Looking at getting this

[Grey Fox]

Features you'll never use. Some say Ultimate is faster then Home Premium. I'd get Home Premium.

[DGuller]

Does it come with a stain cleaner?  I'd need one with this computer, or even when reading about this computer.

[derspiess]

I have Win7 Ultimate & am pretty sure I don't use anything that I wouldn't get with Win7 Home Premium.  You can install x64 and use all that ridiculous RAM with Win7 Home Premium all the same.  The supported limit for Home Premium is 16GB, and for Ultimate it is 192GB (!)

[Caliga]

Oh, right, I forgot that Win 7 Home Premium puts a (ridiculous) upper limit cap in RAM.

Still, Alci, you don't even want more than 16 Gb to start, so it won't matter to you.  If you decide to go beyond that later it's very easy to upgrade Win 7 when needed.

[grumbler]

And does anybody know about windows 7 ultimate?

Ultimate doesn't give you anything you really need that pro doesn't give you, but costs about the same, so I'd go for it over Premium.

The advantage over Home is XP compatibility mode and the greater memory access, plus a bunch of domain things you won't use.

I'd say that you could probably save a few bucks by not buying the Ultimate upgrade before you need to, but you are saving a buttload of upgrade hassle as well, so why not?

[Alcibiades]

So grumbler says get it. 

[DGuller]

Will it play Tetris?

[Caliga]

So grumbler says get it. 

There's nothing wrong with grumbler's reasoning on this.  I still don't think it's what I personally would do: I tend to develop a fixed budget for my PC builds/upgrades and try to meet it right on the nose, which means that if I got 7 Home Premium instead of 7 Ultimate, I'd put the savings into getting a slightly higher quality component of another type.

Also, I was thinking that Ultimate is $100 more than Home Premium, but his post suggests that isn't the case.

[Lucidor]

Neither 5 1/4" or 3,5" floppy drives? Sounds risky!

Just kidding the man.

[Alcibiades]

From what I've read I would be good with just professional, and since I don't have any of the networking needs and stuff I won't really need ultimate.

So windows 7 pro and the ATI 5870 to be upgraded when ever it needs to be next year or something.

Guys approve of the changes?  Price at $2992 after the changes, this is with free shipping, although tax will still suck.

With the 75$ I'm saving should I get a dedicated network card?  34$ or an 80$ model.

[Caliga]

Your board appears to have onboard LAN (which is near-universal with quality boards these days I believe), so no I don't think I'd do that.  Maybe just set the $75 aside to buy some games for your kickass new PC? 

[DontSayBanana]

From what I've read I would be good with just professional, and since I don't have any of the networking needs and stuff I won't really need ultimate.

So windows 7 pro and the ATI 5870 to be upgraded when ever it needs to be next year or something.

Guys approve of the changes?  Price at $2992 after the changes, this is with free shipping, although tax will still suck.

With the 75$ I'm saving should I get a dedicated network card?  34$ or an 80$ model.

Almost everything nowadays has Gigabit Ethernet with at least decent functionality.  Peripheral network cards, you'll only need if you're 1) doing something funky with a boot ROM or some other kind of extreme fringe functionality, or 2) the onboard NIC breaks.

Short: Right now, an extra network card would be a total waste of money that you won't use.

Windows 7: depends how much fixing you do of your own systems... the biggest drawback I've found to Home Premium is that MSC and secpol (system configuration and security policy editors, respectively) are totally and completely gimped; nearly everything in those applications requires Professional or Ultimate.  However, I only use those for the direst cases where I absolutely refuse to plop down a chunk of change on the geek squad (like having to unlock both regedit and task manager).  The average user isn't even that likely to know of their existence, let alone use it.

Short: If you wanna go hardcore nerd and have total control over your system, you need Pro or Ultimate.  Otherwise, Home Premium's got you covered.  Oh, and if you feel a need to use XP Mode (you probably won't), Home Premium won't take it.

[derspiess]

Ultimate doesn't give you anything you really need that pro doesn't give you, but costs about the same, so I'd go for it over Premium.

Where do you see Ultimate for about the same price?  I usually see it about $80 or so above Home Premium, at least for the OEM version.

[grumbler]

Where do you see Ultimate for about the same price?  I usually see it about $80 or so above Home Premium, at least for the OEM version.

Newegg has pro full at $268 and ultimate full at $284.  That's "about the same price" as far as I am concerned.

[derspiess]

Newegg has pro full at $268 and ultimate full at $284.  That's "about the same price" as far as I am concerned.

Were we comparing Home or Pro against Ultimate?  Home is $179 retail.  Now if you're going the OEM route (which I tend to do), Ultimate is $184.  But then Home is $99 OEM.

With that price difference, unless I was certain I'd need any Ultimate features soon, I would go with Home OEM for $99.