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Imserba Webstore - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade
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List Price: $219.99
Our Price: Too low to display
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Microsoft Software
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Batteries Included: 0
Binding: DVD-ROM
Brand: Microsoft
EAN: 0882224885652
Feature: (Includes 32 & 64-bit versions cd-rom) Combines remarkable ease-of-use with the entertainment features of Home Premium and the business capabilities of Professional--get it all with with Windows 7 Ultimate
Format: DVD-ROM
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Microsoft Software
Manufacturer: Microsoft Software
Model: GLC-00184
Platform: Windows 7
Publisher: Microsoft Software
Release Date: 2009-10-22
Studio: Microsoft Software
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Features
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(Includes 32 & 64-bit versions cd-rom) Combines remarkable ease-of-use with the entertainment features of Home Premium and the business capabilities of Professional--get it all with with Windows 7 Ultimate
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
Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode; watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC
Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup; connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join
Recover your data easily with automatic backup to your home and business network; help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker
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Editorial Reviews:
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With Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System Software Ultimate, you'll be able to run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP mode* and recover your data easily with automatic back-ups to your home or business network. You'll be able to connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join. And with entertainment features like Windows Media Center, it's great for home as well as for business.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Operating System Change for the Better
Comment: Purchasing Windows 7 Ultimate was the right choice for me. I run mostly all premium programs. I compared side by side
and found this update version was the best suited for my needs.
Hooray !! I got rid of Windows Vista the best upgrade I have done. It has some glitches but I do not
doubt it is because the original installation was Vista.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Do not buy upgrade, buy full version instead
Comment: This upgrade was my first Windows up grade ever made.
Installation was easy, it took only 25 minuts using formatting custom installation.
Too slow to open many programs I was using on Vista, also my canonI9900 printer is too slow after installation even after upgarade printer driver.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Modest Performance Enhancement - Questionable Investment of Time and Money
Comment: The big question for many users is "will the 200+ dollar investment and several hours of time justified by the actual and perceived benefits of the upgrade?" From my perspective, the answer is *possibly* as general performance is incrementally improved. Personally, it may be many months, however, before I get a suitable payback for the time I have invested during the upgrade process. Sadly, there are some annoying bugs in Windows 7 Ultimate that are having an immediate impact on my productivity.
To its credit, Microsoft did do an excellent job with its upgrade process technology that allows users to keep all of their programs and files. Basically, everything should be as you left it except for various task bar and star menu links. It reminds me of a comment made by a construction contractor faced with gutting the Pentagon in the 1990's who suggested the job was like changing a black-and-white television to a color set with no interruption in programming. This must have been no small feat for Microsoft.
My goal for the upgrade was merely to increase the performance of my already fast HP Elitebook mobile workstation with an X9100 dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM running Vista 64 bit. I wasn't a Vista hater to begin with but I am always looking for a speed boost. Various IT personnel with whom I have spoken and who tested Windows 7 for months before its release raved about its speedy performance. As I continuously run a real-time full-text search application on my notebook called X1, I have taken the approach that any performance enhancement is worth the investment.
After installing Vista and then subsequently installing the graphics drivers for my Nvidia Quadra graphics card, I can say that Windows 7 is visibly faster in some aspects. Oddly, my one performance benchmark, the 3DMark06 (below), didn't conclusively demonstrate a performance bump.
The biggest improvements thus far appears to be with opening various Microsoft applications. While I have not timed this scientifically, the launch process appears to be about twice as fast. Other actions, such and launching a new tab in IE Explorer (i.e. new iexplorer.exe process) appears to be dramatically faster (> 3X). In all, Windows just seems to be running faster when under high stress environments.
Some of the new window manipulation features do allow the user to save a couple of steps. For example, one can drag an application window to the top border of the screen to have that window application maximize and fill the screen. Similarly, one can drag a window to the right or left, causing that application window to fill ½ of the screen on that particular side of the desktop.
Yet, it seems that overall, Microsoft seems to be focusing more on mouse usage and less on keyboard shortcuts. Power users who work on Wall Street are trained to use keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse in virtually all possible circumstances. Once learning a few dozen of these keyboard shortcuts, one's productivity can increase significantly. For some odd reason, Microsoft seems to be moving away from providing such capabilities to power users as evidenced in their release of Office 2007 where many of the most important hotkeys were changed or removed. Likewise, in Windows 7, there are changes to the hotkey functions that will IMPEDE power users.
Some of the aesthetic features are a matter of taste. The Personalization functionality allows for a collection of high resolution desktop pictures to change throughout the day. Corresponding to a particular theme are system sounds so, for example, when you select American scenes them, a banjo will sound when you have an alert whereas in previous versions of Windows a beep would sound. Vindows7 adds additional transparency capabilities to the user interface. Yet, many of these such as the transparent application window frames have dubious value as they give a cluttered appearance.
Be aware, the setup - even from Vista it is time consuming. I have excluded steps that I felt were necessary but not critical to complete the install such as the 45 minutes needed to backup 20 GB of data on the drive.
