So there's starter, home, professional and . . . Opinions please.

[viva_ron_paul]

Ok, so I'm working on a new build. Trying to be informed, prepared, make the wisest choice. After doing my homework, I was left a bit jaw dropped with the horror stories. I'm wondering if I should just say screw it and run back to ol' reliable XP.

What research did I do? I basically went to various sites checking the reviews, including Microsoft. I was left horrified with the oh so many horror stories of Windows7. Good thing I checked though, I found out starter is an absolute joke. And home will cap off your ram at 16gb, which is ok for now but how about down the road? So I figured just shell out the few dollars and go Professional. And then came the controversy over the retail and oem, and all the horror stories on either side, as well.

So I entertained just shelling out for XP Pro on ebay. Wow! It's just as expensive as W7 Pro. Is that because everybody knows it's just as good or better? What gives?

As you can see I'm a bit torn. Throwing my hands up in the air and throwing this to the wind of Tom's Pros. What do you all say . . . any input is welcomed. Thanks.

 

[13thmonkey]

home premium. It'll be 3-5 years before 16GB becomes an issue. win 7 64 is safer, and more stable than xp 64, has better driver supoort than xp 64.

Read the dates on the horror stories, oh the horror, how many of them were pre-release? i.e. beta?

 

[jitpublisher]

Win7 Home Premium is all you need. I don't know what horror stories you are reading about Win 7, but its a great OS. I'd say for every problem you hear or read about, there are literally thousands of people who use it happily everyday. All the professional version does is add networking features that you need in a a corporate environment, for home use it is a waste of money. Be sure to install the 64 bit version, and 16gig of memory is a bunch of memory. Will be a while before any home PC would need more than that, way past the useful life of the rest of the system.

 

[Rockdpm]

I think 12GB is more than enough, and i only use 8 GB. Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit gets my vote!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116716

 

[lupinesithlord]

Home premium x64 best bang for buck, with the caveat if you are doing greater than 16 g ram, need to be able to switch domain names or are doing heavy nas (network standalone hard drive arrays) if those are in the immediate future than pro, if you need xtra language packs, or ultra security via bitlocker then you need ultimate.
I also dont know what horror stories you are referring to, but xp is not really a viable choice any more, and if you want more than 3.x gigs of ram never really was. (ive heard more 64 bit xp and vista horror stories)