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 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $339.99
Buy New: $91.00
You Save: $248.99 (73%)
New (69) Used (6) from $91.00
Rating:  106 reviews
Sales Rank: 185
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Ultimate
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 85.2 x 61.2 x 12
MPN: 66R-02261
Model: 66R-02261
UPC: 882224661447
EAN: 0882224661492
ASIN: B0013O77GM
Release Date: March 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 I Have to Say, I'm Okay with Vista April 5, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I finally upgraded to Vista and it was a long time coming. I must admit for the longest time I felt envious of people who were operating on a system newer than mine, but I also felt secretly satisfied that XP was more secure and faster. No eye candy though. However, as both a Mac and a PC user, I had all the eye candy one would want with Leopard and it doesn't slow anything down.
What I don't understand is why Vista has to come in so many editions:
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Ultimate
Plus all the upgrade versions. Why not just one version that does it all, you know, the way they do it in the Mac world.
Okay, all that aside, I have two PCs, both desktops, one at work (which is actually mine, not my employers) and one at home. At work I installed Home Premium and at home I installed Vista Ultimate. I didn't time the installation in either place as I was doing other stuff during the process, but neither install took more than an hour.
I did not do clean installs in either case, instead opting for the upgrade option, just to see if it worked. Besides, I have lots of back up hard drives so I wasn't worried and it appears I didn't need to, because both installs went swimmingly. I understand others have not been so lucky, but I was.
After choosing my local time, currency, keyboard layout, user name, icon, wallpaper and password Vista decided my computers were good to go and they were.
Right off the bat I have to say, I like the Aero interface. Is it better than Leopard's, not really, but it's not worse either, just different. I've got four gigs of ram in both computers and though maybe Vista might have been a tad slower doing some photoshop work than XP, it wasn't all that noticeable. Some things may have been a bit slower opening, but not enough to make me miss XP. All in all, I have to say I'm okay with Vista.
Jack Priest, author of Ragged Man, Gecko & Night Witch
Vista Still Works Fine for Me April 5, 2008
11 out of 18 found this review helpful
I have XP running on a bootcamp partition on my MacBook and it is doing just fine. I spend most of my working time in Word, hardly ever using any of the other programs in the Office suite. However, I use the Adobe products Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator a whole bunch. Other than that I play solitaire, watch videos and, of course, use both Explorer and Firefox when I go online. That's about it for me, software wise, and XP handles it all without fail, without crashing and without giving me any headaches.
And I will miss it when I upgrade to Vista, however my machine can handle the upgrade, so I'm giving it a try.
Okay, I like the look and feel of Vista, however it's not as snappy as XP or even System X. I like the AERO bit, quite snazzy and one of the reasons my machine runs a bit slower, I suspect, however I'm loath to turn it off as it's so cool.
Word works fine and that's to be expected. My Adobe software runs well too. The browsers, no problem. I did have to upload a printer driver, but that only took a few minutes and I was good to go.
I've read a lot of reviews by people who are having problems with Vista and I'm getting the SP1 upgrade any day and I'll instal it, but I'm not experiencing the problems others appear to be having. Maybe because it's because I only use four or five programs on my Machine. I don't use iTunes or Windows Media as I still listen to my CDs the old fashioned way and only then if I don't have the phonograph record.
I've just installed the SP1 upgrade and I have to saw that I do notice a difference. Things just seem snappier now. For the last week I've had my MacBook running Vista and no crashes, not even in Photoshop, which used to happen before the upgrade. I'm not saying it's going too, but it has not happened yet. So now I'm running Vista Ultimate on my MacBook and I just got a nifty new MacBook Air, oh so thin, oh so cool running with Vista Home Premium. Vista on way cool Macs, way cool that is.
 Would Not Install on My PC, but did install on a MacBook April 5, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This review updated on June 4, 2008 (see the section after the asterisks):
I attempted to install this operating system (OS) on my 1.8 Ghz eMachine PC. My PC is on the older side but within the minimum specs required to install the software as outlined on the box.
Since I couldn't get the OS to install, I will talk about the installation experience for the reference of other potential buyers.
The first thing I did was choose to install and run the Windows Vista Advisor software so it could analyze my PC and offer some information on whether or not it was compatible. This required downloading another bit of system software for the Advisor software to run. The Advisor listed software which I had installed under XP that would not run or may have compatibility issues under Vista and mentioned that there may be some Vista functionality that I could not have based on my PC's specs. Note that it did not say that the OS would not run on my particular PC.
I chose a custom install which allowed for the installer software to make the best choices based on its analysis of my PC and it ran for around an hour giving periodic messages and at times restarting. This was all as should be expected. Unfortunately, after some time, my display went black and my external hard drive's access light stuck on red (which means it was no longer accessible). I waited a half hour to see if this was part of the installation process, but there was no change whatsoever. At that point, I had to force a restart.
Upon restarting, I was told that the installation was unsuccessful and that the installation would be undone. When the PC booted back up, it was running in XP in the same state it was in before the installation began and a message encouraged me to have my system analyzed to make sure it was compatible. However, I had already taken this step.
