Where do I find a DETAILED comparison of the Vista Versions?

[Puppy Breath]

Sorry, didn't have time to read your whole post. But in terms of
comparisons, the (perhaps undetailed) list is at the Compare Editions page
(go to www.WindowsVista.com and click Choose An Edition). The Compare
Editions link at the bottom of the page pretty much sums it up. Don't know
if that's detailed enough for you or not. But none of the editions comes
with the Office programs you listed (Word, Excel, etc.). The development
tools aren't built-in either. Most of you can get from MSDN. There are
Express editions of most tools that you can download for free.

Yeah, a lot of people are having a lot of problems with Vista - even on
machines where it came pre-installed. It's a shame -- both for them and for
Vista's future.

The "time to shoot the engineers and go to market" mentality isn't unique to
Microsoft though. The investors and other people with a stake in getting the
product released were up in arms and really pushing to get this thing out
the door. Rumor has it that R&D costs for Vista and Office 2007 were in the
$9 billion dollar range and the money people were getting real uncomfortable
with that. Investors are sick of Microsoft's seemingly bottomless bucket of
R&D money and wanted some of that kicked back to them in the form of cash
dividends. I think they'll win and MS will become just another corporation
after this.

I got flamed into oblivion when I first suggested that the public release of
Beta 2 was way too early. But if you ask me, now would have probably been a
good time to release the public beta, with a product release several months
down the road. Not that I'm having any significant problems with Vista. But
because of all the other things you see going on in here.

 

[Guest]

First let me say, I have yet to hear anything good from people who have used
it. Which makes me really warry about upgrading. Second, I've been a huge
Microsoft software fan forever. I've been deploying and supporting windows
since the land before time. So this isn’t some random ranting. I'm just
seriously confused about the different versions. I’m permanently disabled
from military service now and I’m now feeling out of the loop. I missed all
of the beta’s, the conventions, basically all of the fun. Yes I’m
disappointed (again) Microsoft keeps ignoring one of its key target users,
but I’ll get into that later. I’m also a little frustrated with the marketing
team’s constant ability to over boast the functions of a product making its
delivery disappointing. We’ve all heard the analogies. They could make jell-o
sound like cream brule. Unfortunately when the waiter brings it out, it
doesn’t matter if jell-o tastes good, it’s not cream brule. I also want to
apologize because I can be excessively long winded. I use teach three dozen
different MS products as an MCT. I go off on analogies because I never know
the background of those listening. I’m really just trying to have a common
ground.

What I'm confused about is the 4 versions (5 if you include enterprise which
honestly sounds like it's suppose to be bigger and better tha Ultimate but
it's actually a step down from what I read). I just can't seem to get a real
view of what each one is and what they are. There are a few very general
comparisons on the site but not a full list. I mean when Office came out with
the Office Small Business, Professional and so forth. You actually had a list
of apps (outlook, excel, word, access, front page or whatever). I could tell
WHAT the difference was because there was a list of the ones included in
each. The best I have right now is my own personal impression of the name.
It’s based on my understanding of the things marketing has done to name
things in the past. I would love to see some kind of realistic way of knowing
the differences. Also I must say I’m wary of the names because of the
over-boasting of marketing in the past making it sound like it includes more
than it really does.

Here’s a quick impression of my understanding.
Home edition – It SOUNDS like it would be a natural upgrade for XP home or
Media Center; tuned for users at home not having a domain. Not necessarily to
be used as a bastardized mega DVR but with the functionality. Mostly for
entertainment but very easily let’s you jump into doing a variety of homework
or productivity needs. The REALITY, no upgrade path from media center tells
me the multimedia is seriously lacking. My honest impression is it’s an
extraordinarily locked down Internet Browser with email tuned to try to keep
the people who are very naive and always fall for EVERY scam out there safe;
the stereotyped 12:00 flashers.

