Should you buy Vista Ultimate?

[Rob Williams]

With the Vista launch imminent, you may be wondering what version you should be buying. Thanks to the four primary versions available, this is no easy task. Many will be swaying towards the Ultimate Edition, but should you save your cash?

You can read the first article of our Vista series this week. As always, discuss it here when you are finished reading!

 

[Bobbythecat]

Good article....will probably become useful a long time from now when I actually get around to it, when there are things that require Vista!

 

[Unregistered]

Something I've wondered about Vista, though, is whether Home Premium suffers from the same smoke and mirrors as XP Home with respect to management features. For instance, NTFS permissions exist on any version of XP, but they're hidden in XP Home unless you're in Safe Mode. The Group Policy Editor is also not available in XP Home - the permissions exist, but they're set to default values, and gpedit.msc tells you it's not supported in this version.

I think the Encrypting File System is also only available on Business+/Ultimate?

 

[Rob Williams]

Hey Unregistered,

Excuse my ignorance because I've never really dealt with XP Home at all. If there is something you'd like me to check specifically, let me know and I can do so. Just give me a general idea of where to look, since I've never dealt with Group Policy Editors before. I've never needed to.

As for EFS, yes that's available in Business and higher editions only. They know how to cripple the things you want the most.

 

[Unregistered]

Another thing to add to Vista’s list of crippleware:

Remote Desktop sessions may only be received, not controlled in Vista Home Premium.

Not being able to use the full system backup in Home Premium is a bit of a donkey punch, no wonder people hate MS.

 

[Rory Buszka]

IMO, even though Aero Glass is a nice little graphical trick, I find my sister's MacBook screen easier to look at than the Aero Glass windows. Whenever you try to look for the controls on the windows, the contents of the window behind seem quite distracting, and they're different every time. I'm not sure I'll be a fan of Glass when I have to use it more frequently. I hope that when Apple comes out with Luminous (successor to Aqua), they don't go for the cheaper visual tricks like this at the expense of usability.