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| Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 Upgrade | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $129.95
Buy New: $67.95
You Save: $62.00 (48%)
New (44) Used (11) from $54.09
Avg. Customer Rating:  88 reviews
Sales Rank: 34
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Windows Vista
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Home Premium - Upgrade
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.5
MPN: 66I-02388
Model: 66I-02388
UPC: 882224661324
EAN: 0882224661263
ASIN: B0013O54P8
Release Date: March 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premuim. Is brand new, factory sealed. 100% guaranteed. Will ship USPS Priority mail
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| Customer Reviews:
 Ugh June 22, 2008
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
I hate it. It offers no real advantages over XP, is slower, works with less stuff, and keeps getting stuck. I'm downgrading to XP...
 Ignore the Apple commercials. Vista is a great OS. June 20, 2008
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
I've had my laptop since August 2007. It came with Vista Home Premium 32 bit installed on it and I upgraded to SP1 when it was released.
I will say this outright: I used XP before Vista on the family computer and if your computer can run Vista smoothly, Vista will kick XP out the window. There are 3 things one must have to run Vista smoothly: a good processor (this is the minor one of the 3 since most people have good processors), a good video card, and at least 2GB of RAM. The video card and RAM are extremely important. If you don't have these, you will most likely not have a good Vista experience. One of Microsoft's mistakes when they created Vista was the RAM usage. The standard amount of RAM needed to run XP is less than 1GB. The standard amount of RAM needed for Vista is at least 2GB. Technically, I believe it can run on 1GB of RAM but I don't trust that. Vista is a much more powerful OS than XP, which is why it needs the good hardware. My computer is an HP Pavilion dv6000. I have an Intel Core Duo (not Core 2) 2GHz processor, 160GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM. I actually have an Intel chipset for graphics and my computer still runs fine. I do wish that I had gotten a graphics card just to make the performance even better. On a daily basis, with just the startup programs running, about 1GB of my RAM is used up. A tip: I don't know if Best Buy and other electronics stores are still doing this, but when I was looking for my laptop last summer the stores were selling crap. They were selling laptops with 1GB of RAM that had Vista Home Premium preinstalled on them. I couldn't believe that. I would avoid those. It's pretty much common knowledge now that computers need at least 2GB of RAM to run Vista smoothly. I bought my laptop from Costco.com because they let you customize it. You choose the base features and then you further pick what you want from the options they have. That way you can have a lot more power over what you want your laptop to have. My dad and I knew that I was going to have to get Vista because the stores don't care about how consumers like to buy new technology. Most people like to wait a while until the 1st Service Pack is released. The stores get new computers with the new OS preinstalled like the week it comes out. They don't care that people like to wait. My dad and I decided to customize my laptop online because we couldn't find any computers with 2GB of RAM in the stores. HP's site and Dell's site also allow you to build your laptop. I used Costco because they had the lowest price.
One of the coolest things about Vista is it's smart. If a program stops working, then Vista will automatically recognize the situation and search for a solution. I'm pretty sure XP doesn't do that. Also, my iPod (the only Apple product I own) recently started giving me problems. When I connected it to my computer to restore it with iTunes, Vista came up with a window that said the iPod could be damaged or messed up and it had some tools to try to fix it right there. Talk about smart. I ended up having to buy a new iPod which is currently working fine. I think the iPod was messed up physically on the inside or something because I had accidentally dropped it a few times in the previous week and the restore by iTunes actually made the problems worse, but at least Vista tried to fix it.
My only complaint about Vista was the boot up time (notice I said "was", not "is"). My computer used to take 6 minutes to boot up in the morning. I didn't mind it though because I start my computer up while I'm getting dressed, etc. in the morning. SP1 cut the boot up time in half. The UAC is annoying, but you can turn it off. I have never had any problems with drivers, crashes, instability, blue screens of death, incompatibility issues, or anything else of that nature.*See update near bottom of review* When I plug in something like a new USB device, Vista finds the driver and installs it automatically within seconds.
I think there are a few reasons why I've had such a good experience with Vista (besides the hardware) One reason is that I've been able to avoid what I've heard are the problems with it. Another reason is that I have a new compuer with Vista preinstalled on it. This did a few things. One, I didn't have to actually upgrade from XP to Vista. Two, because it was a new computer, there were no programs that I had previously installed on it that I had to update (except for the programs that came installed on it, such as Roxio). The 2nd reason is that so far I've been able to get the programs I need in versions that are compatible with Vista. Because they had to work with Vista, most of my programs are the newer versions (such as Office 2007). I like it though because I have all the new stuff. A little update: at first it wasn't easy to find programs that were compatible with Vista. Now, in the last 4-8 months, programs compatible with Vista have come a long way. There are many more out there now.
