Any advantage to paying more for Win 7 upgrades from the factory instead of upgrading yourself?

If you're building a laptop from, say, Alienware, they charge $150 to upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate. However, you can buy the "anytime upgrade" from Home Premium to Ultimate from, say, Amazon.com for $85. Is there anything you gain from paying more to have Windows 7 Ultimate installed at the Alienware factory? Or are you just as well off getting the computer with Home Premium and then doing an "anytime upgrade" yourself?

One example of what I'm thinking about: with my MacBook Pro, when I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, I found it ran a bit buggier than people who had had Snow Leopard as their OS right from the factory. I attributed this to the difference between patching an OS and doing a fresh install of that OS. However, my understanding with Windows 7 is that it's all installed already, and you just unlock already-installed features when you use an "anytime upgrade." That should avoid any glitchiness from the upgrade, right?

 

Time & aggravation vs Money. If problems, is nice to kick it back to the factory. If no problems, then it's just a matter of how much time of YOURS is required for ordering/paying/installing the upgrade.

Personally, when I order new, I order exactly what I want, software-wise, as I like factory loads. All it takes is one little gotcha and now your machine's dead and you're wasting a LOT of time dealing with the fallout.

Save your bucks for hardware upgrades and don't take chances with something that'll blow you out of the water and waste big amounts of time...for $80-ish, it ain't worth it.

 

$80 is $80, I'd save the money and doing it myself

The question is: do you really need Ultimate? Home Premium is doing well for most users.

cheers ...

 

I'd say if you are comfortable altering the software of your computer than definitely do it yourself. It's kind of hard to screw up a Windows 7 installation if you follow the instructions on the screen and apply common sense.

 

The only feature that Professional and Ultimate have that Home Premium doesn't that I'd want is the improved backwards compatibility with Windows XP-era programs. I use my computer for both work and play, and some of the programs I use for work (transcript viewers, calendaring programs) appear to have been released during the Reagan administration. Okay, that's hyperbole, but not much. My work machine uses Windows 7 Professional, and I'm not sure how well these programs would work with Home Premium.

I don't see any advantage for me in having Ultimate over Professional, but Alienware only offers two choices for the M14x (right now the leading contender for my next machine): Home Premium and Ultimate. They don't offer Professional.

 

with mac os the upgrade might mess things up

but the way windows does it there is no patching involved it just unlock stuf

 

not exactly true. backwards compatibility stuff is in all win7 versions. it's just, they don't have a full windows xp emulator with a full windows xp in there. and that, you won't need.

i run win3.1 apps on win7 without any problems. the only thing you'd have to adjust sometimes is the rights (give that applications folder full access rights to your user, not just the admins).

get home premium and test your apps. ask for help in here for common issues. and only if all that doesn't work, consider a virtualized xp for help.

in short: you won't need it. the chance is VERY low that you'll ever need it.

 

Dave Permen--I hadn't understood the difference between having backwards compatibility with XP applications and having a full XP emulator. You're right; I only need the former. You just saved me $150.

 

And in case you're intensely curious, here is the wikipedia entry comparing Windows 7 editions...

Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

With Alienwares at least, the recovery partition on the laptop or backup USB drive will restore the OS to how you bought it, meaning youll have to upgrade it if you ever restore the laptop/get a HDD failure.

Also Alienwares come with custom boot screens, wallpaper, user portraits etc that I imagine you might lose installing your own.

 

I bought my windows 7 ultimate direct from Dell/Alienware because it is more convenient. If you want to spend some time to save cash, the windows anytime upgrade will not bring any disadvantages.

The main function of Windows 7 ultimate is the ability to encrypt hard drives. If you do not need this function, it is better to save some money and stick with home premium.