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| Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $269.99
Buy New: $145.00
You Save: $124.99 (46%)
New (39) Used (4) from $145.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  117 reviews
Sales Rank: 168
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Home Premium
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 66I02387
Model: 66I-02387
UPC: 882224661256
EAN: 0882224661256
ASIN: B0013O54OE
Release Date: March 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Visa Media center rocks !! April 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Overall the vista experience has been very pleasant as I upgraded my computer.
If you are moving from XP/98, make sure that you do have the following:
* Min 2 GB RAM
* Your CPU is atleast a Intel Core Duo/Celeron with high clock speed
I am currently running a Intel Core Duo with 2 GB and the performance is actually better than what I expected - there is a slight degradation of performance, but that is expected when you upgrade.
What is the best thing I like about Vista ?
- Great UI : the windows looks is awesome, looks very stylish and cool
- Media center : This is bundled only with the 'Home Premium' - so make sure that you go for it. If you have a TV tuner card - you get some of these for less than $30, you can watch live TV on your computer.
Infact, vista will get your cable provider details and downloads the information in a easy to use format - it display movie titles as DVD covers which makes it so easy to see what kind of movie you want to watch. I really love this feature and this is one feature for which I would like to use vista.
About SP1:
SP1 is supposed to have fixed many security vulnerabilities:
* Provides 3rd party anti-virus access to the APIsto be able to work on kernel patch protection in x64-bit Vista.
* Decreases chances of of people hijacking vista traffic because it allows signed sessions for remote desktop (you might have used this if you were working for a big corporation) - if not never bother about this
 Home Again Naturally April 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Vista Home Premium installs in a similar fashion to Vista Ultimate, with truly similar headaches.Home Premium looks similar to ultimate, as one would expect, but follows some slightly different setup patterns, however some elements of the install steps are similar to XP and pre-XP Windows.After setup of Home Premium, it looks like the security settings are basically the same as Ultimate.I had saved the Drivers and apps from my Ultimate install, and they did come in handy.It seems like any non-Vista "ready" hardware is not installed automatically. So, I installed
my NIC( Linksys Gigabit)and Sound Card( Audigy 2 ZS).
Home Premium has more "Family Friendly" games, or so it feels like. Within the system , problem solving is far more pro-active than Ultimate, so I assume that Home Premium is presumed to be less DIY, set for "self solving" soutions.Also,seems like the system is set to push "Windows Anytime Upgrade".Shutdown is strangely slow as well.
During regular running, the pages in IE7 crash easily. Applications that work normally in XP and are supposed to work in Vista just die with no apparent reason given.
Just in a basic sense the requirements of 1 Gig of Memory and Processor level are just too low.Vista Needs a lot of memory and even in Home Premium its a Hog for memory.
Looking at the Welcome screen of Home Premium, the pivotal center of the OS,"GET STARTED" has 14 sections.Part of this is file and system backup , and this uses restore point which can revert to C drive restore
points which people still think are unibersally okay.People need to have it reinforced that regular whole system backup of the hard-drive And the registry is important ; The argument partially against this is people should trust the OS backup system ( in Vista) and leave it at that, well what I recommend is that a specialised programme be used ( Like Norton GHOST, but you can use whatever you think works best) simply because the The Three Rules of Computers I learned early is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. Transfer of files has now become "Windows Easy Transfer", and looks suspiciously problematic.
All of these key points I have mentioned raise security flags, when used, with "User Account Control"(UAC), the central security watchdog in Vista ( and I mean that if UAC thinks something an issue, like a page or an application , the number of security buttons gets silly).So, use of Vista Home Premium can cause raging fits by the UAC. Despite ALL the security, you still have to purchase an antivirus product.Despite all of the raging claims of OS completeness, after seeing so many people with problems with Vista, and finally seeing the SP1 versions that still cannot fix the problems, I cannot in honestly recommend this OS. It will work with a high degree of maintenance, but who wants a high maintenance PC? If you want the Looks of Vista, as well as the performance, then a MacBook Pro will do just great.Personally, If I can ever get a look at a G5 I may go for one of those, but since
I work with PCs, I recommend only things I have used and know work well ( Like the VX Nano Mouse ).
If You haven't Upgraded Yet, Now's the Time April 13, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
You have to admit that Vista didn't get off to a banging good start. Many people thought it was bloated, slow, crashed all the time and the endless stories about those popups that kept questioning you would keep all but the reckless thinking twice before they upgraded from XP. In fact a year after its release it seems only a little over ten percent of the XP users out there have decided to upgrade.
I've been using Vista since it came out and have been very happy with it. Yes you need more RAM than you did a couple years ago, I've got 2 megs on my laptop, which is plenty for Vista Home Premium. And I've got a whopping 4 megs on my desktop, which is running Vista Ultimate and that's way, way more than needed. My computers both seem happy enough and I know they're not fooling me, because when they get unhappy they crash and that's something they haven't done in a long time (three months for my laptop and I think six or more for my desktop).