Most of my friends that bought new laptops for college last summer don't mind Vista and haven't had many problems with it and everyone I've asked about it says they're ok with it. A tip: whenever you're considering buying a new device for your computer such as a mouse or hard drive or whatever, make sure it's certified for use with Vista before you buy it. The box in the store should have an image on it that says it's certified. More and more Vista-compatible software is coming out.
Vista takes a little getting used to because things are moved around. But, contrary to popular belief, this does not make things harder to find. Things are actually easier to find. My computer and Control Panel are still there as well as the start menu (the word "start" isn't there anymore, it's just a circle with the Windows logo in it) and they have the same content in them as they did in XP. The content is more detailed and looks nicer in Vista. I think another review may have said that there's no way to search the computer. Not true at all. You can search your whole computer right from the start menu with the instant search. The windows in Vista operate nicer than in XP. You can do more things and other things that you did often in XP are easier to do. The interface is Vista's strength. It kicks XP's butt. The sidebar is also cool. Vista's interface makes XP look like a basic piece of junk. I discovered something very interesting on the internet today (today= August 11). Apparently there is an experiment being done where people are demonstrating Vista to computer users who don't know it's Vista. Pretty much all of the people in the Mojave experiment didn't have Vista because they had heard all the negative hype about it. Their opinions were drastically different for the most part after the demo of it. The site also has a lot of helpful information about Vista such as how many devices and programs it's currently compatible with, etc. as well as statistics. The address of the Mojave Experiment is: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/#.
A little on Microsoft Office 2007. Yes, it's a different interface than the previous versions. But, it's very neatly and intuitively organized that it's pretty easy to learn. It took me about 10 minutes to learn Word 2007. The functions are organized first by 7 main tabs, which are Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailing, Review, View. Then they are further subdivided into categories. Here's an example of the organization: say you're typing a Word document and you want to spell check it. Which main tab would you find spell check under? You're reviewing the document, right? So go to review. Spell check is the first function. It's under the subcategory of Proofing. Guess where bibliography tools are located? Under References and under the subcategory Citations & Bibliography. Very well and intuitively organized. I can't comment on the advanced features of Office 2007 because I've only used it for school and email.
I recently let my mom use my laptop because the computer we have in our house is an outdated piece of crap (Pentium 3 700MHz, 300something MB of RAM). She isn't tech savvy at all and barely knows what OS stands for. She had never used Vista or Office 2007 prior to using my laptop. When she was done using it I asked her how she liked Vista and Office 2007. She loved them. Of course, my dad won't dare install Vista on our home computer because he would be screwed on the hardware by a mile.
Another thing: as I'm writing this I have 5 of my most RAM consuming programs running: Media Center, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, and iTunes. I think my laptop is running slightly slower than it normally does, but the difference is hard to notice.
Overall, Vista is a great operating system and it makes XP look like crap if your computer has the hardware to run it. People who complain about Vista lagging, being slow, freezing, etc. should check their hardware and not be so fast to blame Vista. One reason Vista requires good hardware is that it does things in the background to help the user. When I see the Apple commercials that make fun of Vista I laugh at them because one of my friends who is very tech savvy, smart, and majoring in computer engineering told me that Leopard got hacked within 2 hours of being released and that MacBook Air got hacked within 2 minutes.
Update (11/12/08)
I thought I'd update this review with some recent experiences and some more notes.
Since I first wrote the review, Vista has given me blue screen a few times. I think it was my fault though, as I was messing with a setting I didn't fully understand. But just to be clear, the blue screens didn't occur when I tried to install software or when drivers were needed or anything like that. Fortunately, Vista was smart enough to recover by itself. The computer gave me a blue screen and shut down. I started it up, and after I logged in a window came up saying that Windows had recovered from an unexpected shutdown. That was pretty cool to see.
I know Apple is targeting college students like me in it's commercials. People complain that Office 2007 is hard to use because everything's moved around. Things are moved around, however, this doesn't really apply to college students because it's the advanced functions that are harder to find. I like Word 2007 a lot because it's easier to use than 03. For students, Office 2007 should be nice because everything's easier to find and things are easier to do.
