Page 1 of 1

os win 7

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:47 am
by goodguy
Hello and thank you for taking the time to read this post.

A friend of mine recently moved over to windows 7 after being a die-hard xp supporter for many years and i noticed that has soundcard sounded better, graphics card looked even better, but i don't know why this should be. Now i am ready to take the plunge but am unsure which version of win 7 to go for as there are so many out there, ofcourse i want the best so " ultimate " was my first choice but is has been pointed out that it may not be of much use to me as a home user.

I use my pc mostly as a home theater system, can anyone recommend a version of win 7 which would be best for me in this case. I am interested in 1. Audio quality 2. picture / graphics quality 3. speed.

My thinking is that whatever this " thing " is in windows 7 (sorry i know thing is not a very technical term) that is causing an improvement in audio and picture quality ove xp, then windows ultimate should have the highest perfomance and refined version of this " thing " (apologies again)

Can anyone please clarify or provide information on this " thing "

Many thanks. John.

Re: os win 7

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 10:14 am
by Major_A
I use my pc mostly as a home theater system
Pick up Home Premium. It has Media Center built-in and for what you will be using Windows for it's the most logical version.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... e?T1=tab15

Re: os win 7

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 10:39 am
by Sapientun
Home Premium should be good enough with you.

The fact that you said the audio sounds better and the video looks better might have been better driver support, and not actually a difference in Windows editions.

Re: os win 7

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:46 pm
by goodguy
Hi. Many thanks for all the generous responses.

Is it the media centre that is causing the improved sound and graphics performance?
i was reading that win 7 has wasapi which connects your media player directly to your soundcard bypassing layers of windows software thereby improving the sound quality, whereas xp has asio which does the same thing but does not appear to be as good, not sure if it is better drivers support as mentioned previously but who knows.

Question: Is the media centre, wasapi support, better drivers support etc found in the home premium version exactly as same as found in ultimate, i was under the impression that ultimate is a better and higher performance package (quoted from the microsoft website) sorry guess MS may be a little bias in its sales pitch.

Many thanks in advance. John.