Upgrade OS?

I'm normally a DIY'er, build all home PC's from scratch, throw on an oem full version of the OS, and voila.

I just bought a M11x, with Home premium only. I actually need to put professional on it to use exchange, and wondering if I can just use a regular upgrade version from microsoft, and if so, will I lose all the built on alienware software? Haven't bought a Dell since they stopped using full OS version (it's been like a decade), and wasn't sure if it was possible. thanks in advance. / gfiz

 

I think you might be a little confused. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what it you mean. All you need for an Exchange account is Outlook, which will run fine on Home Premium.

 

Most of the way agreed with Slickie. Outlook Exchange runs fine on Home Premium. However the domain-only featuress that require you to be joined and live on a domain require that you use a professional edition of windows. If you are, or plan to join a domain, then Professional is absolutely required. EULA also requires Pro be used if the system is a business machine.

 

bingo. so back to my question...?

 

Ah. Yes. You can use ANY version of Professional to upgrade. In your start menu you'll find Windows Anytime Upgrade or something like that. Click that, put in any product key for professional, and it will make some changes, reboot the computer, and Voila. Your on Pro. Its sooo easy. All your software will work fine. I'm running Pro myself and did exactly this.

Any key will work. Retail, OEM, System Builder, Upgrade, Anytime Upgrade, etc. As long as its a Pro key. Any Pro key is also legal to use. Naturally, the anytime upgrade key is the cheapest way to go.

 

ah ok, cool, good to know. Thanks for the assurance, was about to buy a full version and just reformat, until I realized I could just go this route.

 

Works well, I upgraded Home Premium to ultimate on one of my machines.

 

This one is upgraded from home premium to ultimate. It works well as well. Do not worry about it.

 

Just to be clear, there are no domain-only features of an Exchange account. If your work requires that your personal notebook is joined to their domain, that's another issue altogether.

 

Depends on how the network is set up. Mine requires autodiscovery to connect outlook to exchange. I don't allow manually connecting for security reasons. Its still possible to connect without autodiscovery, but much, much harder.

Some custom programs and scripts for exchange, outlook, and domains DO require being on a domain. But other than that, I can't think of anything that won't work for a vanilla infrastructure while not connected to a domain.

 

Our Exchange 2007 server is also setup to only allow only autodiscovery connections and no it doesn't require the connecting computer to be on the domain for that to work. Only that you have domain user credentials to authenticate. I connect to 8 different Exchange servers (8 different Outlook profiles) using my M11x which isn't on any domain. Each and every one of those accounts was setup via autodiscovery and use Outlook Anywhere (RPC over http) to connect.

Again, client access to Exchange was what he was asking about and why I asked for a bit of clarification. Home Premium does work for that. As you've pointed out there are all sorts of other reasons for requiring a computer to be added to a domain in which case Pro or higher is a requirement. Generally organizations don't want an employee's personal computer to be on it though for obvious reasons.

 

sorry if I wasn't clear. I've already done this before with other laptops. I will only work with the professional version for a myriad of reasons, one of which is the domain. Probably more important is my vpn will give restricted access if not on professional version. This is kind of off the cuff, as my work supplies latitudes, but on a 4 year cycle. Mine is 3+ years old and instead of going thru the procurement hassle, I'm going to stretch our IT boundary a little and put my own personal M11x on the domain and use as my business laptop and hopefully be able to game a little from the hotel at the same time. Though I'm more of a finance guy professionally, I've already successfully done this in the past with a mbp, and had about as competent an IT guy there is tell me for full access to pull this off I need Pro. Hence my question.