pretty sure it's 16GB for home and 192 GB for professional and ultimate.

Well, I have 8 gigs of ram and Windows 7 only uses 7.75 of it. And who would use 192GB of ram? No motherboard supports that much memory.

XP released almost a decade ago and is still in use today. Back then my computer had 128 MB of memory. Now your computer has 8 GB, thats over 60x as much memory in under 10 years.

While i'm positive we wont see that kind of increase again, it wouldn't be out of this world if people use ten times more memory 10 years from now.

Also it appears 8 GB is the limit for home basic.

Home premium is 16 GB.

Random question guys, but if I've got 4 gigs of RAM, how much better is 64-bit Windows 7 going to be for me than 32-bit? I ask because I'm currently running Vista 32-bit, and upgrading to 64-bit is a big pain compared to upgrading to 32-bit.

Most games won't see any benefit at all. But 64 bit and 32 bit SHOULD be exactly the same installation wise.

Whenever you install a new OS you should always completely wipe the harddrive, i've heard so many ossues about just upgrading from one version to the next without doing this.

Just back up your files, insert 64 bit disc, select format hard drive and thats it pretty much.

Also, if you plan on using this computer for a while, go 64 bit for future proofing it.

theres really no different but the fact that the 64bit utilizes all of the ram

The leaner the OS, the better.
I kept Win2000 until I was forced to replace it with XP due to lack of drivers.
Now, I'll keep WinXP as long as I can, luckily its huge 1billion+ user base will assure it nearly total HW and SW compatibility until its programmed death on 2014.

Banned...nice!