Ultimate or Home Premium?

[Mekanic01]

Building a new system, hopefully within the next three weeks. I'm trying to put together a complete list of everything I need, and I guess that would have to include the OS. WHat I'm wondering, is do I go with Ultimate or Home Premium. I'm using the pc for gaming, internet, misc audio editing, and probably watching some movies, since my pc monitor is gonna spank the hell outta my tv.

So what are the real differences? I've used Ultimate, it's currently on the other hard drive in the pc I'm using now. I didn't care for Vista as a whole, but this computer pretty much sucks ass anyway. And yes, I'm going 64-bit.

[Joe Average]

Home Premium ftw.

Ultimate offers what, 3 features over Home Premium:

- Dreamscene
- Bitlocker
- A premium price

Home Premium will do you just fine...

[Mekanic01]

Ok thanks

[Sparkyy]

I would just go with Ultimate, but heres a chart from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx). Compares the differences, Ultimate you just get everything you could ever need, though you could always buy the Home Premium and just upgrade on the fly inside of Vista if you did want or need Ultimate.

[Mekanic01]

I don't really see the need to blow $80 on feature that I'll probably never need. And if bitlocker is the shit that wouldn't let me access the files on my other drive, then I don't need it. If I want to transfer any files from XP to Vista on this pc, I have to do it from XP, regardless of which way the file transfer is going.

[milkweg]

Yea, Ulitmate is definitely not worth the $80 - 100 extra.I see Office Place in Canada has Home Premium w/SP1 upgrade retail version for just $99.99 right now. Ultimate upgrade version is $199.99. Not good value at all. Buy retail version over OEM version too so you can move and install to any PC with no questions asked.

[Mithent]

Bitlocker is virtually useless for home users, it's designed primarily for business laptops which tend to get stolen. However, it's not the only feature that Vista Ultimate has over Home Premium; one reason people often get Ultimate is that they both want the media features of Home Premium but also want to be able to use Remote Desktop to access the machine remotely. Ultimate also adds Previous Versions (although I think you can access that on other versions with third-party software) and Complete PC Backup.

This is a better chart than the one on microsoft.com (except for the erroneous 'Virtual PC Express' entry):
http://www.cnet.com.au/software/operatingsystems/0,239029541,339273259,00.htm

I agree that Home Premium is generally the best option, but better to be fully informed before choosing rather than just focusing on Bitlocker and the rather useless Dreamscene.

[Mekanic01]

Remote desktop question. My dad wants me to set his Dell with XP so that I can fix his problems without leaving the house. And no, I can't explain how to fix something to guy who can't find the google search bar.

Anyway, will I be able to do this with Home Premium? Or do I have to have Ultimate to do that? And no, I'm not spending another $80 to fix his pc, if he wants it that bad, he's paying the extra.

[Joe Average]

The biggest crock of shit from Microsoft is that they created Vista Business which is the effective replacement for XP Professional in the workplace, which obviously would include business laptops - and yet they don't include Bitlocker support in Vista Business.

Is that the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Yes, they did it primarily for monetary reasons: it's a lot more profitable to charge a helluvalot more for Ultimate than just enable that feature in Business (entirely possible, of course).

Pretty lame tactic on Microsoft's part, especially in light of the issues worldwide the past 2 years with laptops being stolen that ended up having a lot of valuable and confidential data on 'em. First time I discovered this little missing gem from Vista Business I gotta say, I was flat out pissed to a very large degree, but what can ya do...

So yeah, Ultimate ain't. And yes, that does make a lot of sense, actually. :)

[Sparkyy]

Remote desktop question. My dad wants me to set his Dell with XP so that I can fix his problems without leaving the house.

If you need to fix his problems, just use www.logmein.com, they have a free program there that can let you log on to his computer anytime you want, quite handy and you don't need to configure the firewall either.

[Mekanic01]

Thanks

[ryan_975]

If you need to fix his problems, just use www.logmein.com, they have a free program there that can let you log on to his computer anytime you want, quite handy and you don't need to configure the firewall either.

another vote for Logmein Free. I use it to maintain a system I have offsite and to help a few other people with their computers. You can use it with any edition of Windows be it Home or Pro/Business.

[milkweg]

There are fee 3rd party encryption progs too if you really need something like bitlocker.

[Mithent]

I've used LogMeIn for doing remote tech support with family too.