Windows 7 "Starter" on a laptop

[pscowboy]

I created the universal installation disc from this forums' tutorials.
From this, I installed Starter on a laptop I refurbished, which I was eventually going to give to my daughter for college with some flavor of W7.

I was curious as to how it looked and if it would be suitable for her work. Well, she saw me working on it, and wanted to live with it for awhile. Been using it for about ten days, and she loves it. Boots up quickly; no crapware; she loves IE9's performance; and Wordpad suits her homework just fine.

I know that Starter only came out with OEM netbooks and was not made available to the general public. But, I'm wondering if Microsoft would allow me to purchase a license for it before 30 days elapsed?

 

[AllOnTheBus]

I understand that she likes Windows 7 (even if it is a starter) but
as you say, she is going to be going to college. In the meantime have
have you thought about using the re-arm command so you can get up
to 120 days free legally?

I say this because once she is attending college, she will be entitled to
free copies of Microsoft Windows 7 Professional which if she likes Starter, then
surely she's gonna like that even more!

I explained to a guy yesterday who was after a free copy of Microsoft Office suite 2007
(which by the way is not available through MSDNAA anymore)
that as a student, Microsoft has a worldwide program allowing students access to free or heavily discounted software.

If you didn't already know about this, I suggest you go and have a look at these sites:
MSDN Academic Alliance Home Page (MSDNAA)
Microsoft Office Discount for Students - It's Not Cheating (Microsoft Office discounted for students)

In the meantime, if you would like to rearm the software (Starter), I am not 100% sure
if you ARE able to do it with that version but I can't see why not, and if you give it a go
and it doesn't work then the worst that's gonna happen is that you get thrown an error message.

Type ANY ONE of the following commands into the command prompt (Rus as admin) to rearm. Note that you should wait until lets say the 29th day of your 30 day grace period before rearming if you want to rearm for maximum days and considering that you are only able to rearm up to 120 days.

sysprep /generalize
slmgr.vbs –rearm
rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows
slmgr /rearm

Reboot when finished

 

[alphanumeric]

I don't believe you can buy Starter anywhere, even from Microsoft. It only comes pre-installed on netbooks etc. I think Home Basic is the same deal, so the cheapest version you can buy off the shelf is Home Premium OEM.

 

[gregrocker]

The suggestion for her to buy Student Upgrade version is best as it nets the Professional version for very little cost.

Then all that has to be done is type Anytime in Start Search box, insert Pro Product Key into Anytime Upgrade, and in 15 minutes or less the additional features will be unlocked and she'll have an activated Pro version.

Save a Win7 backup image externally of Starter in case you want to move Professional to another machine - it lasts for life and can be moved wherever you want it - so that you can easily reimage Starter back onto the machine. Then after Upgrade save a Win7 Pro backup image to use in place of reinstall.

 

[pscowboy]

Thank you all for your prompt replies.
We don't know if her school is a participant in the MSDN program. TBD.

Too bad that MS won't grant licenses for Starter. It really is a nice tight OS for the casual user.

 

[alphanumeric]

Going to a higher version shouldn't impact performance much if at all, if thats what you are worried about. Each higher version just unlocks extra features. Some you might want like Aero, if it does impact performance you can just turn it off again. Has your daughter tried to change her desktop wallpaper yet? It's NOT an option on Starter.