Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, Full Version (PC DVD)

I got this for a new hard drive and to move away from Vista, and yes I agree with most, this should of been a free upgrade for all users of what is a flawed OS in Vista, isn't like Microsoft couldn't afford to do that for their loyal users either!

Anyway, most of it has been said, a great Operating System, better than both XP and Vista although for most things XP is fine.

I've read reviews about if you can afford it go for Ultimate, the only main difference between Ultimate and other versions is your entire system is encrypted.

Compared to Home Premium you can't use XP mode, connect to company networks, you can't back up to a company network, you don't get bitlocker encryption or able to work in a choice of 35 languages, in Ultimate you can, but do you need to, answer 99.99% of the time, NO.

SO unless you need those few extra features, save 50% of the cost and get Home Premium.

If like me you have a business with 20 years worth of info on your machine it's probably worth a bit extra to keep it safer but I've never been attacked anyway so I may as well of gone for Home Premium, I can only speak English too etc.

Installed quickly, about 30 mins.

Runs beautifully.

Problems running Battlefield 3 on Vista 32 bit, all gone using Win 7 64 bit, along with various other issues, you could be thinking your graphics cards have had it as I did, or your MB, RAM, what the heck is wrong!!!! etc etc but the new OS proved otherwise, unless you can rule the OS out which you can't if you are using Vista you can't then work towards what the issue is and curing it.

Be aware, you cannot run Win 7 on any pc, you can download and run the Win 7 advisor but that does not tell you if your motherboard can run it, something I was unaware of as it isn't stated anywhere, you can search on Microsoft for compatible motherboards so do that, the advisor will automatically check the rest of your hardware but not that part.

I tried the bitlocker encryption but that deosn't work either as you need a motherboard with that feature built into it, so I wasted an extra £80 on Ultimate for nothing.

Wow, what a difference a few years makes. I reviewed Windows Vista upon it's release and was quite scathing in my review. In the end they never did quite get Vista up to scratch. I basically built my system dual boot XP+Vista and every month I would boot into Vista and update any required drivers, patch it all up and then try some gaming, and each time it was nowhere near as fast as XP running on the same box.

So, I've been running Windows seven for a couple of months now and prior to that I'd been running the release candidate version. I've deliberately held off reviewing Windows 7 because frankly I've been waiting to see if any problems appear with it. The good news is that so far I've had very few problems. Infact for the last 2 months I've been running my system with just Windows 7 and haven't even bothered having XP installed at all. This is a big deal, kind of like taking off the training wheels.

The install experince for Windows 7 was very painless, I had non of the SATA RAID controller driver issues that Vista had. Once installed the OS is lovely to look at, to be fair it has more than a passing resemblance to Vista with both OS's looking very similar, but for me the important part is in how the OS affects games performance and overall game compatability. Windows 7 has run every game I care to chuck at it and it runs them just as well as XP. Even the games engines that still gave me problems with Vista would run silky smooth on Windows 7, namely games such as: GTR2, Race07, iRacing. Infact the only game I've struggled to get working is IL2 1946 which needs some tweaking apparantly to make work on Windows 7. All other games I've tried have worked.

I also experienced non of the sound card device driver issues I had with Vista for my Soundblaster Xfi Fatal1ty card. This card was a nightmare to get working on Vista, but works fine on Windows 7.

There is not really much more that I can say as to be honest I really only use an OS as a platform for gaming, so I don't tend to make the most use out of the features an OS might have. All I can say is that if you are a gamer who avoided the move to Vista, quite rightly in my opinion, then it really is time to think about making the move to Windows 7, it is a fantastic OS. Microsoft couldn't afford to drop the ball a second time and I'm glad to say they havent.

I only decided to buy Windows 7 after hearing so many people saying that it was the best OS since XP. I went for Ultimate as I was replacing a full version of Vista that had caused many problems with problematic drivers and was unstable from day one.

I have to say the look of Windows 7 is very similar to Vista, but the performance is nothing short of amazing. It's far quicker that XP and hasn't even wobbled since I installed it. Ultimate gives several additional options to the personal version and I like the improvements that it offers.

All I can say is, if you are thinking about upgrading, don't hesitate. And if you can afford the slightly higher cost, go for the Ultimate version.

As always Amazon was by far the cheaper option to buy this and I received it the next working day. It was installed and working that afternoon!

Pete D.