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 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $339.99
Buy New: $200.00
You Save: $139.99 (41%)
New (35) Used (2) from $195.97
Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 168
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.2 x 1.6
MPN: 66R-02261
Model: 66R-02261
UPC: 882224661492
EAN: 0882224661492
ASIN: B0013O77GM
Release Date: March 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new, never opened
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| Customer Reviews:
 Windows Vista March 26, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Unlike other reviewers whom I have a great deal of respect for my install went well. I preformed a fresh install. The machine I use is strictly for testing, I did not install this on a PC that I use daily. I installed it on a laptop that's 1.67 ghz processor over clocked to 2 ghz it has 512 shared ram (Microsoft recomends 1 gig)other then that the laptop met all of the other suggested minimum requirements. It has the Intel 945 chipset that comes with integrated graphics Intel accelerator 950 video card.
Vista didn't recognize an old Laserjet 4 plus network printer but neither did did XP. It is a network printer so I set it up using IP printing. My Open office ( a free office suite of applications that rivals MS Office) applications work well with Vista. Vista recognized my Canon camera. It didn't recognize an old Omni scanner that I have and there are no drivers for it on the but which is ok because I have a Mac that I do all my photo and scanning work on.
In general Vista is slower then XP on the same machine. The search functions take longer partially because it's doing a more complicated search. The login takes a little longer because it takes longer to load the user profile.
A breakdown of new and improved features.
The Windows software firewall works well but still is not a replacement for a hardware firewall. Vista's mobile computing is better then XP. The spyware is also getting better but I would still recommend lavasoft over the Vista defender spyware. The parental controls haven't changed much since XP. I haven't tried Sync center because I don't have any devices that support it and the limit is 10 computers. Windows Meeting space worked ok but Vista has to be installed on any computer joining the meeting. Windows meeting spaces replaces net meeting. Windows photo gallery is ok but seems to have lost some functionality over Windows photo manager. Windows has a thing called Gadgets. Mac users will recognize this it's very similar to Mac Widgets. It enables you to have applets on your desktop that will tell you the weather, sports tickers, calendars. Windows comes with a few gadgets and there are many more available on line. The Windows media center is nice. It does a good job of visualizing photo's, videos both stored locally and over a network. Windows aero is interesting to play with but fairly useless, basically what it does is give the title bar some transparency so that you can see what's below it.
This is a nice operating system but I don't know that it's worth spending the money to upgrade from Windows XP. If your upgrading from Windows 2000 then it's worth it. The price is also a bit steep at 300 dollars.
 Defective bloatware. March 26, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
This product would be great if you bought a new computer or very recently purchased computer already had Vista home basic installed. But as far as upgrading a computer from Windows XP, I would stick with XP.
The installation runs somewhat smoothly, the Vista upgrade advisor said all was well and I proceeded.
I really didn't have any problems with installing the operating system, I had problems when it came time to run the program. Despite my laptop saying Built for XP and the update advisor saying that the update would be ok, I found the computer ran painfully slow. Boot time was almost doubled and the time it took to load simple programs also greatly increased.
Windows XP had a lot of changes under the hood from previous versions of Windows NT, with minor cosmetic changes that added to the experience. Vista seems to make many changes under the hood with cosmetic changes that detract from the experience. Many features have been moved and are more difficult to find. The constant nag screen asking permission for actions gets old rather quickly.
I do like the Windows sidebar with gadgets and improved search are great ideas I'd love to see included in newer versions of Windows. These features are already refined and have been available in OS for some time now.
Overall, I think Windows VIsta shows some promise. Some. XP had some bugs when it was first unveiled. Those were minor in comparison to Vista, even after the first service pack.
The graphics are nice, though they slow your system down, gadgets and instant search are great. I would wait for a service pack 2 before I even think of buying this to upgrade your system.
 SP1 is an evolutionary, but not revolutionary, upgrade March 25, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
The Windows Vista Ultimate with System Pack 1 arrived in a sleek looking black box, and I crossed my fingers, with the hope that it would sport some major improvements over the original Vista.
So you're probably wondering what's new in the SP1 update for Vista? You can read the official bulletin over at Microsoft,
[..]
but here's a shorter, condensed summary of what you can expect.
-Power Efficiency Fixes; a few % more efficient for you laptop users (that's a couple minutes extra), VSync no longer runs continuously for you gamers, improvements in the HD Audio codecs.
-Reliability Fixes; supposedly less likely to crash, more compatibility with new hardware.
-Security Fixes; nothing that the average guy will notice, but basically, easing the method with which 3rd party products can interface with the Windows Security Center.
