Vista Home or Ultimate?

C

Countryman

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May 30, 2007
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I am looking to buy Vista64 and notice that the differences between Home Premium and Ultimate are file backup and restore, Windows fax & scan, remote access and Bitlocker.

These don’t seem to be worth the difference in price or am I missing something?
 
Remote Desktop alone is what made me go with Ultimate. I also jumped for Ultimate because it had Media Center, but I never use it since I realized that its useless for anything but an HTPC. The automatic backup is very nice, but I don't think it is worth the price difference.

I say go Home Premium and save some dough. If you need backup software later, spend the money you saved on that.
 
Ultimate also has the MUI thing (make the interface into a different language) if you are into that sort of thing. It also has the "Extra" which so far there aren't much of. The Hold 'em game is not going to get someone to choose Ultimate over Home Premium, that's for sure.
 
Biggest reasons are Remote Desktop, joining domains, and the backup/restore/etc.

For some people those are very big deals, but it doesn't sound like they are to you. Go Home Premium.
 
I use Vista Home and works very good for what i do in my spare time...games :D
 
Vista Premium: MCE
Vista Business: Auto-backup, Remote Desktop, domains
Vista Ultimate: All of the above

If you need any of the Business features, consider Business over Premium.

If you need MCE and the Business features, consider Ultimate.
 
Home Premium is enough for anyone, really. If you need some of the options that Business offers, buy Home Premium and some third party software (which would still be cheaper than buying Ultimate) that'll fulfill that need.

Ultimate really is a bit too expensive, considering what it offers. My biggest gripe about Vista in relation to price is how Microsoft decided to simply fuck over every business on the planet that wants the features of Businesss (if they choose Vista that is) and BitLocker by leaving BitLocker out of Business.

So someone clue me in on that: They write an OS designed for businesses (hence the name, Business, since they geared it towards the needs and requirements of businesses), and in light of all the damned laptop and data thefts the past few years, they create BitLocker which can dramatically curb such things or at least offers the potential to keep that data safe even if a laptop or data theft occurs...

And then they don't add that support in the Business edition of Vista and force companies to pay nearly twice as much for Ultimate just to get that feature (and a few others that most businesses couldn't give a shit about).

See, I can bash Vista my damned self, just as well if not better than anyone else, but that was more a Microsoft bash actually. :D

Home Premium, enough for anyone.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Home Premium is enough for anyone, really. If you need some of the options that Business offers, buy Home Premium and some third party software (which would still be cheaper than buying Ultimate) that'll fulfill that need.
Click to expand...
IMHO, VLC sucks in comparison to RDP, especially over the wireless at my university.
 
well, Ultimate has support for domains, which is pretty important for some people....but the way I see it, if you are joining domains, you probably aren't a home user, so media center would be useless, making Business a better choice....

really, in the end, unless you really want Aero, good old Home Basic isn't *that* bad if all you want is DX10 :)

*prepares to be flamed*
 
bbz_Ghost-

Keep in mind that bitlocker is, in fact, available in Enterprise. It's a problem for small businesses, I suppose, but businesses of significant size get it included anyways.
 
I watched the Vista "release" video with Steve Balmer chatting it up with several CEOs and one of them was with Verizon. They even made mention of BitLocker and how useful it will for all the mobile workforce Verizon has and keeping their data and their customer's data safe.

Then I realized based on a figure the Verizon CEO tossed out that they were going to be paying through the proverbial nose for Ultimate all the laptops in the entire workforce, and so would every other business that has fleets of laptops and they require the security that BitLocker provides.

What a crock of shit - nearly twice the cost for that one vital feature?. Give it time, I'm sure someone will discover a simple patch that enables BitLocker functionality in Vista Business. I can't fathom for any logical reason why Microsoft would leave out such an incredibly important tool that businesses would flock to instantly.

Oh, yeah, I guess there is a reason, but it ain't logical. It's money.

But that's taking this thread enough off-topic I suppose.

LstOfTheBrunnenG: Did you mean VNC (remote networking and control application) or VLC (media player) 'cause from experience and comments, RDP is absolute shit for doing video work, so I gotta wonder what you were going on about there in your post. :)
 
the gamer said:
Vista Home: Average Joe
Vista Ultimate: Enthusiast Joe

:D
Click to expand...

Absolute bullshit! That's the statement of somebody who is unable to understand the differences!


Forget Complete backup, for starters. You can go get True Image, which is a better solution, for less than the price difference between Home Premium and Ultimate.

BitLocker is a bit of a wank, too. File encryption is overkill for private users.


That leaves remote desktop and domain join, so unless somebody is actually going to USE either or both of those there's no real point to getting Ultimate. I'm firmly convinced that the bulk of private users who purchase Vista Ultimate do so for one of two reasons:

  • The name sounds better or
  • They wrongly assume that there's something extra in it which will actually be useful!
 
