Windows 7 (x64) Professional vs. Ultimate on VPCZ1

Windows 7 (x64) Professional vs. Ultimate

Which one do you guys think is/feels faster?

Anyway, it's easy and free to upgrade from the original Professional edition to Ultimate on VPCZ1...

 

They should perform exactly the same. If you're really nitpicky, you can disable the WMP Network Sharing Service under Ultimate, and they should be EXACTLY the same performance wise. The only real differences in them is the Media Center stuff in Ultimate, and the Professional Ed. supports a few more really specific business apps natively.

 

Professional also comes with Media Center.

According to Microsoft, the only significant differences between Professional and Ultimate are that Ultimate has BitLocker, and can change operating languages on the fly. Hardly seems worth the added expense.

 

Errrm, are you sure Win 7 Pro comes with Media Center..? Can anyone else confirm this..? I know this wasn't the case with Vista...

EDIT: You are correct, the small-print at the bottom of this page says so... This is so cool, since I was initially looking at getting Ultimate just to get media center, but now I don't need to...!!

 

Media Center is there in W7 Pro.
I guess Microsoft thought they could add a few more home-orientated apps to the Pro version since they did quite a decent job getting W7 to NOT be a resource hog like Vista.

The only notable difference in Ultimate is the built-in Bitlocker feature, which I read is not very good (likewise in Vista).

I would only get Ultimate if you know what services to kill off via the startup list, and only if you know how to get that clean-installed properly. Otherwise, stick with Pro. That naturally has less apps than Ultimate, so that should provide some decent performance out-of-the-box.

Basically, to get Ultimate pulling out the same performance as Pro (they are pretty close already), you need to know how to tweak it.

 

Win 7 Pro + Fresh Start = no need for any extra work.

 

There's no 'fresh start' option in the UK, and I was thinking of getting a pre-built one now anyhow... I was also intending to JBOD the SSD to have separate c: and d: drives, and so would want to clean install anyway... Is clean installing a simple enough process..? I also read somewhere that you can clean install from the backup discs, but choose not to re-install the bloatware, is this true..?

 

I don't know. I guess some people have been successful, but I've seen more than a couple people posting about very strange issues on their machines, and every time it's been someone who clean installed... so I'm not sure that the exact sequence/required steps has been figure out yet.

 

Unless you're paranoid about the RAID0 capability, I would (and did) just keep it as-is and re-partition into into more logical drives.

 

Guess I could do that...

Has anyone yet determined an ordered list of drivers/utils to install after a clean Windows install..?

 

I have used both on different Vaio Z's. I have Win7 (upgrade) running on my Z690 CTO and Win7 Pro on my Z11DGX/SJ. Honestly, they perform the pretty close to the same until it comes to sequential reads/writes - when the SSD leaves the 7200 RPM HDD choking on it's dust.

Startup times between the 2 systems is only a few seconds apart. Granted, this is partly because I had tweaked the snot out of the Services that were running under Vista before I upgraded to Win7 (and which, therefore, Win7 preserved in the upgrade process). I even ended up turning on a couple of additional services under Ultimate and it still keeps up.

All this to say, their speed capabilities are about the same to the average user. If, however, you have a need to change the OS language on the fly or to use OS-based drive encryption, Ultimate is the way to go.

P.S. The only reason I have Ultimate is because under Vista, it was the only way to get both the Media Center/Entertainment components of Home AND the Drive Image & Advanced Networking features of Professional. That distinction no longer exists under Win7.