Is Vista bloated? Yes, sure, that's what happens when an operating systems (despite it's many flavors) tries to be all things to all people. Still, if you don't need the features, don't use them. It's not like todays computers are hurting for hard drive space. With 200 gigs in my laptop and 750 in my desktop, those features I don't use sitting in the background don't bother me at all.
And those annoying UAC (User Account Control) popups and they are annoying, you don't have to live with those. If you've been using computers for anytime at all and have more than a clue about what you're doing, why don't you just turn them off. I did. Just type "system configuration" into Vista's Start Menu's instant search feature. When the System Configuration Utility window opens, click the tools tab, scroll down, click on "disable user control," click "launch", click "okay", then reboot and voila, those annoying popups are history.
Now about the speed, yes, Vista "was" and that's the operative word here as far as I'm concerned, it was a bit slower than XP on my machines, but now thats I've installed the SP1 upgrades on my machines, they both seem zippier. So if you're still using XP and have been thinking about upgrading, now's the time.
 Lousy... April 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've had Vista Home Premium on a laptop. I recall Dan Ackerman on CNet summarizing Vista Home Premium as "warmed over XP". Dan was wrong. This is more like "Windows ME microwaved to death". A lot of this OS is pretty similar to XP. I feel like I'm in a body cast using this OS. Every program I try to run, I end up having this "conversation" with the OS:
OS: Are you sure you want to run this program?
Me: Yes.
OS: Are you really sure? It might hurt your system!
Me: Yes!
OS: Are you really REALLY sure??
Me: Yes!!!
OS: I'm sorry. You don't have permission to run this program.
Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit. I don't like an arrogant operating system to patronize me by constantly giving me one dialog box to click after the other asking me if I'm sure I want to run a web browser. Of course, one can turn off UAC but that doesn't 100% get rid of it. Another thing I didn't like about this OS is for some crazy reason, not all the installed programs appeared in Add/Remove Programs. It could've been something corrupted on my particular copy of it but I kept running into problems where programs wouldn't uninstall or wouldn't be in Add/Remove TO be uninstalled.
The boot time is longer than XP and the Aero interface takes up about 500MB of RAM. There are people running two gigs of RAM. Are you kidding me? Does Microsoft think that people only care about pretty looking pictures? Again, you can turn off Aero and get a classic GUI while saving RAM but I think it defeats the purpose because Microsoft heavily marketed the Aero interface as a selling point for Vista.
I have been unfortunate to run into Vista's infamous copy protection on commercially purchased DVDs. I won't rule out a wayward nVidia driver or a hardware problem but having a DVD looking like a bad YouTube video in any player no matter WHAT codec I installed (including one I paid for) and then getting a copy protection error from Windows Media Player 11 after closing and then opening the laptop's lid is just infuriating. If anyone knows why this happened, please enlighten me. If it certainly was Vista then it's inexcusable. Neither the MPAA or Microsoft should insult their customers by treating them like criminals. I'd like to watch a DVD in peace without being told by some suit who has never seen a computer in his life what I can and can't do with something I legitimately paid for.
Note to Microsoft: If you bog down a system with endless copy protection and security schemes, you're going to end up selling people a brick.
All that being said, I don't think it's a HORRIBLE operating system. It's just Windows ME: The Sequel.
OK on New Computers, No Need to Upgrade on Old Ones April 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Windows Vista doesn't seem to have achieved anywhere near the popularity of XP and for good reason. There's no significant improvement to be gained. Plus you are faced with too many version choices with Vista.
When I upgraded from Windows 98 to XP, I was thrilled. XP was so much better than the buggy, unreliable 98. It ran software easier, had a lot more drivers, and basically managed the computer like an operating system should. I would say the adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it" would apply to the question of whether one should upgrade from XP to Vista.
Vista still has the problem of not being compatible with older software and hardware. And many manufacturers are not providing updated drivers for Vista. It uses a lot more disc space and memory than even the memory hogging XP. And it tries to be too fancy and helpful for its own good. In my opinion there is nothing that Vista does that is worth making the switch from XP.
That said, if you are buying a new computer then you might as well get it with Vista. A new computer hopefully comes with hardware and software that the manufacturer has determined runs properly under a Vista environment so you shouldn't have any problems, and the computer should have the necessary resources in terms of CPU and memory to adequately run Vista. Plus, Vista is newer so it is going to be supported by Microsoft longer than XP will. And, all new hardware and software will be compatible with Vista.
The new interface in Vista is pretty, and you may like the way it looks better than earlier versions of Windows. But in terms of actually operating the system and controlling the computer, I really don't think there is any compelling reason to move from XP. And if you are using older versions of software, don't even think of changing to Vista because you won't be able to run most of them.
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