Though I wasn't able to install the software, I was impressed that it perfectly preserved my old system, applications and documents after the failure. In the near future, when I have significant amounts of time to tweak the installation, I hope to make another attempt to see if I can get the OS to install. I suspect that the black screen problem may have been the result of my upgraded video card conflicting with the built-in integrated graphics chip. I suspect Windows Vista may be attempting to tap into the integrated chip and this is causing a crash. I will have to work out how to disable the onboard chip during installation or physically remove the card to verify this. However, it may be prudent for others with a similar configuration (both an integrated graphics card and an upgraded card) to keep my experience in mind before installing Vista.
I will update this review when and if I successfully install Vista and detail how I got it to work should I manage it (and particularly whether or not the graphics card was the issue). I'm giving Vista two stars at this time mainly because of the Advisor software's ability to "warn" the buyer about what might break with Vista and in what way software may fail to function and the way the installer kept everything intact despite the failure to install. While it is disappointing to have the OS fail to install, it's less troubling if you experience no data loss in the attempt.
******************
A few months after failing to install Vista on my PC, I successfully installed it on a MacBook Intel Dual Core 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB of RAM. Installation on the MacBook was smooth and performance very speedy. I had to install the set of drivers that came with BootCamp to make everything fully functional, but I was able to configure Vista to do web surfing independent of Apple's drivers and it ran pretty well even without the correct drivers (it just did not have sound and ran at a default screen resolution). I was also able to smoothly locate shared drives on my home network and make a wireless connection.
Vista's main problem is that it smothers the user with caution and makes you dig around to turn all the warnings off. Every time an application launches or a piece of software is installed, Vista asks for your permission. It can be quite maddening after awhile but can be shut down using the control panel and accessing User Account settings. However, Microsoft really should have added the option to turn off all such warnings to the dialog boxes themselves rather than making the user tinker with the control panel settings.
The only other issue I have had with Vista is its refusal to allow me to use disc images. On a laptop, it's far faster and more convenient to run games off of images rather than having to carry around several discs when you have the whim to fire up a game. Eventually, I purchased a piece of shareware that seemed to do the job for now, but it is clear that Microsoft is doing all it can to circumvent anything with a hint of impropriety, even at the user's expense.
All that being said, I'd recommend Vista Ultimate to anyone with an Intel Mac of the same or greater specs than my MacBook if games or Windows-only software is on your horizon. It runs well and is easy to install. In particular, better support for the low-end integrated graphics cards that Apple uses in its mobile and low-end machines is available for Vista. I couldn't run games available for both Mac and PC on the Mac side because the driver software was incompatible and the Mac has no ability to run older software in compatibility mode. In Vista, I updated the driver software and I ran some very old and well-loved games in Windows XP compatibility mode.
I'd like to upgrade my star rating of Vista to 4 stars for a Mac running BootCamp but I'm afraid I can't edit the star rating after the fact.
 Some New Form, Little New Function - Not Worth Upgrading April 4, 2008
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
For having taken Microsoft over 5 years to build since XP, Vista has surprisingly little to offer that XP can't do with a few tweaks. There are a handful of useful new features, and Aero Glass is certainly attractive (if it works on your machine, it doesn't for many). But most of these, even the eye candy, are unnecessary and can be added to XP if you want them that badly.
I'm reminded of the "upgrade" from Windows 98 to the ill-fated Windows Me. Windows 98 was a "perfect" OS for its time, and while Windows Me was meant to bring exciting new features, what it really brought was a myriad of bugs, and actually took away features from Windows 98, which some die-hards still use. Although Vista is much more different from XP than Me was from 98, the situation is similar. There are no absolute must have features in Vista, but there are plenty of bugs, incompatibilities, and upgrade nightmares.
When it comes to upgrading by installing over your old operating system, my advice is this: don't. Move all your data off your hard drive, wipe it, and do a clean install of Vista, or don't upgrade at all. With today's complicated operating systems, installing over your old OS is bound to be a hassle. Even if it does work correctly, your system still won't be as fast, and will have a lot of junk left over on your hard drive from your old operating system. A clean install is always best.
This brings me to my final problem with Vista: performance. Despite its lack of hot new features, it does consume vastly larger amounts of resources than XP. Your old machine may not be able to handle it, and even if it can, it will still be much slower than if you keep using your old operating system. The best approach to buying Vista is to just buy a new machine with it preinstalled. It's not like you have the choice anyway, most new computers give you Vista whether you want it or not.
Overall Vista is okay, but not worth buying if you're happy with XP. As always, do your research and be ready for a big hassle if you choose to upgrade.
What a piece of bloatware. April 4, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sure, it's pretty, but my computer is blazing fast with XP and when I threw on a copy of Vista Ultimate, it slowed down significantly. I had problems finding software to work with Vista. I'm going to close my eyes and hope that Vista isn't here when I open them.
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