Home edition professional – It SOUNDS like this is the type of machine based
for the home network. Still tuned for the priority on entertainment with
functionality for business productivity. Something for the tech savvy family.
Teenagers with cell phones and digital cameras able to take 30 minutes of
high quality video on their 1 or 2 gig SD cards. Then able to edit and make
creative things to post on MySpace or the family type web sites. Machines
able to join a domain because they have a personal server in the house with a
couple 400 gig drives in them for sharing stuff. Possibly running a personal
family web site and maybe even a light weight email server. Systems able to
interact with the web sites on that server like share point or DotNetNuke.
Systems where the firewalls are all turned OFF and the network stacks kept
thin because they have a wireless router running the firewall. However they
do have their anti-phishing and spam stuff going. REALITY – it’s the upgrade
path for Media Center which means just like Media Center you probably don’t
have domain membership ability (which I always thought was odd that you could
install XP Pro and be able to join domains but as soon as you add the media
center add-on software your can’t join anymore) You get all of the extra crap
people not only don’t need but REALLY NEED out of the way is turned on, like
the excessive firewall, bridging and other stuff not wanted. Stuff that is
completely redundant or put there to give people the impression they’re
getting a lot for their money. Peppered with tons of simple stuff that really
is a severe annoyance and in actually prevents you from even being able to
see the real meat of the few powerful apps included. One of which is not the
Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore. Come on guys, we know there are
always tons of bugs. Any type of better backup and restore as well as
scheduling should have been included in all versions. There's no excuse for
that.

Business, This is obviously where they reverse the priorities. Systems
designed for the 24 hour “hot cot†call centers and routine productivity
users. People who come in to work and don’t really think much of their
computers because they’re all locked down to only browsing the company’s
internal web site and only run the applications approved by the company.
Which is probably easy on this version because any application a business
might use has been taken off in order to get them to pay extra for it.
Because it specifically says it’s not in the media center upgrade path these
are the machines you really don’t want to in the hands of your marketing team
because they are the other side of the pendulum needing multimedia apps for
creating all the pretty marketing packets and videos. REALITY, it’s the basic
Home edition with the ability to join a domain. Also, still already running
the firewall and other crap. Which in turn actually pisses off the IT guys
because NOW, they have to figure out how to get it out of the way so their
custom enterprise management tools, scripts and services will work. And by
the way if you were going to get rid of backup on ANY version this is the one
to not include it. WHY, because any computer running this will be in an
office where any failure to the machine that takes more than 10 minutes to
figure out is resolved by re-imaging the system. Places where the IT guy just
walks around with the image CD's in his pocket.

Ultimate, basically all the stops pulled so you have all the functionality
it was designed for but didn’t have to cut out in order to create the lesser
versions. Unfortunately this means by default EVERY single function is turned
on and running. And even though they aren’t doing any good running because
they haven’t been configured they are all running and killing any machine out
there. Possibly needing a system housing 2 dual core procs and 4 gigs of ram
minimum and still taking 30 seconds just to launch notepad.

Honestly this is the same reasoning that when MS launched IE7 they made it a
High-priority update. They have finally moved it down to an optional piece
but it’s too late. They already pissed everyone off by doing it. The teams
try so hard to impress their bosses that the most stupid features are boasted
off as mission critical. You know, all the crap that some clueless person in
market thinks is a cute feature therefore JUST HAS to be added. Kind of like
making the default outlook view “In Groups†and not making and easy way to un
do it.

I hate to digress because this is already getting really long. I am
seriously trying to find out about Vista, but as much as I love Microsoft
products, I find myself suffering from PSTD solely from IE7’s release. So
I’ll treat myself to just a little bit of ranting. Any time it’s mentioned I
can’t help but pull two fists of hair out. I’m still absolutely flabbergasted
that in a time when MySpace type web sites and personal customization are the
hugest thing out there, they thought taking all of the customization
functionality would be acceptable. That was such an astronomically huge
error. I can’t believe they haven’t fired any of the IE team. I lost a lot of
respect for them when they did that huge debacle but the fact that those guys
still have jobs is beyond my comprehension. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to
trust them again. I still remember putting IE 1.0 on people’s machines even
though many said mozilla was better. IE 7 has become a huge black stain on
Microsoft. You can get mad about this statement but you can quote me. I have
never been able to get people to really understand how truly horrible it is.
And yes, I don’t even think you’ll still truly understand. “The release of
IE7 was worse that the Holocaustâ€. I also dare any survivor of Auschwitz to
have a conversation with me for 30 minutes and not walk away with the sudden
urge to storm Dave Massy’s office with torches and pitch forks. End Rant! By
the way, can you run IE 6.5 on Vista?

