Which version of Vista to get?

vern

Dominus
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This has probably been asked a million times but here it goes ... hat version of Vista should I be getting? ... a version comparable to XP Professional. I want all the features, but want to save money if I don't have to get Vista Ultimate.
 
Unless you really need to join an active directory domain or you really really want texas hold'em poker, then Home Premium would be enough for most people
 
It really depends. Vista Business lacks some of the media features, while Home Premium doesn't include the ability to join domains and other features like Remote Desktop, Previous Versions (aka Shadow Copy) etc.

If you really want "all the features," as you said, Ultimate seems to be the way to go. Take a look at the Vista site and the link AZ posted, and see what features are missing in each of the other editions. I think only you can finally decide which ones are important enough to you. :)
 
I have went for Home Premium, and I have to say for the "typical" household PC where its used for the internet, e-mail, small games and MSN. Then its more than enough, if you want a "complete experience" then it appears that you need to go Ultimate.
 
I have went for Home Premium, and I have to say for the "typical" household PC where its used for the internet, e-mail, small games and MSN. Then its more than enough, if you want a "complete experience" then it appears that you need to go Ultimate.


Im using Vista Ultimate OEM which is approx £121 in UK
 
I have always tended to get the most full edition of windows you can get, just in case in the future I would need something extra.
 
I have always tended to get the most full edition of windows you can get, just in case in the future I would need something extra.
But in the event you want to get a cheaper version for now, you can always do the upgrade purchase from the Control Panel down the road :)
 
But in the event you want to get a cheaper version for now, you can always do the upgrade purchase from the Control Panel down the road :)

exactly. I dont really see the need for it personally however. Most of my "power user" activities are done on a mac, with the release of Leopard I expect my need for the Vista's features to diminish even more.

Good OS though - so far it is a huge improvement of XP, performance and feature wise.
 
MS could repackage and re-release ME and the two of you would pine over it.
 
I'm sure you've posted it before, but what is your thought process behind disliking Vista so strongly? Do you have any thing positive to say about it? Comparing this OS to ME? Goodness.
 
I wasn't comparing it to ME, I was just pointing out that according to both Netryder and yourself that Microsoft can do no wrong.

What's wrong with Vista, well I've posted it before but its pretty straightforward. It is not ready yet. There are many inconsistencies and incompatibilities. There are many programs that do not work with Vista yet, there are many drivers that are not available yet. The UI is very clunky and inconsistent. There is tons of DRM added to the OS, that is never good for the consumer.

Lets start with some major problems.

1) Using the upgrade invalidates your XP key, so you cannot legally reinstall XP after you realize Vista was a huge waste of money.

2) It does not offer any performance increases over XP at all. There are absolutely no benchmarks out there that show any increase. In my personal experience with it, it is orders of magnitude slower than XP. It takes minutes to transfer relatively small files [~100MB] from one disk to another. The UI [Aero] can be very taxing even though it really doesn't offer that many effects. Beryl & Java3D desktop offer many more and detailed effects that will run smoothly with much lower requirements.

3) DRM. If you don't know why this is bad, then maybe you should read some more about it.

4) UAC, to quote Hencry Spencer "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

5) AutoCAD does not offer a version that is compatible with Vista and wont offer a service pack to fix it, that means your $4,000 software will not work until 2008 is released and you have to pay for an upgrade. That is a personal problem since I use AutoCAD daily.

3rd party software and driver issues are really not Vista's fault, well it could be if they didn't release their ABI specs fully, but knowing Microsoft they are always so good at conforming to standards.......

Whats nice about Vista?

Well the UI is more polished than XP's teletubby theme, but it is not a giant leap forward.

Sandboxing IE is probably a good idea, but time will tell if that actually helps and isn't circumvented.

Not having a full administrator account by default is a good thing.

Shadow copy protection is a nice feature, but only available in Ultimate or Business IIRC. I don't like the versioning or price structure. They should allow one copy of Ultimate to be installed on 3 PCs if you buy the full version, that would make it reasonable. $400 for one OS on one PC is ridiculous.

To me it seems like RTM should actually be a beta version. It was rushed out the door to save some face, yet it is far from complete. It is years late, way over budget, I'm sure, and lacking many features promised for "Longhorn."

Personally I think it will fail, but not completely since it is already forced on you by Dell, I just checked and couldn't get a cheap home PC with XP.

Hopefully MS will lose a significant portion of their market share. Competition is good, is they were 60% not 95% they might actually produce a decent product at a decent price. With their monopoly power they are allowed to force substandard products on the market and it becomes the standard.

I just don't see anything groundbreaking that requires an upgrade. XP has finally become a stable OS after years of patching and I don't think many companies will waste tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade and I think that the business world affects the home PC market a lot. If you were using Vista at work you probably want it at home. People like what they are used to. MS has always said their biggest competitor to Office was previous versions of Office, I think the same applies here. The 98 -> XP change was dramatic, the XP -> Vista change is not. There are changes sure, but a lot are cosmetic and a lot are just down right annoying.
 
ME was a huge mistake. I don't feel that way about Vista.

As you said, it is not Microsoft's fault that vendors are not releasing updates for software or compatible drivers. Partners, such as Autodesk, had years to prepare for this release.

UAC is good and it is bad. So I agree with you.

As for the XP key being invalidated, another good point.
 
As for the XP key being invalidated, another good point.

I'm confused. So people that upgrade to Vista and end up not liking it won't be able to go back to XP because their key gets invalidated?
 
Thats what the EULA says, I haven't heard any stories of not being able to activate XP after the upgrade though.
 
I see Vista (pre service pack 1) being in the same ballpark as ME historically speaking.
 

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