Thursday, February 1, 2007
Vista Upgrades All New, All Worse
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 10:00 AM
"If you’re not confused enough by all the versions of Vista, the upgrade choices might just do it. I predict Home Premium will prove to be far and away the best seller (for home users). Home Basic has too many features stripped out, it may become just as maligned as Windows ME. Ultimate is too expensive, unless you have the need to connect to a domain or are an enthusiast that just have to have every feature (like me). So, you’ve decide you’re going to purchase Windows Vista Home Premium. Wait! You’re not done. Do you want the full-retail version, the upgrade version, or the OEM version? The obvious difference is price. Most places are selling the full retail version for about $230, the upgrade for about $150 and OEM for $120. So, just what is the difference?"
Raise you're hand if you've ever been in this scenario: you've bought a copy of Windows XP Home or Professional upgrade, and you want to wipe out the currently installed OS and install a fresh copy of XP. Or maybe it's brand new hardware and you want to put the upgrade of XP on it. During the install when XP asks for the disc of previous version of Windows, you put in your copy of Windows 98 or Windows 2000. That's certainly something I've done over the years, all using legitimate copies of Windows 98 or Windows 2000 to drive the upgrade. After all, I'm a legitimate owner of that software right? I could never quite figure out why someone would buy the full-priced version of Windows XP, because almost everyone has a previous version of Windows, right?
Microsoft has implemented a radical change in how upgrade copies of Vista are going to function. It would be best to call them "in place upgrades" because you can't install the upgrade on bare metal (a blank drive) any more. Essentially, Vista has to see an installed, activated copy of Windows XP in order to proceed. That means that if you want to install Vista on a freshly wiped computer, you first would need to install and activate XP, then install Vista. That's typically the worst way possible to install a new OS - one over another - but I believe there will still be an option to do a clean install of Vista (one where the hard drive is wiped). Because I don't have a retail copy of Vista at my disposal, it's hard to know exactly how this is going to work. Any of you have experience with this so far?
Thankfully, there's a workaround that involves installing the trial version of Vista, then doing the upgrade over top that trial - and apparently it works. I'm going to be upgrading my father's computer to Vista sometime in the next few months, so it will be interesting to see this process first-hand.
Raise you're hand if you've ever been in this scenario: you've bought a copy of Windows XP Home or Professional upgrade, and you want to wipe out the currently installed OS and install a fresh copy of XP. Or maybe it's brand new hardware and you want to put the upgrade of XP on it. During the install when XP asks for the disc of previous version of Windows, you put in your copy of Windows 98 or Windows 2000. That's certainly something I've done over the years, all using legitimate copies of Windows 98 or Windows 2000 to drive the upgrade. After all, I'm a legitimate owner of that software right? I could never quite figure out why someone would buy the full-priced version of Windows XP, because almost everyone has a previous version of Windows, right?
Microsoft has implemented a radical change in how upgrade copies of Vista are going to function. It would be best to call them "in place upgrades" because you can't install the upgrade on bare metal (a blank drive) any more. Essentially, Vista has to see an installed, activated copy of Windows XP in order to proceed. That means that if you want to install Vista on a freshly wiped computer, you first would need to install and activate XP, then install Vista. That's typically the worst way possible to install a new OS - one over another - but I believe there will still be an option to do a clean install of Vista (one where the hard drive is wiped). Because I don't have a retail copy of Vista at my disposal, it's hard to know exactly how this is going to work. Any of you have experience with this so far?
Thankfully, there's a workaround that involves installing the trial version of Vista, then doing the upgrade over top that trial - and apparently it works. I'm going to be upgrading my father's computer to Vista sometime in the next few months, so it will be interesting to see this process first-hand.