I left this for last and I'm really hoping someone would be able to either
answer this or honestly forward this to some one who could explain this or
maybe even do something. The HUGEST problems I have about Vista are first
there is a very bad set of upgrade paths. I'm absolutely disgusted there is
no upgrade path for W2k. Even though I haven’t run it in years I know many
people do. That's just really poor work. Even “IF†in essence you were doing
a fresh install you still could have created a way to keep selective parts of
the person profile information. I have a feeling the first answer someone is
going to try and say to me is, you just don't understand, we can't know
everything about every program to make sure they upgrade right. Unfortunately
if you have the ability to state something like that then you should have the
intelligence to work with or around this issue.

Did you ever think maybe you could solve the problem by making a very easy
way to help people do an "upgrade" when in technical reality it's a fresh
install. You could do a really great job of automating the setup. Have it
check the list of installed application to see if any have already been
worked for upgrade like say office. Then make a list of the other apps. You
tell the user they will have to provide the original install disks or select
an option to not include it. This way you can use the information in the
installer system to re-run their installs and overlay the users previous
settings. I'm not going to try and say it would be an easy one, two, three
type thing to do, but it really looks like it was just completely ignore.
Almost like they twisted it into an up-sale, saying you have to buy the full
version versus just the upgrade version.

The second thing is how everyone I've talked to says they hate it, or it
just pisses them off. The complaint I hear the most is that it nags you
constantly about everything. They actually say the mac commercial is not an
exaggeration but actually a kind way or talking about it. I hear from fellow
IT people they hate how they added so many extra unnecessary pieces to the
network stack. I say unnecessary because it's not that they aren't a
functioning item but again everyone is more interested in bragging off the
programming they did than determining if it really should be added by
default.

Now, here's the thing about what I said about an ignored user base. It’s
also the basis for most of the input I’ve received as to what people think of
Vista. The user base is the smart users. I realize there are MANY people that
have no interest in knowing the deep inner workings of the OS. I always use
the analogy of the car industry back closer to the 60s and 70s. All the cool
people knew everything about the insides and the inner works of a car. And
then there's people who just really don't care and are very happy with just
driving and taking it to jiffy lube to change the oil. But the thing is there
IS a segment of users who actually have a big impact on the impression of it.
What do you think would happen if “The Fonz" came out saying mustangs were a
piece of crap, or sucked. Ordinary drivers recognize if the guy who lives
this kind of thing says it sucks I'd rather just avoid it if only to avoid
the ridiculing and not buy one. Who do you think people ask if they like
Vista?

Why isn’t there an IT Pro or Architect Version. A version where by default
everything is included but not turned on and running. A version where we can
just use the Add/Remove Windows Components to choose what we want. Making the
list very detailed as to the sub components. And when something is added you
have to actually turn it on and have an easy way to turn it off. We’re the
guys who spend half the day in the registry. We constantly want to tweak and
refine our systems so that we can get them to operate as fast as possible or
just the way we need. We want to control absolutely every aspect of the
machine and the Task Manager just doesn’t really do us any good. Hell, you
could even add tons of the freebee downloads like the Command Prompt Here
power tool or the ISO drive mapper. Include a copy of SQL Express and add
VS2005 Express in the list. Add a bunch of SDK’s to the list like the .Net
Framework SDK’s. Maybe instead of the retarded default welcome page web site
you include a preconfigured version of DotNetNuke using the SQL Express and
Pre-linked into the Visual Studio. Hell, make a default template that has the
damn welcome text on it and all the Microsoft images you can possibly think
of. I’m sure you’d have tons of room for stuff on a DVD install disk.

