Wiley Windows 7 Secrets 978-0-470-50841-1 User Manual
Product codes
978-0-470-50841-1
22
Part I: Surviving Setup
I
f you haven’t purchased Windows 7 yet—or you’d like to know whether or not it’s worth
upgrading from the version you do have to a more capable version—this chapter is for
upgrading from the version you do have to a more capable version—this chapter is for
you. Here, we’ll explain the differences between the many Windows 7 product editions
and help you pick the version that makes the most sense for you.
and help you pick the version that makes the most sense for you.
The Way We Were: XP and Vista
Product Editions
Back in 2001, life was easy: Microsoft released Windows XP in just two product editions,
Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition. The difference between
the products was fairly obvious, and with its enhanced feature set, XP Pro was the more
expensive and desirable version, as one might expect.
Over time, however, Microsoft muddied the waters with a wealth of new XP product edi-
tions. Three major product editions were added: Windows XP Media Center Edition (which
received three major releases and one minor update between 2002 and 2005), Windows
XP Tablet PC Edition (which received two major releases between 2002 and 2005), and
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, which took most of XP Pro’s feature set and brought
it to the x64 hardware platform. Other XP versions, such as XP Embedded and XP Starter
Edition, can’t really be considered mainstream products, because they targeted specific
usage scenarios and were never made broadly available to consumers.
Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition. The difference between
the products was fairly obvious, and with its enhanced feature set, XP Pro was the more
expensive and desirable version, as one might expect.
Over time, however, Microsoft muddied the waters with a wealth of new XP product edi-
tions. Three major product editions were added: Windows XP Media Center Edition (which
received three major releases and one minor update between 2002 and 2005), Windows
XP Tablet PC Edition (which received two major releases between 2002 and 2005), and
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, which took most of XP Pro’s feature set and brought
it to the x64 hardware platform. Other XP versions, such as XP Embedded and XP Starter
Edition, can’t really be considered mainstream products, because they targeted specific
usage scenarios and were never made broadly available to consumers.
Most PCs sold during Windows XP’s lifetime were 32-bit computers based on
Intel’s x86 platform. While the industry was widely expected to make the
jump to 64-bit computing at some point, that leap came from an unexpected
place: Intel’s tiny competitor AMD developed the so-called x64 platform, which
is essentially a 64-bit version of the aging x86 platform. The x64-based PCs are
completely compatible with x86 software, and though all PCs sold today are, in
fact, x64-compatible, most PC operating systems to date (including Windows
Vista) were sold in 32-bit versions for compatibility reasons. (Even Intel is on
board: though the x64 platform was created by AMD, all of Intel’s PC-compatible
chips are now x64 compatible as well.)
Though not as technically elegant as so-called “native” 64-bit platforms like
the ill-fated Itanium, the x64 platform does provide all of the benefits of true
64-bit computing, including most importantly a flat 64-bit memory address
space that obliterates the 4GB memory “ceiling” in the 32-bit world. For the
purposes of this book, when we refer to 64-bit computing, we mean x64. And
as we look ahead to the generation of PCs that will ship during Windows 7’s
lifetime, what we’re going to see, predominantly, are x64 versions of the OS.
That said, Windows 7 comes in both x86 and x64 variants, as we’ll discuss later
in this chapter.