Windows 7 OS - what version?

brightonman123

I hve seen 'W7 Starter', W7 Home. W7 Premium.. and wondered what the difference was?

Is the starter purpose built for netbooks, or just a stripped down version OS, to save on cost?

And does getting a full blown OS use more memory?

RussJK

Starter is stripped down in order to run better on netbooks, just as you suggest. Some of the missing features are things like Aero (based on the assumption that netbooks don't have decent graphics cards, which isn't necessarily true), while other changes are just to reduce the memory usage. Some of the limitations are quite arbitrary rather than technical, e.g. disabling the ability to change the wallpaper without using third party software, and only supporting up to 2gb of memory.

You can look in more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

The main thing not present in Windows Home Premium is the 'XP Mode', which would be handy for some old games. Have to just troubleshoot, or at worst use a virtual machine.

m5rcc

Compare here for features and here for system requirements