 

[DP]

I will admit that I skimmed over a large part of your post.

But here are a few answers from my point of view. I'm sure you'll get more.

First let me say, I have yet to hear anything good from people who have
used
it. Which makes me really warry about upgrading.

Other than getting drivers set up, I've pretty much had zero problems. I
think it's a terrific OS. It operates faster than Windows XP Professional
x64, which was on the same machine. (Still is: I can boot into it if I want
or need to.)

What I'm confused about is the 4 versions (5 if you include enterprise
which
honestly sounds like it's suppose to be bigger and better tha Ultimate but
it's actually a step down from what I read).

Yes, I think that was a stupid marketing decision on MS's part. Only adds to
confusion and customer disappointment. I hope that real soon they start
cutting down the available editions.
I would say you can't go wrong with Ultimate 64-bit, assuming you have a
64-bit processor.

Ultimate, basically all the stops pulled so you have all the functionality
it was designed for but didn’t have to cut out in order to create the
lesser
versions. Unfortunately this means by default EVERY single function is
turned
on and running. And even though they aren’t doing any good running because
they haven’t been configured they are all running and killing any machine
out
there. Possibly needing a system housing 2 dual core procs and 4 gigs of
ram
minimum and still taking 30 seconds just to launch notepad.

Wrong, at least in my experience. I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 3800+
processor. It's about a year old, so it's moderately "old" in terms of
technology. I have 2 gigs of ram and a geforce 6600 video card with 256MB of
video ram. All of this on an ASUS8-NE motherboard. And I can honestly say
Vista Ultimate 64-bit runs without a hiccup.
I have no speed concerns at all. I'm sure it can run faster or snappier, but
this thing certainly is not slogging along, straining all the time.

And yes, I don’t even think you’ll still truly understand. “The release of
IE7 was worse that the Holocaustâ€.

OK, that's way way way over the top. IE7 didn't kill 6 million people.

have a conversation with me for 30 minutes and not walk away with the
sudden
urge to storm Dave Massy’s office with torches and pitch forks. End Rant!
By
the way, can you run IE 6.5 on Vista?

IE 7 is installed with vista. I don't know if you can then roll it back to
6.5.

My advice, if you can afford it, is to get Ultimate 64-bit (again, assuming
you have a 64-bit processor). An OEM version at New Egg costs $200. If you
buy Ultimate, you know you won't be missing anything. I'm sure there are
processes you can turn off if they bother you.

 

[john]

I will admit that I skimmed over a large part of your post.

But here are a few answers from my point of view. I'm sure you'll get
more.




Yes, I think that was a stupid marketing decision on MS's part. Only adds
to confusion and customer disappointment. I hope that real soon they start
cutting down the available editions.
I would say you can't go wrong with Ultimate 64-bit, assuming you have a
64-bit processor.

Stupid marketing decision? Confusion & Customer disappointment?
heh - all by design. What used to be a company driven by innovation is now
just concerned with the bottom line.
It's not entirely their fault as it was bound to happen sooner or later
anyway.
A "better idea" will only get you so far, after that, it's all about "show
me the money".

Another perfect example:
Microsoft releases TWO Vista-Compatible Logo Lists (for software
compatibility)
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933305)

There's the "Certified for Windows Vista" List, then there's the "Works with
Windows Vista" List.
The first one pretty much says it will work in Vista, while the second only
IMPLIES that it MIGHT.
IOW, if it doesn't work, tough sh*t. Microsoft blames the vendors, the
vendors blame Microsoft.
You know the drill.
Hats off to the boys in marketing once again.

Vista is just Windows 95 v4.0.
same as it ever was

 

[Pecos]

What I'm confused about is the 4 versions (5 if you include enterprise

which
honestly sounds like it's suppose to be bigger and better tha Ultimate but
it's actually a step down from what I read). I just can't seem to get a
real
view of what each one is and what they are. There are a few very general
comparisons on the site but not a full list.

