Help! Do i buy a Windows xp home netbook or windows 7 starter edition netbook?

I've just bought a netbook with windows xp home edition for $229 at London Drugs..i have 14 days from purchase date (Friday Dec 10)to change my mind and return it for a windows 7 starter edition netbook (there's only one left on the shelf at the sale price of $279). The difference in cost is about $50 plus tax, but what's more important is...will the starter edition be better than xp home? I have a pc laptop already that i will be networking my new netbook with. My current pc laptop is already running xp home. If i go to the store and exchange my netbook for the windows 7 starter edition, will i still be able to network to my current xp home laptop?

On the microsoft site, there's very little information on window 7 starter edition. Does this edition really have some better features over xp home? Will it be worth it?

I will also be networking a new mac that's arriving in a couple of weeks, will i be able to network a mac with my pc's?:-s

Both of these netbooks have just 1GB of RAM. Please help.. is xp home better or w7starter better? I realize there are differences, like no dvd playback and cant change the desktop to customize it to my own picts and colors, but is that all? There's no dvd drive on the netbook anyways, so that's not an issue to me, and i don't care if i have a fancy or boring picture on my desktop. What i want to know is, is w7 starter a better OS, and why?

Originally Posted by 29julie

On the microsoft site, there's very little information on window 7 starter edition. Does this edition really have some better features over xp home? Will it be worth it?

Windows 7 Starter Edition is an extremely limited operating system. The rational alternative to Windows XP Home Edition is Windows 7 Home Premium. Very few people here, including myself, have tested its feature set, primarily because it is known to be extremely limited. It is limited to pre-installs and OEM versions, as well as emerging markets. Your best bet, for any computer, no matter how slow it may be, when it comes to Windows 7, would certainly be, at the very least, Windows 7 Home Premium. I would only consider Starter Edition to have more security than Windows XP. Other than that, it is not a better operating system in terms of functionality. It is very unlikely you will be doing much networking with this OS either. You will immediately hit functional walls.

For some concise information about Windows 7 editions, please see here: Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I agree with you Mike, the logical upgrade from XP Home would be Win 7 Home Premium.
Actually Home Premium is OK for most users IMHO.
I got to ask can these netbooks even run Win 7 Home Premium?
I mean to say is the hardware up to it?

Yep, I have an Acer Aspire One AO532H netbook (about $250 new now or so) that came with Starter. First thing I did to it was install Ultimate and it works perfectly well and great for everything.

the reason i wanted to buy a netbook was because of the price. to upgrade to 7home edition i would have to fork over another 80 dollars. not something i was looking forward to. Did you have to pay this upgrade price? Do you have more than 1gb of ram to allow the w7 ultimate version work better? I was under the impression that netbooks had starter edition because they have a small amount of ram and can't handle more than the starter edition. any thoughts on this.?\
What does it mean for a OS to be more "stable?"\
Does it mean that when i type out a message/email/blog post/word document that the letters will appear on the page as i type as opposed to appearing on the page with blips and blanks and time inbetween when they actually appear as a word on the screen? I do notice that i have to wait for the words to fill in and show up on the monitor to see if i actually hit the right letters on the keyboard with xp home?\
What i did was buy the other net book and now they are sitting here side by side on my kitchen table for me to look at.
\i've now typed out this message that you're looking at on both pc's. The reason you see \ so many times is becasue the keyboard is layed out differently and my pinky finger keeps hitting the \ key when it should be hitting the enter key. this key is located in the wrong place....very annoying (it's a hp mini21) tHIS HP Mini has a keyboard layout that i've never used before, so that's a strike against this machine which is running w7starter, but to it's credit, i can actually see the letters come up on the screen as i type them, that's a plus.\
The Certified Data u10IL1 xp netbook which has xp loaded on it has a better keyboard,a plus, but has a delay in when the typing shows up on the screen to when i actually hit the keys, a minus.

What to do now? that's all that i've experimented with them. \i aufla....\I just don't have hours to be testing these pc\s just before christmas!!! but now they're here and i've got to figure them out.\
more help please

(this message typed out in the w7 starter \hP mini computer)

thanks for your replys...what i did was go and buy the w7starter netbook and the windows xp home netbook. So here they are side by side on my kitchen table and i have a few days to check them out. I immediately noticed that you were right about the networking. 7 starter does not allow networking AT ALL! What a bummer! The xphome edition does allow netwoking.
the reason it was attractive to buy a net book was the price. Just under $300. I understand that i need to pay for an upgrade to windows 7 home whcih would cost about $80 more. These netbooks only have 1 gb of ram and cant be uptgraded to more, because there's no physical hardware space on these two that were on sale.

