It lacks perks such as Windows Media Centre and multi-touch navigation.

Home Basic is a stripped-down edition to be sold in developing markets, such as China, Brazil and Thailand, where Microsoft can charge less in order to tackle rampant piracy. There are a couple of versions you'll likely never even see on shelves: Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows 7 Enterprise. If you're just the average consumer with a new PC, these are the two editions to decide between. Essentially, it's for any computer that will spend half its life at your home, and the other half at the office. It contains all the features of Home Premium, but adds support for Domain Joining, which you may need to log on to your office's corporate network Windows XP Mode, which makes old software that's incompatible with Windows 7 run as if it was running on XP and Microsoft's Backup and Restore Centre, which is an integrated file and folder backup utility for automated backup of important files. If the answer to these question is yes, you should buy Windows 7 Professional. It's the main version for most people, for home PCs and laptops.īut ask yourself these questions: do you also take your laptop to the office? Do you need to run legacy (read: old and obscure) applications? Do you want automatic file backups built into Windows?

It's the version that'll do everything you expect Windows to do: run Windows Media Centre, network your home computers and devices, support multi-touch technologies and dual-monitor setups, Aero Peek, and so on and so forth. If you're buying a PC for use at home, it's highly likely you want Windows 7 Home Premium. Which version of Windows 7 should you buy?

So we're going to answer one question, once and for all: There are six versions of Windows 7: Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate, and it predictably transpires that confusion surrounds them, like fleas on a manky old cat. The prize for confusing the everyman goes, this year, to Microsoft.

Laptop with windows 7 home premium