I opened the phone lines a few nights ago, asking the community to call in to talk about Windows 7. We had some excellent discussions. This particular call was from Ray, asking me about whether he should upgrade his Windows 7 RC 1 to the full/final release now… or wait a bit. We also talked about differences in the different versions available of Windows 7, and what may work best for his needs.

As I mentioned, Ray is using RC 1 still on his computer. He says he isn’t having any issues or problems with it. He was wondering if he “should” go ahead and buy the full version now, or if it was ok to wait until the RC ran out. I told him that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Seriously, if his version isn’t causing any problems, wait to buy the full version until there’s a coupon or sale going on. Save yourself some money!

We also talked a bit about the various versions. He had heard from someone that with Windows 7, the Home Professional version is actually better to use than the Ultimate version. I do know that the big difference between Professional and Ultimate is additional language packs, and BitLocker. Kat and I discussed BitLocker a bit in a previous video. If those are things you need, then it would be worth it to get Ultimate.

Personally, I don’t think those things are value adds. I think they should just be part of the operating system, no matter which version you buy. But who am I to make the rules?

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Vista’s still a mess. It’s meant to be at release candidate stage, yet vendor’s are struggling to provide sufficient driver support, features are still missing or not yet complete, and its performance compared to XP is still poor. Nowadays hardware is cheap, and it would be sufficiently acceptable to upgrade in anticipation of a wonderfully revolutionary OS. Unfortunately Vista provides little to no benefit for end users compared to that of the previous version of Windows, released five years ago in 2001.

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. I think we’re all hoping for dramatic (and I mean, DRAMATIC) improvements between RC1, RC2, and Gold.