrence]

I have Windows 7 Home Premium and though it has limits, it is a good OS.