Thanks for acting as a sounding board guys! I'm going for Home Premium as I can't justify the difference either. I have no interest in joining domains, I can't ever see myself using Remote Desktop or BitLocker. I have used Ghost for the last ten years and it has saved my bacon many times. To be honest, I can't justify upgrading from my present Ghost 9.0 to the Vista version either but I am quite happy to do all backups from DOS.
 
i wish i would have went w/ Biz instead of Home Prem. Most of the MS included "Home" apps i dont use as choose to use different apps; Outlook, Nero, Adobe Elements, etc.

The one feature i want is RDC which i hacked wifes Prem32 to work, but no luck on my Prem64.
 
Catweazle said:
BitLocker is a bit of a wank, too. File encryption is overkill for private users.
Click to expand...

Until your computer is stolen and those pictures of you drunk are sent to your office or your HD scanned for stored passwords to your bank accounts. Then yes, file encryption is overkill for private users.
(School teachers should be especially careful since any file of theirs on the internet can be potentially job threatening. One stolen file on the internet can be a huge problem.)

And for businesses shelling out the extra cash for bitlocker...well that makes sense. Since any good drive encrypting program costs 200 dollars per seat anyway, the extra cost to get to ultimate from business makes sense.
 
I'm still a firm believer that most home users need encryption. but i'll accept that fix. :)
 
heh heh....

I've been focussing on (and specialising in) the issues, problems and usages of 'ordinary home users' for years, and the pattern I've seen isn't a need for encryption amongst that particular user sector. Matter of fact, the biggest 'ompact' of file encryption I've seen for that sector is the extent of problems people confront when they lose their blasted files because they've unnecessarily encrypted files, without any real understanding of encryption, and then end up with a trashed OS installation and can't access the things any more!
 
I have struggeled with file based encryption as well, such as that built into windows XP. The only solution I have found that would yield decent results in the case of a hosed OS would be a third party encryption platform such as pgp. I guess even whole disk encryption would be an issue unless the user backs up reguarly and we all know they won't. aside from that is container based encryption then if the OS goes, at least you can get that container back and your encryption PW is still good because it's not some hidden key like the XP encryption. (i have not had good experiences during my testing of its encryption recovery from one system to the next. sometimes the key will work propery and sometimes not.)

If the user backs up to an encrypted disk from a third party like pgp then i think thats when the benifit comes in.

Users need to be educated on computers....just a little bit.
 
Bit Locker is pretty useless for people like us anyway imo, how many of us have TPM?

I know I don't, and can't use Bitlocker in Ultimate because of it :mad:
 
Yeah the TPM bugged me too.

My bios has the option but it doesn't work on my laptop. I guess I don't have the chip.

The information says that it will work if you don't have TPM via usb thumb stick but I can't find out how to enable that. I just upgraded my PGP software to the VISTA compatable version and I am going to use that again. That has been great.
 
I would like to see Ultimate vs. Other Version sales and know how much Microsoft is actually selling of the Ultimate copies.

Ultimate, IMO, is just a waste of money.
Either you are a home user, or a business user (in generalities).
If you are a home user, you generally could care less about joining your PC up to a domain and using Remote Desktop (LogMeIn Free works well enough).

If you are a business user- you generally could care less about Media Center. After all, folks who actually are in the business of editing movies and need something like Media Center generally are going to run their own, more powerful, video software.

So Business and Home Premium pretty much take care of both worlds.
The only thing I see Ultimate being handy for is a larger home business that requires a central server, and the particular workstation is also a personal computer (Hence possible need for Media Center). I just don't see the advantage of Media Center being all that huge of a push for Businesses to go with Ultimate.

So for me, after having explained it a bit, Ultimate is still more geared for the Home User. The features it offers over Home Premium aren't cared for by most Home Users anyways, which ends up in it being pretty useless anyways.

That's how I see it at least ;)
 
heh heh.....

You wobbled and weaved about a bit there, zacdl, but that's actually a damned good summation.

If somebody wanted the advanced connectivity/data security etc features, but definitiely does not want Media Center, then they'd be silly to pay extra for Ultimate over Business. If somebody wanted Media Center, but not the 'Business' features, then they'd be mad to choose Ultimate over Home Premium. And there are only a very small minority of people who fall between. Ultimate is most certainly a "Home Use" edition
 
I purchased Ultimate. Waste of money. I don't use any of the extra features nor am I required to use any of the business features for work. Also, they've released a pathetic amount of "Ultimate Extras" and the few that are available aren't worth 200 bucks.

Stick with Home Premium and you'll be fine.
 
The on thing that was supposed to really set Ultimate apart - The Extras, has become a bit of an embarrassment. From a tech pod cast last week I heard that the group (podcast said they were even a formal team) who were making them just dropped the whole thing.

For the sake of compatibility I would say TrueCrypt would be much better.
 
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