Aug 222013
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User)
- Install Windows 7 Home Premium on up to three PCs in your household
- Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music–you can even watch, pause, rewind, and record TV
- Make the things you do every day easier with improved desktop navigation
- Start programs faster and more easily, and quickly find the documents you use most often
- Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup
Windows 7 Home Premium offers a rich, dynamic entertainment experience on your PC, making it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, and rewind TV or record it to watch whenever and wherever you want.Get three Windows 7 Premium licenses in one convenient package. Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, rewind, and re
List Price: $ 149.95
Price: $ 226.99
Here Comes Windows 7,
Here comes Windows 7, nearly three years after Windows Vista and eight years after Windows XP. By most accounts, Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. Do we finally have a worthy successor to XP?
** CLEAN UPGRADE UPDATE BELOW 10/29/09 **
PROS:
- Fast startup and performance
- Stable
- Nice aesthetic and functional changes to the desktop
- Improved networking, power management & security
- 32-bit & 64-bit versions included
- Windows Media Center
- Windows XP Mode (Professional & Ultimate only)
- Family Pack value
CONS:
- User Account Control still annoying
- Upgrade can be challenging
** CLEAN UPGRADE UPDATE 10/29/09 **
It seems that a lot of upgraders have been complaining about the upgrade process, especially from XP. Most of us expected to be able to format our hard disks and be prompted for either the XP disc or product key. Alas, this is not the case. The upgrade is much more complicated than it should be and some workarounds have been discovered
Method A (simplest)
If you already have an older version of Windows on the hard drive, finish the Custom Install, without entering the product key. After installation, go to your System Properties and click the link to activate Windows. Enter your product key and it should activate. This has worked for me twice.
Method B (hardest)
If Method A doesn’t work, try the registry hack.
1. Finish the custom install without entering the product key then click Start and type regedit.exe into the “Search programs and files” box.
2. In the registry, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/. In the pane on the right, you’ll see an entry for MediaBootInstall. Double-click on it and change the value from “1″ to “0″ and click OK.
3. Close regedit and go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories then right-click on Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator.” You’ll get a UAC alert, click Yes.
4. At the command prompt, type: slmgr /rearm and hit Enter. Reboot.
5. Now try to activate. If it fails, make sure there are no pending Windows Updates to install. If there is, install them, reboot and start over from Step 4.
Method C (most time consuming)
Perform the Custom Install and skip the product key. Once completed, run the upgrade again from within Windows 7 but this time, enter the Windows 7 upgrade key and then activate Windows.
** END UPDATE **
I had been running the Windows 7 release candidate for 3 months and the full version 2 weeks before official release date. The experience convinced me to finally upgrade my Windows XP systems to 7. This review briefly touches upon some of the key features and enhancements of Microsoft’s latest OS.
PERFORMANCE & STABILITY
One of the welcome enhancements Microsoft made was start-up time. The shutdown time has been improved as well. Also, in my non-benchmarked experience, Windows 7 has been at least as fast as XP if not faster. The kernel changes and ability to run the 64-bit version probably has a lot to do with that. Most benchmarks from around the Internet seem to support my observations.
64-BIT
I am elated to finally upgrade to a 64-bit operating system in order to take advantage of more memory support and modern processors. I have Intel Core 2 Duo processors in both my systems with 4GB of physical RAM but XP only allowed 3.25GB for system use.
DESKTOP
At first login, you’ll notice the changes to the taskbar. The taskbar is no longer just a place to store quick launch icons and view open windows. It now provides functionality in the form of Jump Lists, which allow you to select your most frequently opened files or links from the apps you have “pinned” on the taskbar. The clock and calendar are improved and the Show Desktop icon is now integrated in the far right corner. Other desktop enhancements include Aero Peek, Aero Shake, Snap, new themes and wallpapers. You also get gadget support. All of these features combine to create a much improved and enjoyable desktop experience.
LIBRARIES
Windows 7 introduces a new feature called libraries. Previously, your system had shortcuts to My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc. which had files residing in only those specific folders. Files can now reside anywhere on your system and be organized inside libraries. It’s similar to how many music and photo applications organize files.
NETWORKING
Even as good as XP was, networking was cumbersome. Windows 7 makes connecting two or more Windows 7 systems together easy, using HomeGroup. This enables easy sharing of files and devices. One downside is that HomeGroup is only supported between Windows 7 systems. File transfer performance between computers has been vastly improved and connecting to a wireless…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|A Good Deal,
If you’re like most people, you have several computers running throughout your house: a desktop, a laptop, a kid’s laptop etc. This 3 license package is a great way to upgrade all of your PCs in your home for one low price.