-Performance Fixes; Faster copying of files, less time to become active from Hibernate & Resume, slightly less CPU and memory utilization.
-Misc; A fix for users with Nvidia Mobos, ejecting ipods, AMD Barcelon reboot issues, hybrid SLI/Crossfire problems.
In short, SP1 doesn't offer anything substantial that the average consumer is going to notice. It's mostly hundreds of small code updates.
Installation: Home consumers can get Vista with SP1 with one of two ways. Buy it from Amazon with it integrated into the DVD with one license. Download it automatically from Windows Update (I think it's ~ 7 GB). I heard from a friend that updating from Vista to SP1 takes about an hour; installing the complete package on my machine was about 1.5 hours.
Thoughts: Even with SP1, Vista Ultimate still takes forever to boot up. XP could boot up in 30 seconds. I still get more infamous "Blue Screens of Death" more than I did with XP. Various programs that I ran fine in XP are still unstable in Vista. Lockups, crashes, it's annoying. SP1 offers some cosmetic changes, but I still question the overall stability of Vista Ultimate.
Conclusion: If you purchased an OEM machine from a company like Dell, HP, etc.., then you're most likely stuck with Vista for the time being, unless you want to go purchase a separate key for XP. SP1 improves some minor issues, so I guess you'll have to wait until SP2 for more substantial changes.
For everybody else, stick with Windows XP. If it ain't broke, then don't fix it. I do like the Aero graphical interface that Vista offers, which are aesthetically pleasing, but other than that, XP has it beat hands down. XP with System Pack 2 is still rock solid, and runs all of my apps, games, and hardware without issues. So stick with Windows XP if you can, and wait until the upcoming Windows 7 comes out (2010).
Rather flawed, may want to skip unless it comes pre-installed March 25, 2008
17 out of 31 found this review helpful
I'm a long, long time Windows user, since the very first days when it was released and we could finally move away from DOS. I've reformatted my computers and installed various OS's up to Windows XP. The early days of XP were certainly not easy either, but with SP2 we finally had a fairly stable, solid, reasonably secure operating system. I seldom jump on new operating systems, letting other users be the ones to find all the bugs and problems. And there's no doubt, Vista had its share of them. When I recently bought a new high-end system, I specifically asked that XP Pro be installed instead of Vista as I did not want to be bothered with software that didn't work or drivers that weren't compatible.
But given the opportunity to review Vista Ultimate with the new service pack, I figured it was worth checking out. I ran the Vista Upgrade Adviser on my secondary development box and it didn't find any problems, so I figured I was good to go. It was a slightly older system, but still had plenty of memory and space and should handle Vista fine. However, after reaching the product key screen, entering my number, and continuing to the next screen, boom! The installation throws an error about the install.wim file being missing. I'm installing right from the Windows Vista CD, how can it be missing? Researching this error on the Microsoft support site brought up nothing, doing Google searches found it to generally be caused by people downloading an install and burning it to a CD. This is a packaged version I am using though, so what now?! Several calls to Microsoft support totally fail to bring any resolution and after routing me through to several people they tell me it's an activation problem and the key I have is invalid. This just doesn't make sense to me in terms of the error I was getting.
So I started doing some detective work on my own. After a couple hours of diagnostics I was sure the disk itself was fine. I disconnected everything from my computer but my hard drive and the DVD-Rom and tried again, still getting the same error. So my best guess was that it had some problem with the DVD drive. There were no firmware updates available from the manufacturer so I did some more searching and found a site offering upgrades for these drives to newer firmware versions (mainly for the purpose of flashing a newer version with more burn capabilities). So figured I'd give that a shot and see what happened. And wouldn't you know it, that allowed Vista finally to install properly.
More on the software later, but this install problem really threw me for a loop. The error was totally unhelpful as was the support at Microsoft. I found reports of people having problems with this error with boxed versions, so it's definitely not unknown yet there was nothing at all in their knowledge base about the cause. The Upgrade Advisor seems pretty useless to me if it can't even find a problem that would result in the software refusing to install! I'd really highly caution anyone that purchases Vista *other* than as part of a new computer system to really be sure they are ready for it. With new computers, the vendor has done all the work of making sure the hardware is compatible, all the drivers work with it, etc. As a home user, you are totally on your own with any problems you run into. Microsoft does give you free support for a short time if you run into problems with the install, but I must say, I found that help to be completely worthless in trying to resolve my own issues, so have little faith in how helpful they are for anything other than typical inexperienced user issues. If you run into serious problems and decide to go back to your previous OS, you most likely will not be able to return the software, or if you can, it will often be with a significant price hit. So be sure to check the return policy on software wherever you purchase it, be it here at Amazon or elsewhere, before making a decision to purchase or not. And if you do decide to install on an existing system, do whatever you can to make sure all your hardware is Vista-ready.
