![]() In this case, the most important missing detail is price. It simply unlocked the features in the upgraded edition, and it really did take only a few minutes to complete. What was remarkable about this process is that it didn’t require me to insert the original installation media or download any code. When the upgrade is complete, click to begin using the new features. The system will restart automatically as part of the upgrade.Ħ. Go do something else for 10 minutes or so, while the system is being upgraded. The top link ("Go online and choose an edition") won’t work until Windows 7 is released and the various purchase channels are enabled, obviously.Ĥ. ![]() Buy the upgrade from Microsoft or from a partner, such as the OEM who manufactured your PC. Click the link to “get more features with a new edition of Windows 7.”ģ. However, this process would also work with Windows 7 Starter Edition or Home Premium.Ģ. In this case, I have Windows 7 Professional installed. Go to the System Properties page in Control Panel, where you can see which edition is currently installed. I’ve put together a screen-shot gallery to illustrate the process. The process is, as promised, remarkably easy. That means you can upgrade from, say, Home Premium to Professional by purchasing an upgrade key and then ‘unlocking’ the additional features.”Įarlier this month, I installed a recent build of Windows 7 and tried out the Anytime Upgrade procedure for myself. With Windows 7, the upgrade paths are easier.Īs I noted earlier this year, “each edition is a superset of the one before it. So what if you want features such as Offline Files and the ability to join a Windows domain, which are found in Vista Business edition or its successor, Windows 7 Professional? With Vista, you have to shell out $150 for an upgrade to Ultimate edition. That’s going to be the most popular OEM edition when Windows 7 comes out as well. When you buy a new consumer PC running Windows Vista today, you probably get Home Premium Edition. What’s changed? I took a close look at a recent beta to see for myself. Windows Anytime Upgrade will be available in Windows 7 when it's publicly released in a few months, and like so many Vista features that were good ideas, poorly executed, it has been completely reworked. The upgrade process itself was a cumbersome kludge that required physical media and a full Windows reinstall (a process that can take hours), the price tag was way too high, and there was no perceived benefit in it.įast forward to 2009. In practice, the Vista version of Anytime Upgrade was a spectacular failure. The theory behind Anytime Upgrade was a good one: if you bought a PC with one edition of Windows installed, you could upgrade online and get additional features. Way back in February 2006, nearly a year before the consumer launch of Windows Vista, I noted the first appearance of Microsoft’s Windows Anytime Upgrade program in a Vista beta build.
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