Which Vista Edition is Right for Me? (Basic/Premium/Business/Ultimate)

By Slimy
in Microsoft (Windows)

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jporter

Posted
Posted

I got a MSDNAA account this week, and am getting Vista Business for free. Now my question is. If I install it now on my current setup, will I be able to activate it on my next rig which I will purchase in a few months? If so, is it possible to activate it on the rig after that or is it just gonna be limited to one hardware change?

Regards,

Contributor

yichi

Posted
Posted

I will definetely stick with U edition coz aero and dreamscene will costs rest of my system performance. It will drive me crazy

and paid for extra ram and a more powerful cpu, LOL

Thanks! bill gates, you've made a good suprise to me every 4-5 years!

Enthusiast

grnemo

Posted
Posted
I got a MSDNAA account this week, and am getting Vista Business for free. Now my question is. If I install it now on my current setup, will I be able to activate it on my next rig which I will purchase in a few months? If so, is it possible to activate it on the rig after that or is it just gonna be limited to one hardware change?

Regards,

This is perfectly legal. Don't bother. If it doesn't let you activate it on new setup over the internet do activation via phone and a microsoft representative will guide you through process. Chill. I know for sure,

I am administrator at Dept. of Informatics & Telecom. University of Athens ELMS-MSDNAA subscription.

I think there is no limit as long as you aren't using it on 2 pc's.

EULA Vista Business(pdf)

Cheers bro, Enjoy :D

//sorryzz for the double posting spamming :p

  • 2 weeks later...
Grand Master

MtnDewCodeRedFreak

Posted
Posted

Am using Business Edition on both PCs, the self-built I had for PC Configuration class and the Dell comp I had back in 2004.

I will upgrade one Vista Business to Ultimate, but I'll keep one Vista Business for support reasons (heard that it'd support through 2017).

On a side note, lol the professor had us dual boot between Vista Business and Linux Ubuntu ... will show that to my brother.

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

MtnDewCodeRedFreak

Posted
Posted

Both Business and Ultimate.

Business for extended support (through 2017) and Ultimate for everything (but support is through 2012, unfortunately), lol.

Mentor

tao muon

Posted
Posted
Both Business and Ultimate.

Business for extended support (through 2017) and Ultimate for everything (but support is through 2012, unfortunately), lol.

How does that work?

Since Ultimate contains the functionality of Business, shouldn't it be subject to the same support level, at least for Business-related software and performance?

Neowinian

jmac12

Posted
Posted
Are you kidding me? Sure goody-wise it's the same as XP, but the security is another story.

Vista security is mind-blowingly awesome compared to XP.

Also where are you seeing these huge price increases? The only product that it affects is Vista Home Premium.

Home Basic $199 = XP Home $199

Home Premium $239 is only $40 more and you get Media Center & Aero.

Business $299 = XP Pro $299

Ultimate $399 is a completely new category.

It combines Home Premium & Business as well as some Enterprise features and adds in the Ultimate Extras program with a premium of only $100 over the business price.

Are you telling me that an OS that can work on a Tablet PC with a Wireless HDTV tuner/receiver isn't worth $400 retail or $360 upgrade if you own XP?

Yes I realize that Wireless HDTV tuners aren't out yet, but I wouldn't expect that to take too long.

Or rather I should say the ability to stream HD streams to Vista MC from an HD source via a high speed wireless connection.

The security is ridiculous, who wants to respond to 2 or 3 prompts to run a program? Once you disable UAC in the basic version you are back to Windows XP. The idea of not putting some retention capability into UAC so that you aren't forever harassing the owner of a home PC is ludicrous. If you run Zonealrm with Antivirus capability you are just as well protected and it remembers all the programs you want to run after you install them with out harassing you each time. As far as the great security you claim, give it 6 months and you wuill see just as many security updtes from Microsoft. The OS is basically flawed in that regard and until it is completely re-written you are going to have intrinsic security issues.

Apprentice

falconcy

Posted
Posted

I got Home Premium with my new laptop, is it really worth $159 to upgrade to Ultimate, the only feature I might actually use is the Deskscapes, which is running quite nicely already ;-) The only current advantage is that Stardock's addon will work only with Ultimate, still hardly worth $159.

I get the impression that Ultimate is merely Plus! Revisited. Having been stung by Plus! with all it's promises and not actually delivering much, I'm reluctant to believe Microsoft on this one. I might reconsider once they actually offer something I will actually find useful.

Grand Master

null_

Posted
Posted
I got Home Premium with my new laptop, is it really worth $159 to upgrade to Ultimate, the only feature I might actually use is the Deskscapes, which is running quite nicely already ;-) The only current advantage is that Stardock's addon will work only with Ultimate, still hardly worth $159.

I get the impression that Ultimate is merely Plus! Revisited. Having been stung by Plus! with all it's promises and not actually delivering much, I'm reluctant to believe Microsoft on this one. I might reconsider once they actually offer something I will actually find useful.

Personally, I find that Windows Vista Home Premium does all I need it to (browse the internet, check e-mail, messenger, type documents in Microsoft Office, listen to music, watch DVDs and movies, some photo editing and video editing, creating CDs and DVDs, etc). However, if you like features such as Complete PC Backup or Previous Versions, those would be two compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate. You also get "inbound" Remote Desktop (so that you can connect to your machine remotely) should you need it.

