Win 7 Home: premium vs Basic

[mubs]

My sister, who's been a luddite all her 55 years, finally has learned how to use email and wants a laptop for email, web browsing and Skyping with her kids (webcam essential).

Win 7 Home Basic is available pre-installed in a few countries only (including here) and is n/a in the "developed" world.

Sis is extremely price conscious, and most budget laptops here (95%) come with W7 Home Basic.

Web searches indicate the following main differences:

Summary:

1. Home Basic is cheaper than Home Premium.

2. Home Premium is sold worldwide, while Home Basic is sold only in certain areas.

3. Home Premium has full Aero support, while Home basic only has partial support.

4. Home Premium is able to create and join a home network, while Home Basic is only capable of joining.

5. Home Premium is already equipped with the Windows Media Center, while the Home Basic is not.

None of these is really a problem, IMO. VLC Media Player would be more than adequate to address #5, and #s 3 & 4 are non-issues.

The laptop will be used in wireless mode to connect to the Internet.

Any reasons to NOT choose W7 Home Basic?

I guess in descending order of priority, manufacturers to consider would be Lenovo, Dell, Asus, with the bottom being Acer & HP? Getting something priced lower from the better manufacturers will be a challenge, but I am starting my search now.

Thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

IIRC, you're confusing Windows 7 Starter Edition with Home Basic. Home Basic is in fact sold in the USA on some netbook systems.

Big issues: Limited support for RAM (2GB) and multitasking. Issues that will actually make people want to upgrade: Users cannot change the default wallpaper.

 

[Mercutio]

Or maybe it is too early and I have one confused one for the other. Whatevs.

 

[mubs]

I think you are indeed mixing up the two - Starter and Basic.

According to that most definitive source :beye:, Basic 32-bit supports 4GB physical RAM, and 64-bit supports 8GB physical RAM.

Starter, on the other hand, comes only in 32-bit flavor and supports a max of 2GB physical RAM.

 

[Mercutio]

I've encountered both in the wild. Usually on Netbooks that were purchased in South America.

It should be pointed out that you can always do an Anytime Upgrade to move to a less retarded version of Windows later on. Anytime Upgrades are completely painless. I'm not sure there's even any change to the installed software. You just wait five minutes, reboot once or twice and magically a bunch of stuff starts working.

 

[MaxBurn]

Non computer user wants a first machine? Did you pitch the tablet angle?

email, web browsing and Skyping with her kids (webcam essential).

 

[ddrueding]

Did you pitch the tablet angle?

An excellent thought. Be sure to include a real keyboard, typing anything long on the screen is a pain. Also get something that can print in a non-retarded way.

 

[LunarMist]

I've encountered both in the wild. Usually on Netbooks that were purchased in South America.

It should be pointed out that you can always do an Anytime Upgrade to move to a less retarded version of Windows later on. Anytime Upgrades are completely painless. I'm not sure there's even any change to the installed software. You just wait five minutes, reboot once or twice and magically a bunch of stuff starts working.

South America? Isn't the licensing different compared to the NA versions?

 

[mubs]

Tablet is ruled out; she doesn't want it, ad I thing it would be too big a jump for her and the even bigger luddite, my b-i-l. It's got to be a notebook or netbook.

How is MSI as a manufacturer of net/notebooks? They hit some awesome pricepoints.

This heah is a local website that is like a local Amazon.com (in fact was started by a couple of guys who did some sw dev for Amz; site is a copycat).

Look at these; prices can't be beat for the config and sw combo offered:

MSI U Series U135 Netbook

MSI U270 U Series U270 Netbook

MSI A6200 (PDC) A6200-689US Laptop

MSI A6200 (Core I3) A6200-489US Laptop

Roughly, prices in USD would be $292, $406, $473, $494 (the currency here has depreciated vs the $ for some odd reason).

There are so many machines available with FreeDos, or nothing, or some oddball Linux. The choice narrows considerably if one wants something like W7 home Basic or better. I also see many netbooks with Meego! I thought Meego was orphaned with both Intel and Nokia washing their hands off of it after making the appropriate sympathetic noises.

 

[Mercutio]

I bought quite a few MSI U100s when those were the new thing. They have a cheap feel but they distinguished themselves by offering 3, 6 or 9-cell battery options at the same price. The original U100 could also run be made into a Hackintosh with ridiculous ease.

That said, I don't think anyone I know who bought one three years ago is still using it today.

 

[ddrueding]

Nope, I bought a couple dozen of them and only one is still working.

