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    Check for 7 Pro when buying a refurb

    Discussion in 'Alienware M11x' started by Sequimite, Jun 26, 2011.

  1. Sequimite

    Sequimite Notebook Guru

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    I noticed when buying my refurb a week ago that some of the M11x's had System 7 Professional for the same price as the same spec'ed models with Home Premium. After buying it I checked the additional features and was underwhelmed. As it turns out however it seems that I need the XP Mode for a couple of old games so I'm now glad I got it.

    Just a heads up to look for the 7 Pro machines when looking to buy a refurb. The upgrade to Pro on Dell is $130 for a new M11x.

    add - Looking again it appears that there is a $10 - 20 bump for Pro over Home Premium. When I bought mine for $669 there was a $629 machine that had a 320G HD vs my 500G HD and Pro. Looking today there are 2 R1 machines both at $629 but one has a 160G HD with Pro and the other a 250G HD with Home Premium.
     
  2. Sequimite

    Sequimite Notebook Guru

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    I just wanted to add that XP Mode is really slick. When I retired I was on XP Pro so that's the last OS I am familiar with and Sys 7 is brand new to me.

    XP runs in it's own window with it's own partition on the hard drive and I can switch back and forth between 7 and XP freely running stuff on both simultaneously. Like I said, Slick!
     
  3. JTOverath

    JTOverath Notebook Evangelist

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    If you don't have Pro or higher you can look into VMWare player or Virtual Box. Both are free and have features similar to XP Mode. Only issue with these is you have to provide your own copy of XP. So if you can get Pro as a cheap upgrade and don't have a copy of XP then I say go for it!