Here’s my generic Windows 7 review:
I’ll admit, I’ve been running Windows 7 for six months now: the preproduction version of it and have just upgraded to the gold code. So I have quite a bit of experience with the operating system. Let’s get to the nitty gritty:
Should you upgrade from Windows Vista? YES! I mean it – upgrade today.
Windows 7 is quite simply faster, more stable, boots faster, goes to sleep faster, comes back from sleep faster, manages your files better and on top of that it’s beautiful to look at and easy to use. Even the preproduction version of Windows 7 was better than my Vista with SP2.
Should you upgrade from Windows XP? Maybe, but for different reasons.
XP is a good operating system and if you don’t need to add new hardware or software, XP is good. However, XP is old as an operating system. Also chances are that if you’re running XP, you might not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 7 – check the compatibility site at Microsoft to see if your system will support Windows 7. That said, Windows 7 is light years ahead of Windows XP in terms of functionality, ease of use, etc – to me it’s worth buying a new system.
64 bit or 32 bit?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s ok skip this section. If you have a core2 duo or core 2 quad or a multi cpu machine, go with the 64 bit OS, it handles memory and the CPUs much better. If you have a single core CPU, one CPU or run special programs that require 32bit, then stick with 32 bit for now.
BEFORE INSTALLATION:
I recommend you have:
-a core 2 duo or core 2 quad machine
-4gig of RAM (That’s about $50 in today’s market)
-good hard drive with (200 gig – it doesn’t need that much but that’s another $50)
-back up your files to a USB drive like Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black)
-check to make sure your computer is compatible with Windows 7
INSTALLATION:
Installation was very straight forward. You put in the CD and reboot your machine. You might have to enter your bios and enable the “boot from CD” option. Once the machine reboots a nice screen comes up to guide you through the installation. You have the option to upgrade your PC or do a clean installation. I did an upgrade and it brought in all of my files and settings from my windows Vista system. It worked great.
The upgrade did take about 2 hours for me so definitely consider.
I noticed that early on in the installation the operating system went out to Microsoft’s site to look for the latest and greatest updates, so I think this should help Microsoft respond quickly to any hiccups with compatibility.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK:
The driver from my old HP Inkjet printer for 2001 doesn’t work on Windows 7 so there are some things that will not transition. I had to use a generic HP driver which doesn’t give me the quality that I got from an injet – so overall, I’m up and running with that printer but I’m degraded on the inkjet front. That said, I recently upgraded to a HP CP2025DN Color LaserJet Printer that I love so no real loss there. I’ll likely pick up a cheap inkjet for the occasional photo that I might need to print. Everything else upgraded.
BENEFITS
-faster boot time
-faster go to sleep
-faster wakeup
-faster about 20% to 30% faster at running applications than my Vista – seriously (but those are my results without any benchmarks or anything like that, just seeing how fast Adobe Illustrator loads, and how fast all the applications respond)
-joining wireless networks is much easier
-the interface is just plain beautiful
-my wallpapers are now a slideshow that can be set to change every few minutes (I’m not stuck with the same picture)
-Gadgets – these are wonderful little small applications that you can drag onto your desktop. I have a weather gadget and a calendar gadget on my desktop that tell me
-Better taskbar management – hovering over the taskbar icons shows me mini windows of what’s running
-Better file management – I can organize my files into Libraries that are sortable not only by type but by folder or other data. It’s great! I can browse through my presentations or illustrator files!
-Windows Media appears to be smoother which I love.
-You get…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Key upgrade info,
I had a difficult time trying to upgrade from Vista. I kept getting “unknown error” or “can’t create directory for update files”. Eventually I disabled everything running in the system tray – spysweeper, anti virus, and my background backup program. The install also asks you to un-install itunes. After this, I was able to update all three home computers. You would think it would be easy for Microsoft to detect these issues and give a decent error message – or include it in the installation instructions.
An update after using Windows 7 for a couple of days:
* Very good compatibility with programs, and printers. Everything came up and worked well. Even my Western Digital background backup program.
* Taskbar bar icons are bigger – I’d guess that most Microsoft designers are growing old with me and starting to use reading glasses
* Occasionally hangs when shutting down – I think that I have narrowed it to Spysweeper hanging out in the background and not closing. I do have the latest Windows 7 approved version. For now, I’ll shut it down before shutting down windows.
* Did not see much of a speed improvement
* I had more disk space at the end of the install
Was this review helpful to you?
|