I've only been using the software for awhile but so far am fairly underwhelmed. Yeah, it looks nice and there are some neat features, but there's so much that I just shake my head in frustration at. The main problems with Vista are pretty well documented elsewhere. Performance generally slower than on XP (particularly copying files over the network), constant security pop-up messages, common tasks often taking longer to do or setup options being harder to find, all the different versions and the high price, etc. It does seem to put a lot more emphasis on things looking pretty than on getting things done quickly and efficiently. I've mainly been using the Media Center features and it's not been a particularly great experience so far, it's locked up a couple times on me and several times the visualizations stop running for some reason (and tell me I need to restart the computer. Huh??) I had to find a different way to copy over DRM-protected files as it wouldn't move them from my other networked system (I can understand not playing them until I download the rights, but not allowing me to even copy them?? Come on!) I do get frustrated at the things that take me more mouse clicks than before...as someone that suffers from repetitive strain problems, more mouse clicks not only slows me down, it simply is not good from an ergonomic standpoint. The new start menu is a good example...I love the look of it, the integrated search, etc. But why can I not do a cascading programs menu?? I have to click on each submenu to open it, rather than being able to just mouse over. Things like this seem to be an unnecessary step backwards in usability and makes you wonder when Microsoft lost site of keeping their operating system elegant and intuitive to use, in favor of something that "looks cool". Keep in mind as well, that you don't get any kind of user manual, etc. with this software (as is typical for a lot of software these days, particularly MS products)...you have to figure stuff out using the built-in and online help, or purchase a book on Vista to get more step-by-step information on using it. The average user, particularly one moving from XP or older systems, will certainly find themselves a bit lost at times.
Hopefully I'll get used to this new monster and appreciate all the new tools it has. But for the high price, it's really hard for me to recommend it unless it comes packaged with a new system. And even then, it's really debatable if it's worth moving to over the tried-and-true XP. I left this one-star review initially on it when I had spent almost 2 days trying unsuccessfully to install it, and I would have to say my overall experience would still come in at a 1-star so far. It definitely has not been a smooth ride. As for rating the operating system portion alone, I'd probably bump that up to 3-stars, it definitely has some very nice graphic improvements, if you have the hardware to handle it, and some improvements and new features that no doubt many people will appreciate. Many of these though are just as easily available for XP (desktop search and gadgets for instance) so you need to really judge whether it's worth moving to Vista with all its other flaws.
The Next Generation OS -- If You Have the Hardware to Support It March 25, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've been using Windows since the days of Windows 3.0 and have always been impressed, for the most part, with the advances each new version brings. Windows 95 and Windows XP remain the two "major" advances of Windows that redefined the user experience. Windows Vista Ultimate doesn't quite qualify as a major advance, but it is definitely the next generation OS from Microsoft.
The biggest thing that sets Vista apart from XP is the hardware. If you are running on hardware that is "fine for XP" chances are it won't be fine for Vista. All too many of the problems people are running into are because they are trying to run Vista on hardware that just isn't supported -- or supported poorly. You need a modern PC (dual-core, at least 1GB of RAM and a decent graphics card) to fully take advantage of what Vista Ultimate offers.
So why would you consider upgrading to Vista? If you are heavy into the Media Center functions of Windows, or want to experience the WIndows Aero interface then Vista is right for you. If you are happy with XP and it provides everything you need -- then there really is no reason to run out and upgrade.
There are some features I do like in Vista that aren't "killer" but nonetheless make the experience better. The Windows Sidebar is a great addition, letting you add gadgets to track everything from recent documents to the weather. The enhanced performance and reliablity center is great for geeks like me who like to see what is going on under the hood -- but to be honest, I think they overdid it with the new Event Viewer; way too much information and choices. I also like the fact that they have brought Windows Media Center into the Ultimate version -- before this was a seperate purchase.
Some things I could do without. The new Explorer interface can be annoying at times; Windows Ultimate Extras have not really lived up to the hype; and the new photo tools -- well, let's just say I wish they'd go back to how XP handled photos. I found myself having to go out and get a third-party tool to resize my photos; a feature I took for granted in XP!
Vista Ultimate is a good upgrade choice if you have a newer PC and want to experience the next generation of Windows. If you are happy with XP and you don't have a need for Vista, then stick with XP. Consider Vista Ultimate one of those purchases you make when you need to upgrade your PC, or when you want to finally get your digital media loaded onto your PC to share it throughout the house.
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