Which Windows 7 for Photoshop?

[dsymes]

I've reviewed the specs on the adobe forums and elsewhere and realize that Win7 Home Premium 64 can "only" address 16 GB of physical memory and one physical processor while Win7 Pro 64 can address 192 GB and two processors. Will this matter for Photoshop or Lightroom if my machine has less than 16GB memory and only one processor? Is there a practical advantage to Win 7 Pro aside from encryption and the XP mode?

I do have Win Office 2002 and see no need to upgrade - will that require Win7 Pro in order to have XP mode?

Finally, is there any real difference between getting an AMD processor or an Intel one assuming both are quad core and have similar spcifications?

Thanks in advance,
dsymes

 

[Darshan]

I use Win7 Home Premium and Photoshop/GIMP/Silkypix/etc.
No problems so far..

PC: Studio XPS 8100, Intel Core i7-860 processor, 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz-4x2GB, Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English, 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

 

[sevo]

There are precious few programs that need XP mode, there are few differences between XP and Vista/7 that aren't already dealt with by the compatibility modes - I have are only one POS that is stuck on XP, and that is only restricted because its registration is tied to the OS version (and even that could be avoided if I was willing to upgrade, but the more recent versions are even worse in handling and performance). But XP mode is only one ready-wrapped application for virtual machines, I suppose that versions without XP mode won't be VM enabled either. And having no virtual machines is a more significant limitation. They can be very nice as VMs allow you to run very old OSes for ancient software, or very different OSes - for example I've got some MF/LF digital back drivers and some synthesizer editors that aren't supported past Win97, NT or Win2k, as well as a couple of Linux only licenses.

As far as RAM is concerned - unless you know what you are doing you will not need more than 16GB physical RAM, and if you don't have more it is irrelevant whether the OS is artificially limited at that border.

 

[dsymes]

Thanks Servo and DanP. Will go for Home Prem/64. Luckily most of the time I know that I don't know what I'm doing, but there are times that I don't know that I know what I'm doing and that may be a problem...