Vista: Home VS Business VS Ultimate

[#686578]

From what I recall, I definitely want Ultimate, but I cannot remember why. I actually have several Vista Business (Legit, that I stole, so not so legit) CDs that I was playing around with and didn't really care for. I'm buying a laptop and it look like Dell finally lost their loophole to install XP on their laptops. From what I remember, Business > Home > Vista, but if anyone can tell me (Or link me to a very indepth feature by feature review) I'd be grateful. However, I may just say fuck the whole thing and install XP anyway.

[Cephius]

Short Answer: Home Premium has all the feature you'll want and need, without the extra lame stuff that no one cares about. Feel free to look it up, but the "extras" that Ultimate gives you are not worth the higher price tag.

[#686578]

See, I'm not so sure, but it's been a while since I've looked it up. I remember reading this great article in a magazine with the larger features detailed side by side and I remember Ultimate having a few things I might actually want (still assuming I dont just reinstall XP).

[Shuemue]

No trolling intended in this post.

Can you give me three good reasons why you would want Vista over XP?

I've tried to follow a ton of XP vs Vista discussions, on this forum and a couple of others, and I'm yet to come across any features that make me want Vista.

[#686578]

No, I really cant. I've been trying to find the same article I read when Vista first came out, as that's when I was doing most of my research on it. There were one or two networking features I was really interested in as well as policies and administration features that I was looking at because it's related to my field of work. However, I cant seem to find an article that has the basic differences between vista premium and home whether less vista and XP. The only thing I might even hesitate about with installing XP over the Vista is that Windows is no longer making drivers (as far as I know) for private uses.

Edit: I actually looked up my model I'm looking at, the XPS M1530, and there doesn't appear to be any XP drivers for it. I guess I'm going to have to stick to Vista on this one.

[Tajin]

If you are going to pirate, just get ultimate, Home Pro or however is called comes with the most standard features, unlike Home Basic which is a piece of shit.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... hoose.mspx

Obviously not an very detailed comparison, but one or two clicks away has details on most vista features.

[#686578]

Unlike most of the world's population I actually have legal copies of most of the software I own.

In other news I found some XP drivers for the M1530 if anyone who's reading this may need to know at a later date. I'm not sure if they're Dell created and they were taken down off the Dell website when their little loophole fell through with Windows, but I'm looking into if they're legit.

The more I think about it though, I think the M1530 did originally have XP available for it, so logically somewhere there must be a drivers CD for it somewhere that I may be able to bootleg.

[Killgannon]

when i built my new pc i bought vista ultimate, i have no regrets, but home premium is enough for most people to get by with (home basic = xp home, home premium = xp pro, ultimate = more stuff ms can give you) home basic is total shit, never buy it, i hate oems that use it (dell doesnt... i dont even think they have an option for it.. my laptop came with home premium)

you can easily find drivers for xp for most things dell.. you just have to search around, a lot of the time hardware used in one box is the same as the hardware used in another box so drivers work (especially true with network/sound/modem stuff)

[#686578]

I'm trying to find Dell XPS M1530 XP Drivers, but the one site I seem to have found them on I dont quite particularly trust, but I'm looking at it all the same. Trying to see if I cant just find a CD rip. Demonoid and Isohunt are devoid of anything.

[Killgannon]

I'm trying to find Dell XPS M1530 XP Drivers, but the one site I seem to have found them on I dont quite particularly trust, but I'm looking at it all the same. Trying to see if I cant just find a CD rip. Demonoid and Isohunt are devoid of anything.

thats because no one rips drivers CDs and uploads them to the internet>.>;

[#686578]

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=212981

[Amele]

No trolling intended in this post.

Can you give me three good reasons why you would want Vista over XP?

I've tried to follow a ton of XP vs Vista discussions, on this forum and a couple of others, and I'm yet to come across any features that make me want Vista.

my three reasons were: (biased for vista SP1, I wouldn't touch vista R1 with a 10ft pole)

1. higher maximum memory allowance without the stability issues of xp-64.
2. there are directx 10 games coming out I'm interested in playing.
3. vista's media sharing system works much more readily (less fiddling with settings) than XP's which typically involved me spending several hours resetting three different devices and changing firewall settings on two of them each time I tried to set up a media stream on the home network.

I also like to tinker and I was getting kind of bored with xp.

overall, vista SP1 isn't that bad - it'll take more memory to run (about 1.5GB just to handle vista SP1 with aero enabled) and I would imagine a faster processor (I built a new pc just before getting vista) but if you've got a pc on the high end of the last 18 months worth of hardware you'll probably have no issues with vista after a week or two of configuring (especially that pesky UAC)

most people who have bad experiences with vista do so because of hardware issues and not because of the actual OS software (#1 is memory capacity, #2 is driver stability with 2yr old+ hardware, and #3 is cpu just too slow.) I get the feel from vista that it's really optimized for operation on multi-core - if I had a single core the vista background tasks would probably take about 15% of the cpu, with a quad this gets spread out to about 4% per core.

I recommend dual-booting a copy of XP on a separate partition in case you have any older games/applications that you need to guarantee access to: vista compatibility is pretty good but it's not perfect.

[Cephius]

1. higher maximum memory allowance without the stability issues of xp-64.

Not true... Any 32-bit OS whether it be XP or Vista can address a maximum of 3.5GB minus video card memory. Vista has no more addressable space than XP does.

2. there are directx 10 games coming out I'm interested in playing.

A valid point, though many people will argue that no games take full advantage of this yet, but we'll see about newer games.

3. vista's media sharing system works much more readily (less fiddling with settings) than XP's which typically involved me spending several hours resetting three different devices and changing firewall settings on two of them each time I tried to set up a media stream on the home network.