This forum shows a detailed list of features for each version, but is a
pre-release list and has changed, i.e. some versions have been dropped:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=587581&SiteID=17

I left this for last and I'm really hoping someone would be able to either
answer this or honestly forward this to some one who could explain this or
maybe even do something. The HUGEST problems I have about Vista are first
there is a very bad set of upgrade paths.

I have written an article about the upgrade paths, EULA restrictions and
limitations, 32 vs. 64 bit and probably some other questions that you never
even considered:
http://www.mindspring.com/~anorton1/

Just click on the Vista Confusion article. Skip the 'After Dinner Mints' if
you want facts and not my opinions. ;-) I serve up a seven course meal of
answers just for you, but there is no Jello.

Answer the 12 questions in the article and you will have a better idea which
version is right for you.

--
Alan Norton
Reviews Including ABIT AN8 SLI, ECS P965T-A & Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H MB's
Guide to Choosing the Right Version Of Vista - Vista Confusion Article
Arizona Pics
No Spam - Just a gratuitous plea for more hardware to test
http://www.mindspring.com/~anorton1/

 

[Blue Terminal]

But you bothered to reply, and quote the original post in its entirety
in your reply.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the constructive feedback, it's good to hear someone is having a
good experience. I'm on a dell 1505 with similar stats minus the 64bit. From
what I've been reading through the Ultimate sounded like where I was going to
be heading. Although I'm still hoping my IT version suggestion gets sent to
someone in that arena. Yes, I know, it was late, was working on a bunch of
stuff. I'm running on IE6. THANK you for the info on New Egg, so far every
where else I've been looking wants $259 for the upgrade. I am still
disappointed in the Home Pro not having domain functionality. I run my own
home network and every one here has at least 2 machines. The discount offers
I see for home pro with an Ultimate sounded really awesome but without that
one single feature they're nothing I'll look at.

Like I siad, my little rant on IE7 is going to piss people off. Although you
might think it WAY WAY WAY over the top, I’ll just repeat, I bleed Microsoft.
So the betrayal and pain I feel from IE7 can only be measured by me. And
although 6 million died, many after much torture. That torture IS actually
over. The pain of IE7 is still going on. I can guarantee MORE than 6 million
users are still being tortured by it. I haven't read other responses yet but
I'm sure someone is going to go off on it. IE7 is going to start getting
listed next to Sex, Politics and Religion as taboo topics. I sincerely hope
IE6 will run on Vista. I WILL NOT use 7 and I'm sorry, but I don't like
Firefox, Opera or anything else. I'm happy with just using 6. If I can't get
6 to run on Vista I will seriously be considering waiting till IE8 is out
before I get Vista.

 

[Guest]

You know John, the thing is the Marketing team is what made Microsoft what it
is. Or at least the early team. On the biggest Network I worked on, I was
able to convice, Sheldon Laube, Glen Ricart and Marc Epstien to go with Win2k
RC2 for a production roll and architecture. These guys are prior CTO's and
top executives from Netware. And this was in the hight. The marketing of
Win2k helped me get that architecture done using all MS products.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I know, I WARNED YOU. I'll prattle on forever if no one stops me. 9
billion sounds realistic for Vista if you're including all of the manpower
costs. They'll still do fine on the books though after the sales kick though.
I use to call it "Working on the BLEEDING edge of Technology". It's
definitely painful. I swear the next company I start is going to be a
technology based Neoprene.

 

[Guest]

Oh, that's helpful. Way to go and big cudos. That's got much more info on it.
It's almost impossible to get a full list but this looks like it's got a lot
more info. Thanks for the help.

 

[Guest]

Damn it Pecos,

Since my injuries got so bad, both my weight and colestorol are through the
roof. Jell-o is one of the few things I can eat that actually taste good. ;-)

Ok, FINE!!! I'll pick up my own before I head on over. ;-)