 

[Mercutio]

Actually, to the best of my knowledge, no one I know who bought a netbook three years ago is still using it. I don't think the problem is unique to MSI.

 

[MaxBurn]

Tablet is ruled out; she doesn't want it, ad I thing it would be too big a jump for her and the even bigger luddite, my b-i-l.

I don't think I understand, jumping from nothing to the PC world is far more difficult than picking up any of the tablets. Given what we know of PCs it might not seem that way to US but there is a serious learning curve to work effectively with a PC.

 

[mubs]

She has learned to work the basics on PCs. Knowing how little they are able to anticipate their needs, I don't want to end up recommending a solution that is limited (tablet). Over here, tablets and mid-range laptops are priced alike, and laptops are certainly more versatile.

Thanks all for your inputs.

 

[mubs]

So, netbooks are to be avoided. Is MSI still worth looking at as a manufacturer of laptops?

Any hierarchy of mfrs to use when trying to find the right machine?

 

[ddrueding]

ThinkPad
Latitude
Everything Else.

IMHO.

 

[CougTek]

HP/Compaq NC business laptops are not bad either.

 

[Handruin]

I would also put Lenovo Thinkpad higher on the list. I just ordered a T420 (i5, 4GB RAM, 500GB, 9-cell, docking station) for my girlfriend's mom. She needs a new machine for her home business. Since she lives eight hours away, it becomes a challenge to support any hardware failures. I paid for the 3-year overnight warranty with accidental damage protection. The cost of that is equal to a cost of a round trip flight. I back her up using Mozy.

 

[Santilli]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VDKOO4...e=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B004VDKOO4
?

 

[Mercutio]

I have an X100. It's not quite the same thing as a netbook, though mostly in ways that skirt the edges of technical definitions. Mine shipped with Windows 7 Professional and 4GB RAM for example, and neither of those things are what Microsoft and Intel say Netbooks are supposed to be like, and as I recall Lenovo does not refer to it as a netbook either.

 

[mubs]

Well, the problem with Lenovo's and Lattitude's is price. Too high for the purpose. I might be able to find an Inspiron for a little over budget. Otherwise it'll have to be the likes of Asus, HP/Compaq, Acer, MSI, etc. Hence the struggle to do the right thing :bleh:

 

[Mercutio]

Some of the HP Probooks are fairly reasonable.

 

[time]

Mubs, how about the Samsung R508? With a Pentium Core 2 but without Windows, it appears to sell for about Rs 24000.

 

[mubs]

Thanks for the responses, folks.

time, what would I do for the OS? A copy of Win 7 Basic seems to run about Rs. 4.75k and Rs. 5.65k. There is also the problem of logistics; we're about 650km apart. I'll have to have everything shipped to me, do the install, and ship it to her.

Actually,this may make more sense; I can install it without all the crapola mfrs put in, configure everything, and send it to her. Didn't think about this angle; certainly has merit. It also increases the pool of machines I can consider.

Thanks time

 

[ddrueding]

Actually,this may make more sense; I can install it without all the crapola mfrs put in, configure everything, and send it to her. Didn't think about this angle; certainly has merit. It also increases the pool of machines I can consider.

If you go this route, after setting up the machine, get a drive image and put it on bootable recovery media along with some basic diagnostics. That way you can talk her through a lot more remotely.

 

[Chewy509]

Actually, to the best of my knowledge, no one I know who bought a netbook three years ago is still using it. I don't think the problem is unique to MSI.

I know of exactly 1 person that has had a netbook for over 2.5yrs, and still uses it. (It operates as a secondary mobile pc, supplementing their deskop). The rest have migrated to using tablets instead of netbooks.

Myself, I'm still using my netbook (currently 19mths old), but as a supplement to my desktop. (The small size and 6hr+ battery is great for Uni, where it's not uncommon to see a mass of people hunting for spare power sockets to charge their laptops). At home, I spend most of my time in front of my desktop.

 

[mubs]

My Dell Latitude was purchased by my employer in August 2007. It has since been and continues to be my only work machine. About a year ago IT wiped XP on it and put Win 7 Enterprise with Office 2007. 2 GB RAM. I wait a tad when opening programs or large files (like powepoints), but I guess I've gotten used to it. Subjectively, the HDD feels really slow.

Since my home desktop is 5+ years old, and my daughters Dell desktop is a hand-me-down that's ~ 10 years old, and since I've never experienced an SSD, there's no way for me to compare and understand what I'm missing