Apple recently aired a commercial where the PC guy is putting lots of money into marketing Vista and little money into fixing it and the Mac guy convinces him to put all the money back to fixing Vista. Truth is, Microsoft isn't marketing Vista to get people to buy a bad OS. Vista has been improved a lot over the last 8 months or so with SP1 and now Microsoft is marketing it so people know it's much better. SP1 was focused on improving performance, stability, and reliability. The Apple commercials were true when Vista first came out, but they're not true anymore. It's kind of funny to see peoples' reactions when they're shown Vista because all they know is what the Apple ads say about it and most of the time they're amazed.
Also, don't hesitate to buy the PCs in the stores now. In the last 4-8 months the hardware necessary to run Vista nicely finally came out. Vista will run fine on 2, 3, or 4 GB of RAM. If you like to play games with intense graphics, I recommend an NVIDIA or ATI video card and 3-4GB of RAM.
Lastly, for those of you who are considering getting Vista, it's been improved a lot from what it used to be. One of the reasons there are different versions is to accomodate different levels of hardware (Basic is designed to run ok with 1GB of RAM, and Home Premium is designed to run on 2GB and up). A lot of people say that Vista is just a pretty version of XP. Microsoft has a section on their website that explains how Vista is better than XP. The address of the page is http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/discover/why-now.aspx
You may find that helpful.
I know this is a pretty long review, but since Vista's such a controversial OS I wanted to be as helpful as I could. I will continue to update this review as necessary. And by the way, I'm not a Microsoft employee. I'm a college student.
a mac user who now has a pc June 18, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
i am a mac user have been since i started using computers but i have also at the same time used pc's. however this is the first time i have bought windows to use as my main machine since losing my macbook which died on me. i do have to say this is THE BEST VERSION OF WINDOWS EVER!! its more secure do to the fact that microsoft went back and totally redesigned vista from the ground up in terms of security. for those that say this is just as buggy or has as much security problems as xp doesn't know what they are talking about. this is by far the easiest, most secure, reliable windows ever made. and no im not a microsoft agent.
 Stick With XP And Be Happy June 4, 2008
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
As a computer technician and software developer for over ten years, I suggest that everyone with Windows XP stay with XP, at least until Microsoft comes out with something more worthwhile to upgrade to.
Overall, Vista does come with a bunch of new and useful features, including a prettier interface. But all of these can be easily duplicated with free or cheap software. Many of these alternatives are as good or superior to the features they duplicate in Vista. Check out download.com, amazon.com & elsewhere for free or cheap software for XP that duplicates whatever features you want in Vista, such as antispyware or file/drive encryption.
Vista also has big hardware requirements. It essentially has double the memory requirements of XP (2 GB RAM should be your minimum for decent performance, try 4 GB for best performance).
Also, keep in mind that no version of Vista comes with antivirus software. It's essential to have antivirus software that is compatible with Vista. So pick up your favorite AV program if you're out of luck with your existing program. My favorite is ESET NOD32 Antivirus: very easy to use, lightweight and one of the most effective antivirus programs according to multiple independent lab tests. I also recommend either PC Tools Spyware Doctor or Webroot Spy Sweeper over Windows Defender for extra protection... Windows Defender (which comes with Vista), while moderately effective against adware, is next to useless against spyware & rootkits.
With Vista, you are also asking for headaches if you care about your computer working with your older hardware, such as printers, digital cameras, and so forth. I have seen some devices, even ones certified to work with Vista, not actually work with Vista. Many do work, but be forewarned and check with your existing device manufacturers for Vista support before purchasing this Vista upgrade. You may also run into issues with drivers for existing hardware, such as your sound or video hardware. Check with your computer manufacturer (e.g. Dell) to find out if they offer Vista drivers for your particular computer model. Software as well can be an issue, as some software (especially uncommon programs) may not work well or at all in Vista.
The bottom line: Upgrading from XP to Vista offers nothing you can't duplicate on XP for little to no cost, in exchange for $100+ and the potential for great headaches with existing software & hardware. Instead, find some free or cheap software that duplicates the features you want. If you must have Vista, good luck! Consider a new computer (with at least 2 GB RAM), which will save you from at least some of the aforementioned hassle (at least you'll know the computer itself will work, though perhaps not with existing old software or hardware), and rely on your older computer for anything that just won't work with Vista.
BIG MISTAKE FOR ME May 31, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I thought my computer was in bad shape (Blue screen repeats) when my operating system was Windows XP SP2. But now that I've installed Vista Home Premium it is in worse shape. If you have problems with your system when running with Windows XP, DO NOT UPGRADE to Vista. It would be better to backup your important files and then install Vista using the clean install method and then moving your files back in. At least I found that UPGRADING to Vista certainly did not solve my problems.
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