Is it worth it to get Vista Ultimate?

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Thuban

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I've recently became aware of a deal where I could buy and active Vista Ultimate by Jan 15 and get another Ultimate key for free.

My brother and I have WinXP Pro SP2 32-bit right now and are satisfied with it, but with this deal we could both upgrade for $250. The problem is I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. Can I dual boot it or something? Is it possible to dual boot between 32-bit and 64-bit?
 
And yet you could get two of these for less than that.

The way I see it is, if you don't want/need Remote Desktop, get Home Premium. If you want/need Remote Desktop, get Business. If you want/need both Remote Desktop and Media Center, get Ultimate.

I was very happy with Vista Business until I got my tuner card, so then I opted to upgrade to Ultimate.
 
Ultimate offers BitLocker, Dreamscene, and a few other "goodies" over Home Premium. Does that make it worth the typically double price compared to Home Premium? Hardly... so if you're just flat out asking "Is Ultimate worth the extra dollar cost?" the answer is no, and I don't think many would disagree with me.

You neglected to mention the hardware you'd be using Ultimate with as well - if it's less than a dual core processor (whatever brand) and it's less than 2GB of RAM then get ready for slower performance than XP 32 bit on the same hardware. Even using Vista x64 wouldn't do much good unless you can give Vista plenty of RAM - 1GB is the bare minimum for a usable system, and 2GB or more is where Vista really shines.

Times change, and now the "minimum" acceptable memory is up to 2GB, like it or not. You'll get tons of varied opinions here, but people that actually know what they're doing and talking about would never recommend installing Vista Ultimate (32 or 64 bit) on anything less than a dual core processor of some kind, preferably a Core 2 Duo or something from AMD that's relatively in the ballpark and 2GB of RAM minimum.
 
The only thing that makes Ultimate remotely worth it is Bitlocker, but Truecrypt (And numerous other variations of those) is just as good. And free. Generally, Ultimate isnt worth it (Not even for Remote Desktop, considering VNC is way more useful.)
 
Remote Desktop is fine and dandy, but you might as well get the business edition if you want that. I have Ultimate and IMO it is not worth the money Microsoft asks for it. Lucky I got it for free, but I would not spend that kind of money on an OS.
 
The problem with the Business edition is that it doesn't have Media Center, which is a must have for me. Yeah the retail price for Ultimate is high, however there are so many ways to obtain Windows, like TechNet, which is not a bad deal for what you get, all Windows versions and Office to boot for about $300, which is cheaper than buying Ultimate at retail.
 
Technet is an amazing deal for what you get. So is MSDN (Though a bit more expensive
)
 
The answer to this question, like so many others continually being asked, is: it depends on you.

The bottom line is, you need to compare the differences in the versions, and take a look at your needs. When you factor in th costs, you'll have your answer. No one else is going to be able to make this decision for you.

As for TechNet, it isn't meant as a discount method for home users to obtain piles of Microsoft software.
 
Four of my computers are running Vista Home Premium, I have one box that I have Ultimate on simply because I got it at the same price as Home Premium. Do I need it, no....did I want it....obviously or I wouldn't have purchased it. Does it give me that much more than Home Premium...no. If you don't want it, don't need it, don't buy it. At this point it's more of a virtual pen0s thing than anything useful.

If I could score two licenses at the price of one, I would jump on it in a flash.
 
You know.. you could just buy home basic and use Open source applications for any other features you want, and vlite to strip out anything you dont want that is in it... thats the cheapest way to do things.
 
The deal is good only with Vista Ultimate so the debate about various version of vista is moot. So my question is, from your experience, is upgrade to vista more of a hassle and troublesome than using XP? Can I dual boot between XP32 bit and Vista 64bit? If it's possible, then I would get it but still keep XP for a while to see how it goes with Vista.

My brother has core2duo an 2 gb of ram. I have 2gb of ram also but with AMD X3500.
 
You can certainly dual boot. However, most people that take this route soon end up using Vista only. I'd probably ghost the XP install, and then install Vista using the 30 day trial. If you don't like it, or still aren't sure, you can always ghost your XP install back.
 
What does ghost mean and how do I do it? I take it you mean ghost image of the hard disk? The last I did something with a ghost image it was 10 years ago when I had a 200 mhz intel and 16mb of ram.
 
I think the worst part about vista ultimate is that it takes the features that were in XP pro and puts them in an OS that costs twice as much.
 
Thuban said:
What does ghost mean and how do I do it? I take it you mean ghost image of the hard disk? The last I did something with a ghost image it was 10 years ago when I had a 200 mhz intel and 16mb of ram.
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That's exactly what I mean. For most home users, the common and best way to use Ghost is to run it from a BartPE disc or something like it, and send the image off to an external USB drive.
 
Or...

If your hard drive is made by Seagate or Maxtor you can use their software (Seagate DiscWizard or Maxtor MaxBlast) which comes with a moderately stripped down version of Acronis True Image, my second most recommended piece of software.

If not, then either the regular version of True Image (worth every cent) or Ghost (hoping it's not on some PE disc you download because that makes it warez, but it's worth the cost if you buy it I guess) would work just as well for a full partition backup.
 
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. You can always use RealVNC or some other remote acces product if you want to get Premium.

Don't get Ultimate for the "Ultimate Extra's". That whole deal is nothing but a scam, and it's been a ghost-town since Vista was released.

Everytime I check for more "Extra's" all I see are tumbleweeds (Bitlocker and Poker).


LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
And yet you could get two of these for less than that.

The way I see it is, if you don't want/need Remote Desktop, get Home Premium. If you want/need Remote Desktop, get Business. If you want/need both Remote Desktop and Media Center, get Ultimate.

I was very happy with Vista Business until I got my tuner card, so then I opted to upgrade to Ultimate.
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