Time required for the setup (HP Elitebook Mobile Workstation):
1) 3.0 hours of research (reading reviews, speaking with IT personnel)
2) 0.5 hours choosing the appropriate version and purchasing the software
3) 0.5 hours backing up data (as a precaution)
4) 0.75 hours uninstalling conflicting HP Protect software and turning back on needed processes that I disabled
5) 1.5 hours installation time
6) 0.5 installing Windows updates immediately after installation
7) 0.5 hours installing Nvidia Quadra drivers (suggested by Windows 7 installation process
8) 1.5 customizing layout of taskbars, start menu, visual effects and other Windows setting
9) TBD - learning curve
So, in total, this took up 8.75 hours of my time, which hopefully will pay off at some point.
The X1 real-time search application is my biggest processor hog by a long margin. It is one of the reasons I purchased a very high end notebook and decided to invest in the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade. I can't say there is a big performance boost from that perspective. It does seem that there are fewer hang-ups in Windows 7 than with XP or Vista, but it still happens. Yet, when a program does hang ("application not responding") - any program, the user finds the same annoying messages "are you sure you really want to close the application, really?" It is still mystifies me why there isn't a more aggressive kill function, much like what exists in old-school Unix.
In all, I would say the upgrade is worth it. Windows 7 does appear to slightly improve performance and many enjoy the new aesthetics.
BUGS
*Conflicts with Adobe Acrobat - can't move/ resize windows in some strange instances - seems to be getting better after Adobe upgrade
*iTunes controls (top of window) don't work on a second monitor when the screen is full screen
*Adobe controls (top of window) don't work on second screen when the screen is full screen
*Window jumps around, can't move properly when there is an alert windows
*Front panel/activity pane gets stuck
Design Flaws
*Icon spacing on Task Bar is too large
*Links on Windows menu have a less control
*Still no way to aggressive kill stubborn applications
Performance Benchmarks 3DMark06 - As you can see, the CPU subscore is much LOWER in Vista. However, I can't say I have seen anything slow down. It may to do with the benchmark code.
HP Elitebook - X9100, 4GB Ram, Quadro FX 770M
********Windows Vista*********
5/30/2009
many process on,both monitors on
4831 3DMarks
1849 SM2.0
1829 HDR/SM3.0
2731 CPU
5/30/2009
several processes off,both monitors on
4828 3DMarks
1840 SM2.0
1832 HDR/SM3.0
2733 CPU
5/30/2009
sim to #2 w/ nb mon off
4862 3DMarks
1849 SM2.0
1853 HDR/SM3.0
2730 CPU
5/30/2009
On battery power
4904 3DMarks
1866 SM2.0
1868 HDR/SM3.0
2752 CPU
5/30/2009
On battery power
4903 3DMarks
1867 SM2.0
1866 HDR/SM3.0
2753 CPU
5/31/2009
Plugged in, many services disabled
4858 3DMarks
1845 SM2.0
1850 HDR/SM3.0
2751 CPU
6/3/2009
Plugged in, Standard services enabled
4954 3DMarks
1887 SM2.0
1892 HDR/SM3.0
2740 CPU
*******Switched to Windows 7*********
11/1/2009
4767 3DMarks
2098 SM2.0
1894 HDR/SM3.0
1521 CPU
11/1/2009
4869 3DMarks
2110 SM2.0
1963 HDR/SM3.0
1607 CPU
11/2/2009
4949 3DMarks
2092 SM2.0
1906 HDR/SM3.0
1874 CPU
11/2/2009
4924 3DMarks
2093 SM2.0
1900 HDR/SM3.0
1829 CPU
11/2/2009
4889 3DMarks
2085 SM2.0
1902 HDR/SM3.0
1765 CPU
11/2/2009
4997 3DMarks
2173 SM2.0
1939 HDR/SM3.0
1727 CPU
11/2/2009
Updated Nvidia Drivers for Windows 7
4986 3DMarks
2180 SM2.0
1932 HDR/SM3.0
1705 CPU
Customer Rating:
Summary: I wouldn't rush to get Windows 7
Comment: Everything runs faster with Windows 7--right?...Wrong...If anything, start-up and overall functionality was faster last week for me with Vista.
The biggest difference for me between Vista and Windows 7 is actually a negative one: if you have a widescreen monitor like I do, Windows 7 scales up all applications--even if it has to stretch the images/fonts and saddle you with a blurry display (all except Microsoft products, which look fine at the 150% display); and if you lower that display %, all non-Microsoft applications do return to a normal display---but then your Microsoft product screens (such as Word menus) will be tiny: you can't win.
Other than that, not much different than Vista at all as far as my experience goes (except for some extra "crumbs", like file-sharing capabilities...no TV network will be building a reality show around the extra features in Microsoft Windows 7).
I guess you'll eventually have to switch over to 7 (to stay current), but I wouldn't rush into it. I'm usually a big Microsoft fan but---at $200 for this upgrade---this smacks of an attempt by Microsoft to pad its coffers now that overall sales aren't what they were in the 80s and 90s.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Win7
Comment: Finely a good Operation System from Microsoft, less errors, faster, safely disables services that you don't need from running in the background, easy to navigate, etc.
Now I think is time to retire the good old windows XP and the "hall of shame Vista", and have hardware and software developers concentrate on better 64-bit products.
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