Some Windows 7 questions

I considering moving to W7 from my XP Pro setup on my desktop PC. I have a few questions which are undoubtedly trivial and 'obvious' but he ho. I also have a netbook running XP Home. My desktop has an Intel Core i5 760 (2.8GHz), 4Gbytes RAM, 1 Tbyte HDD, Geforce GT 430 with 1024Mbyte. I'm sure the PC is quite powerful enough.

For the desktop I'm trying to decide whether to go for W7 Home Premium or Professional. As far as I can see the only possible benefit to me of Pro is XP mode. In reality I don't run complex purpose built applications - a few home brewed but pretty simple ones, and 2 or 3 that run in a DOS shell - all these work on XP.

Is there any real benefit of Pro over Home Premium for me?

I run IIS on my XP Pro system, it looks as if that will be ok on Premium. Is that true?

My netbook and desktop network together and share drives and printers. Will that be possible if the desktop is running W7 (of whichever flavour)?

I can't think of any more questions - at the moment, if I do I'll post them here if I may.

No remote desktop with home premium. I can't live without remote desktop

As for everything else you should be fine - file shares and printers may need tweaking to make them work.

Your machine is well equipped to run windows 7. I would recommend pro version and 64 bit also as long as you get the drivers for your hardware, most drivers are catered for by windows 7 anyway.

Remote desktop doesn't have to mean Microsoft Remote Desktop does it?

VNC would be a place to start looking (works on everything from phones (Symbian and up) to Window and Linux boxes).

I'd certainly go for Home Premium with VNC if remote desktop was the only deciding factor.

VNC is rubbish compared to remote desktop. Yes, you heard me right

I'm not sure where the thinking about the need, or otherwise, for remote desktop came from. I don't use it or any equivalent at the moment. Maybe it was the reference to my desktop and netbook networking together. They do but only to the extent of being able to see each others drives and printer via shares, certainly not to the extent of one remotely controlling to the other. I've used VNC and similar in the past in a work environment but have never needed it in my home environment.

But you can't argue with the price.

Remote Desktop is rubbish compared to Citrix, but let's not go there.

It wasn't specifically anything you said - just something to bear in mind when getting premium instead of professional.

In reply to a post by cavillas:

Your machine is well equipped to run windows 7. I would recommend pro version and 64 bit also as long as you get the drivers for your hardware, most drivers are catered for by windows 7 anyway.

On the subject of 64 vs 32 bit, it might be worth the OP checking that his home brewed applications will execute on a 64 bit platform before going down that route.