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| Windows Vista, Home Premium Edition with Service Pack 1 (PC) | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft
Category: Software
List Price: £167.99
Buy New: £138.48
You Save: £29.51 (18%)
New (16) from £119.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 87
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 66I02387
Model: 66I-02387
UPC: 882224661256
EAN: 0882224661256
ASIN: B0013O54OE
Release Date: April 4, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Don't know what all the moaning is about October 14, 2008
First off, I'm not a Microsoft worshipper, but I'm not into bashing them just for the sake if it either.
Initially I listened to the negative comments on Amazon and the net and decided not to upgrade. But when I first encountered it on a laptop at work, I found myself thinking Vista wasn't so bad after all. So in the end I decided to upgrade my home PC and am glad I did and wouldn't consider going back to XP. So let's look at the usual complaints.
You DO need a powerful and compatible PC. If in doubt you can download a utility from Microsoft to check your current hardware. I would recommend this. I suspect that a lot of people are moaning because they didn't check first.
Backwards compatibility is not as bad as they say although it has some surprises in that old software I expected to fail actually works better under Vista (games) and stuff I expected to work has "known Compatibility Issues" (such as, can you believe it, Microsoft's own Visual Studio 2005). There are ways of overcoming these issues, however.
It's at least as reliable as XP. I have not experienced any crashes yet. A recommendation here is to make sure you have the latest drivers for sound and video cards etc.
The User Account Control (UAC) features have narked a lot of people but I don't find them annoying at all. You only tend to get nagged when attempting to do things that are considered a risk. During normal program use you're allowed to just get on with it.
I don't recall the installation taking all day long either as some people have claimed.
There are numerous new things that make using the PC much easier, such as better searching, a links facility in explorer and the open/save dialogs to frequently used folders and many more. Installation of software when running as a restricted user is now better; you get a dialog prompting for an administrator password unlike XP where it just fails.
Of course, it looks real pretty too.
There are some gripes though.
Forget using the built in backup and restore centre. I won't go into why it's crap but do yourself a real favour by buying a third party solution like I did and get something that actually does what a backup program should do. Oh, by the way, the Vista backup utility is incompatible with those you did under XP so you'll have to download a utility from MS that will enable you to retrieve an old backup if you need to.
The locations of certain folders (such as pictures, documents etc.) have changed. This is probably something else that is annoying everyone, but I hardly think it warrants damning the whole OS. Will confuse those less IT savvy than some, however.
So to sum up, Vista is good, but not perfect. Thing is, its detractors can't cling to XP for ever: MS are trying to phase it out so there will come a point in the when a switch will have to be made in order to receive support in the form of service packs and drivers.
Anyway four stars not five, due to minor gripes.
 Waste of money October 13, 2008
Quite frankly I think that vista is a waste of time, Ubuntu Linux is far superior!
 It is what it is September 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I got Ultimate Upgrade as an offer of 30 when buying a laptop from Amazon. Let's be clear I would not have paid the full price or anywhere near the full price, so my review is based on a purchase price of 30 only.
I have replaced my Desktop XP operating system (3 year old pc) with Vista Ultimate as the laptop came with Vista Premium, good enough for me.
I upgraded the desktop RAM from 1gb to 4gb before loading Vista Ultimate.
It is important to go to Windows Update and make sure your system is up to date before proceeding and to do the same after you have loaded Vista Ultimate, this ensures that you have all the drivers and patches needed.
The upgrade from XP on the desktop to Ultimate was pretty simple, although you do have to read the instructions as they come up and follow the advice about what drivers are needed to be downloaded (not run) before upgrading, for me this was a Linksys Network Adapter driver and a Canon printer driver, simple enough.
It is an upgrade as I did not have to clean re-install and all my previous programmes and files accumulated over the past 3 years on XP have remained intact once converted to the Ultimate operating system.
Very simple process as these things go with no problems.
The Operating System itself is ok but to be honest I will probably not use many of the features and have just future proofed the desktop.
stay away!! September 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
when i bought my new pc i had a choice of XP or vista, i really really wish i had picked XP.
From day one, i have had trouble with vista, from compatability issues to updates essentially turning my nice new pc into something as useful as a doorstop.
The automatic updates have corrutpted one of the main launch files, despited the updates having been turned off.
And there is NO HELP or advice from microsoft.
They wish to sell a product for over 100, which doesn't work correctly and then charge you yet again to tell you how to fix the problem.
The customer service representatives are a joke.
I think in future i'm going to look elsewhere for an OS.
Overall, stay well away
Great on new computers, just be carefull when upgrading though... September 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I got Vista Home Premium preinstalled on my new computer and I personally think it is the best version of Windows yet, it looks fantastic and works really well too. There are some great security features and everything is so easy to do. I would never go back to an older version of Windows now.
But my Vista was preinstalled on a new computer which is fully designed for Vista in the first place. If you have a really powerful computer (one of the last ones to include XP) then you should be okay installing Vista, however if you have any less than 1 GB of RAM, don't bother. Vista is a fantastic operating system but it needs a Ferrari of a computer to run it.
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