Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Upgrade Edition for XP or Vista users (PC DVD)

Mis take
I did order this item on 10/11/09 but I wish now that I had ordered the full version for the system does not work with my Norton anti virus!

Product description inadequate

I bought this at launch for my home computer and networked PC, but was disappointed to find I could use it just once. As far as I am aware, this is not explained in the product literature. I thought Microsoft was trying to be more helpful to its customers, but perhaps I'm wrong!

Vast improvement on Vista
I had very low expectations for Windows 7 but have been really impressed with the performance improvement.

Complete Waste of Money
If you're looking at this, then that means that you're a sensible person who pays attention to the bad reviews as well as the good, to get a balanced view of the product you're considering.

With that in mind, I tell you that this is the biggest waste of money I have ever committed to.

This may not be the case for you, because I have a very specialised setup - I need to be able to input Cantonese Chinese characters, for which the pronunciation is not standardised - even if a keyboard IME officially existed for Windows, the best way I found by far was to use a tablet. This lets me input characters for any East Asian languages I happen to need, even if I don't know their pronunciations (e.g. if I'm copying them out of a book). This worked fine in Windows Vista - there were no restrictions. In Windows 7 however, it's a different kettle of fish.

I'm told that I must shell out an extra £100 or so to upgrade to the Ultimate Edition. So, having shelled out x amount money for new software, I find that the content included has actually regressed. I feel (possibly unjustly) that it must only be a matter of time before more removals become apparent.

A little more context is needed perhaps to make this review entirely fair - I moved over to Ubuntu in a fit of Vista-hating angst recently, which was fantastic for everything... except inputting Chinese characters. Wanting to input characters without the burden of Vista, I thought I'd take advantage of the (relatively) cheap Windows 7... only to find this. A happy bunny I am not.

Moving away from this particular rant, little else seems to have changed since Vista too. I'm disappointed to find that IE and Media Player are just as integrated as before - what were the point of any court rulings to prevent this? - and the overall feel is more clunky than before. The Start Bar is certainly a big improvement insofar as usability is concerned, and there are enough open source programs to make the whole experience productive. Still no workspaces though, a Linux luxury I'd just gotten used to.

Performance seems to be worse than Vista; it loads up in about the same time as Ubuntu 9.10, which I found interesting.

Anyway, as much as Linux and Vista have their fair share of frustrations, for my purposes at least, there are fewer there than here. If Microsoft actually do something about this, I'll be the first to sing their praises. I want to like Windows 7. But really, this kind of flagrant corporate greed isn't really helping. Avoid, until you've made absolutely sure it'll do what you want.

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