Well... in XP you could share media by using windows media player and letting it share to a media extender. Clicking "yes, share these" automatically configured your firewall. Vista works the same way, though they added a few features to the network control panel to more easily see what and how you were sharing media. Still, the process remained the same. It sounds like you had problems with XP sharing due to your network setup, not the OS itself.

And just for the record, I like Vista and use it at home, but there's really no rock-solid concrete reason to choose it over XP.

[MisterBob]

1. higher maximum memory allowance without the stability issues of xp-64.

Not true... Any 32-bit OS whether it be XP or Vista can address a maximum of 3.5GB minus video card memory. Vista has no more addressable space than XP does.

He's referring to the fact that Vista x64 is notably more stable than XP x64

[Amele]

Not true... Any 32-bit OS whether it be XP or Vista can address a maximum of 3.5GB minus video card memory. Vista has no more addressable space than XP does.

mister bob is right; my intent was to highlight the stability difference between the 64 bit versions of the products.

that aside; it's 4GB (4096MB) minus Memory-mapped I/O (it only loses vc mem if you have integrated video/shared ram ala laptop which would be in addition to this memory cost); which for XP on most configurations is about 500-550MB - which is where the 3.5 in various guides and FAQ's comes from.

A valid point, though many people will argue that no games take full advantage of this yet, but we'll see about newer games.

I'm thinking dragon age primarily; as for games already out: Bioshock does a good job of it, although until we see the first 'directx 10 only' title I would tend to agree.

[quote:17121c69]3. vista's media sharing system works much more readily (less fiddling with settings) than XP's which typically involved me spending several hours resetting three different devices and changing firewall settings on two of them each time I tried to set up a media stream on the home network.

Well... in XP you could share media by using windows media player and letting it share to a media extender. Clicking "yes, share these" automatically configured your firewall. Vista works the same way, though they added a few features to the network control panel to more easily see what and how you were sharing media. Still, the process remained the same. It sounds like you had problems with XP sharing due to your network setup, not the OS itself.[/quote:17121c69]

I would argue that, when two other Operating systems have no issue configuring through my network (OS X and Vista) where it was literally as simple as saying 'yes, share this' yet it takes 2+ hours of matchmaking to get windows 11 on xp to not forget the device existed (or for windows XP to not auto-disable the port-forwarding when the remote device is no longer active) every time I try to add a new device (and not just for the first device) that it is very much an OS* problem. especially when I'm using a bone-standard network setup (dsl uplink wired to standard major brand airport which serves as the primary wired and wireless hub as well as being the primary external firewall)


*or at least, an issue with the software applications (firewall, media 11) included with the OS.

[Isiolia]

I would argue that, when two other Operating systems have no issue configuring through my network (OS X and Vista) where it was literally as simple as saying 'yes, share this' yet it takes 2+ hours of matchmaking to get windows 11 on xp to not forget the device existed (or for windows XP to not auto-disable the port-forwarding when the remote device is no longer active) every time I try to add a new device (and not just for the first device) that it is very much an OS* problem. especially when I'm using a bone-standard network setup (dsl uplink wired to standard major brand airport which serves as the primary wired and wireless hub as well as being the primary external firewall)

Odd, Vista has given me headaches just trying to do basic file sharing at home. Using Enterprise on my HTPC (allowed to use a single license from work at home, and I figured I'd tinker with it). Had been using XP on an older machine.

Existing network shares on my XP desktop are accessible fine. New shares it can't access. Can't access shares creates on the Vista machine from the XP machine. This is stuff that would work 100% fine on XP, and for whatever reason on Vista, doesn't.

[Cephius]

Ah ok, didn't realize you were comparing the x64 platforms. You're right, Vista 64 is way more stable.

[Amele]

I would argue that, when two other Operating systems have no issue configuring through my network (OS X and Vista) where it was literally as simple as saying 'yes, share this' yet it takes 2+ hours of matchmaking to get windows 11 on xp to not forget the device existed (or for windows XP to not auto-disable the port-forwarding when the remote device is no longer active) every time I try to add a new device (and not just for the first device) that it is very much an OS* problem. especially when I'm using a bone-standard network setup (dsl uplink wired to standard major brand airport which serves as the primary wired and wireless hub as well as being the primary external firewall)

Odd, Vista has given me headaches just trying to do basic file sharing at home. Using Enterprise on my HTPC (allowed to use a single license from work at home, and I figured I'd tinker with it). Had been using XP on an older machine.

Existing network shares on my XP desktop are accessible fine. New shares it can't access. Can't access shares creates on the Vista machine from the XP machine. This is stuff that would work 100% fine on XP, and for whatever reason on Vista, doesn't.

the issue you're running into may have to do with access knowledge on the XP side- because you're trying to share between OSes (rather than stream content using a standard interface) and MS changed the way it does it with vista, this is similar to trying to share data between XP and OS X. - Service Pack 3 probably fixes your problem if you haven't updated to it yet.

I was talking specifically about streaming data to 'dumb' terminal devices like an xbox360, DVR, or a device like the linksys DMA2200; rather than file sharing across the network (I maintain a dedicated FTP server internal to my network for that, since it simplified discovery for the variety of computers that pass through my network - mostly laptops.)

[Kakashisensei]

I'm running a XPS 1530 with XP on it. I tried Vista when I first got it, couldn't stand it x.x. I used http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpos ... tcount=163 to install my XP drivers (3 posts down from the top.) The 1530 uses almost the exact same hardware as the 1330, which does ship with XP. It was a fairly easy process for me, didn't take more than an hour to find all the drivers and get it all working. Good luck, and enjoy the new laptop I really like it.

*edit* Oh, and it says don't use Pro... I didn't notice that when I was first installing everything, and I used Pro just fine - no problems at all with any drivers