If you're happy with Home Premium though, and it does what you need and works nicely, then stick with it. Save the $159 for something else, like a hardware upgrade down the road or whatnot.

Grand Master

MtnDewCodeRedFreak

Posted
Posted (edited)
How does that work?

Since Ultimate contains the functionality of Business, shouldn't it be subject to the same support level, at least for Business-related software and performance?

I dunno why, but I think it's because Ultimate is mostly targeted at consumers and power users (and I consider myself a power user). It's just Home Premium and Enterprise (not Business!) combined.

Both Enterprise and Ultimate have the BitLocker Drive Encryption, so Business with BitLocker Encryption is Enterprise. That's all I know about the differences between Business and Enterprise, apart from the fact that Enterprise is available only to volume-licensing customers only. Both of those editions do qualify for extended support, since it's what most businesses have, lol. I doubt that they would want to have Home Premium and Ultimate though, so that's why Microsoft decided to limit the support of those editions to 5 years, while they extend the Business and Enterprise editions to 10 years.

Any other features of Enterprise that's not in Business, please list them out. Thanks.

Edited by MtDewCodeRedFreak
Veteran

Leddy

Posted
Posted
I dunno why, but I think it's because Ultimate is mostly targeted at consumers and power users (and I consider myself a power user). It's just Home Premium and Enterprise (not Business!) combined.

Both Enterprise and Ultimate have the BitLocker Drive Encryption, so Business with BitLocker Encryption is Enterprise. That's all I know about the differences between Business and Enterprise.

Any other features of Enterprise that's not in Business, please list them out. Thanks.

I believe that Enterprise also has the full-disk backup that Business doesn't have.

Apprentice

falconcy

Posted
Posted
I dunno why, but I think it's because Ultimate is mostly targeted at consumers and power users (and I consider myself a power user). It's just Home Premium and Enterprise (not Business!) combined.

Both Enterprise and Ultimate have the BitLocker Drive Encryption, so Business with BitLocker Encryption is Enterprise. That's all I know about the differences between Business and Enterprise, apart from the fact that Enterprise is available only to volume-licensing customers only. Both of those editions do qualify for extended support, since it's what most businesses have, lol. I doubt that they would want to have Home Premium and Ultimate though, so that's why Microsoft decided to limit the support of those editions to 5 years, while they extend the Business and Enterprise editions to 10 years.

Any other features of Enterprise that's not in Business, please list them out. Thanks.

There are plenty of other programs out there though that would provide similar features should you need them. PGP springs to mind for encryption and it does support Vista. Backup, plenty of options in that area, and VNC for remote access.

Most of the stuff built into Windows does tend to be a bit on the basic side and lacking the real features offered by the more specialized commercial products. On the business side of things, much will depend on what corporate IT policies dictate and that depends on how switched on or paranoid your IT Department is.

  • 1 month later...

Guest ID2

Posted
Posted

My computer already has an operating system.

I'm not quite sure that I need another one.

It currently runs WinXPproSP2.

I am not sure why I need a whole new operating system.

I don't need better security as I use excellent third party security software.

I don't need backup as I use excellent third party backup software.

Can anyone tell me why I need Vista, or why it's better?

Apprentice

Hexter66

Posted
Posted

I went for the Ultimate Edition as it always nice to have all the features that Vista have to offer really, I like the backup feature the best so that I don't have to reinstall the system drivers because it all backed up which saves me a lot of hassle. :D

Contributor

232087_1437846937

Posted
Posted

What i really want to know is when will microsoft start thinking like apple and just have 1 Operating System which includes everything...rather than microsoft and 2 or more versions for every OS They release :(.

  • 3 weeks later...
Contributor

F K Schneider

Posted
Posted

I installed Home Premium on the PC at home. I think Ultimate has too much functions that a home user can never use them.

However, if I buy a laptop for myself, I'd like to choose Ultimate though it's more expensive than the other ones.

I'm now living in China, and I saw a lot of Windows Vista Ultimate, of course, pirate copy, on sale. Ten yuan a DVD, about $1.3. Genuine copy is too expensive for ordinary Chinese.:(

  • 3 weeks later...
Rookie

Ed Szuba

Posted
Posted

I had bought a new laptop in February (trade-in deal at CompUSA) which had Vista Home Premium on it. Since it didn't have Remote Desktop in it (I could remote from it to another of my PCs, but not to it), I looked at the upgrade to Ultimate. club.live.com came along, and for a while had Ultimate available if you played the brain games and accumulated 6,000 points. Got there and placed the order. Received Ultimate last week and installed it onto the laptop.

Right after I ordered it, I told a co-worker or two about it. One of them tried to do the same, but when she got to 6,000 and tried to order it, the site changed -- option to get Ultimate was gone, and replaced with Home Premium for 20,000 points. She's a bit upset at that. :)

-Ed S

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

altezza Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I'm a proud user of Vista Ultimate full version, bought it outright. Couldn't be happier and I still trying to get used to it :D

I think I need to install another 1gb memory to be able to run smoothly. Graphic card I think it's okay but it's time for me to change soundcard. Need to fork more money for those. Otherwise I'm happy of the Vista Ultimate :D

  • 1 month later...
Mentor

Roadrunna

Posted
Posted

With Vista ultimate can you have both 32bit and 64bit versions on the same machine from the same install? i.e one account being 32bit and another 64bit.

I'm guessing/assuming that you have to have 2 separate installs but if so can you do it with the same licence?

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