What i'm wondering now is, did u upgrade to windows 7ultimate with a netbook that has 2gb of ram or are you running just 1gb. The reason i ask this is because i was under the impression that starter was made for the netbook becauee netbooks can't handle the size of a full version of windows 7. can they?

(this messge typed out in the certified data xp home pc, and it's shorter because i can't what i'm typing right away and haveing to go back and fix my typing errors!)

1 GB RAM is well more than enough. My main machine I'm on now had only 1 GB RAM for ages on Windows 7, and I do absolutely everything with this PC. Latest games, heavy video editing/encoding, audio tracking and production, crash dump analysis, Photoshop to name a few...

No complaints at all then with the 1 GB. As a fact, I don't even notice the difference at all doing any of the things I do, now that I have 2 GB.

2 is better, yes, but not such a difference as the common acceptance would have everyone believe.

"1 GB RAM is well more than enough. My main machine I'm on now had only 1 GB RAM for ages on Windows 7, and I do absolutely everything with this PC. Latest games, heavy video editing/encoding, audio tracking and production, crash dump analysis, Photoshop to name a few...

No complaints at all then with the 1 GB. As a fact, I don't even notice the difference at all doing any of the things I do, now that I have 2 GB."

Dude 1GB is just only cutting it, even with the 32bit Version and that 1GB is just for windows 7 bare bones, consider you have other programs running in the background and then using Photoshop or Microsoft Office together take a further 512MB Ram each then have a Virus program and Windows Media player going together at the same time together using another 512.

1GB for windows+1GB for Photoshop and MIcrosoft Office+512MB for Virus Program and Windows media Player and 512MB for background items=3GB. My Gaming Computer has 8GB and soon to be upgraded to 16GB. IMAO NO COMPUTER should come with less than a 64bit OS and 4GB ram, even Netbooks

Baring in mind that a 64Bit OS cost's no more than that of a 32Bit and it is around $59 Per 2GB of Ram

My Netbook given to us at work has 1GB ram and Windows 7 Enterprise and runs fine, ("untill I load something then it takes forever, Like word proccessing, Internet use or Windows Media Player") No excuses upgrade the memory and OS to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate and make sure it's a 64Bit, all modern processors support it, Ram is cheap and it's the way of the future

Only having a 32bit OS and 1GB ram does a lot of hard disk memory swapping, Slowing the Computer's performance and the more it does that on a 5400 RPM HDD the slower the computer gets, don't ever let your computer do Hard Disk Memory Swapping or use the HDD for even temp Memory, Unless someone's tieing you to a chair.

No excuses with today's technology and how cheap it is.

Thanks for the info, but as I've said, I don't notice even a little difference with all the multi-tasking I do.

At any given time concurrently, I'm encoding x.264 1080p, analyzing crash dumps, seeding more torrents than the screen can handle, have Office open, have Winamp playing.....

all on a P4 machine that is not even 64 bit capable.

I had no complaints at all with 1 GB and my machine was fast. As I've previously said, now with 2 GB, there is no perceived difference.

For you, going from 8 to 16 GB really will absolutely make not even the slightest, tiniest bit of difference. It won't even be addressed at all, unless you start a web server serving to 100s or thousands of people at the same time. Waste of money.

2 GB is the "sweet spot" on 32 bit Windows 7. 1 GB is more than fine, especially for someone that only browses web and reads e-mails, or watches YouTube.

"For you, going from 8 to 16 GB really will absolutely make not even the slightest, tiniest bit of difference. It won't even be addressed at all, unless you start a web server serving to 100s or thousands of people at the same time. Waste of money"

You mustn't Play games like BFBC2, LFD2 or CoDBO, anyway Call of Duty Black ops suck's up all 8GB Ram and 6 Cores of me Processor, So I need more ram. and thats the game by it's self, I do susspect it is a Memory leak and processor over usage. But it stalls, lags or freezes

and for a fact Windows 7 Professional 64Bit addresses 129GB ram, even sometimes me computer is used as a game server at my lan parties of over 64+ people, another reason for 16GB ram, thats all