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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:
 I Have to Say, I'm Okay with Vista April 5, 2008
4 out of 5 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
2 out of 3 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.
 Some good, some bad April 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just wanted to try out Vista since I heard some good things about it from my friends. I am not a very technical guy, so I am really not aware of the compatibility and technical jargon. I will simply review it from a regular, know-nothing-about-programs POV.
Vista is graphically very impressive. I also liked the little changes they made with the Windows Media Center. Graphically speaking, Microsoft did an excellent job with Vista. They also beefed up the security features on the computer which can be good but sometimes gets annoying, when repeated messages appear during simple tasks, i.e. trying to run a program etc.
Overall, I liked it and my other programs seems to work well with it.
Hasta La... you know April 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First a disclaimer. I am NOT what one would classify as a true computer geek. Indeed, while there are many who would (probably) gladly testify to my geekhood, they would chortle(yes, people do still chortle) at it involving anything so complex. Thus, the three-star rating above: I am reluctant to grade this product any lower, since those with far more knowledge than I might be able to draw great benefit from it. Conversely, I cannot in all conscience rate it any higher since I found it to be of, at best, "limited" service (o.k., I removed it from my hard drive as soon as I could!) I have a theory that Microsoft, along with most other companies both in electronics or anywhere else, releases new products periodically whether there is any need for them or not. Further, they will release even an inferior product (to replace a better one) JUST to say they did!... and make a few (million) bucks. This, alas, seems to be the case with Vista. Not only is it not, in any meaningful way, BETTER tha XP, it doesn't even begin to approach it! One final note (Amazon, turn your head, this could cost you money... although I think you'll survive). The list price for this system is over $200. One can go online and buy a completely new computer that includes this OS (whether you want it or not) for under $500! Something seems wrong somewhere, no?
 If you want to do Microsoft's QA work, VISTA's for you! April 5, 2008
26 out of 32 found this review helpful
It's a long known inside but painful joke in the computer applications development world that Windows gets most of its QA testing from its customers. After spending 7 hours today in a failed attempt to install Windows Vista, I can tell you most emphatically that I am tired of doing Microsoft's quality testing for them.
Installation of Vista over my perfectly fine XP O/S crashed at least 5 times. Part of the installation involved the system rebooting itself during the process. This is a serious problem if you have one cd/dvd drive and your hard disk. It's a problem because most systems will be set at the factory to reboot off the cd drive first, then the hard disk. As the Install disk is in the drive, the reboot will fail and so will the install. So, being a bit savvy, I reset the boot order in the BIOS and went at it again. Still I got the same confounding error!
The error message is: Windows Installation encountered an unexpected error. Verify that the installation sources are accessible, and restart the installation. Error code: 0XC0000005.
I researched online forums and Microsoft's own aptly misnamed "knowledge base" to find a solution. MS's site was useless. Other techy forums were strewn with messages from poor annoyed people like myself having the same issues. Some say, oh just reset the BIOS, but that didn't work. Also, many users will not even know how to access the BIOS and may make an unfortunate error there from which they cannot recover. Forcing the user to change system configuration settings to install software is NOT a good business model at all.
So, on I went into hour 5. I ran the VISTA Advisor application which tells you if your computer is compatible to run VISTA. The application said that I was compatible. But there was a problem there, too. You see, Microsoft's own version of the Advisor failed. So I went to CNET and ran their version which ran perfectly.
During the first installation attempt, the installation showed success and even showed activity on the screen. But, I could tell that nothing was being written to the disc-- I knew it was a failure so I aborted the install. I rebooted the system again and started from scratch. Again, I got the same error message as shown above.
This was a total waste of an evening, and a great frustration. Do yourself a favor and don't get Windows Vista. Windows XP is highly tested and works great. I will keep XP until I have to get a new computer. Otherwise, I may just upgrade to Linux.
This absurd business model of having the customer do the company's testing is abysmal. Why do you suppose that Microsoft has few friends in the Systems world? This is why! I'm sure the O/S and U/I are all quite whizz bang and graphic intensive, but I like to access my 2 GB RAM for applications-- not to support my O/S. Maybe when enough customers have sent their trouble tickets in to Microsoft and the people in Redmond get the code fixed all correctly maybe then I just might take another chance with Vista. Wait, on second thought, no, I won't. VISTA - No Stars.
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