Customer Reviews

Windows Vista Home Basic with SP1

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Yes, this is Vista Home Basic, you get what you pay for, a very good operating system without a bunch of eye-candy using up system resources, which makes it a good choice for an older computer upgrade or building your own system. You just have to ask yourself if you really need Media Center, DVD Maker, more Windows games or the RAM devouring Aero Glass desktop look. If you look around there are free DVD makers, free games and probably free substitutes for Media Center. But if you are going from XP to Vista I do recommend a clean install of Vista instead of upgrading XP. So it's your choice if you want Vista Basic or Vista Ultimate Bloatware.

On the whole I have been happy with my new Vista Home Basic operating system. I chose Home Basic over the other versions because I felt the extra features were nothing more than eye candy and software bloat that taxes your system resources and ram. One thing I did to optimize my experience with Vista was to install it as a new operating system, instead of upgrading Windows XP to Vista Home Basic. This freed me of any bugs or bad registry data that has collected in XP over the last 5 years. I copied only 4GB of data (important photos and documents) to a usb flash drive, then I rebooted, formatted, and installed Vista. After installation, Vista found all my drivers and downloaded them for me. After the first couple of restarts due to driver and antivirus installation, Vista runs very smoothly, in fact it starts up faster than my XP operating system did. I am docking 1 star due to the fact that the Windows disk defragmentation application no longer displays a status screen and thus you will have no idea how long it will take or how bad it is fragmented. I also feel that Microsoft should have bundled Windows Live OneCare with Vista, since they love to bundle in all their other programs.

I was warned by every IT person I know - stay away from Vista. Anyway, I bought a new Dell vostro 1400 (very nice by the way - do buy) and it came with Vista Basic. I admit Vista is relee pretty and very cool looking. However, Vista treats me like a second class citizen on my own system.

I should say that the problems stem mainly from my old LEGALLY purchased software that I subsequently installed and that work really well on XP!!!

The last straw is just now when my Corel Paint Shop Pro X (which seems to work ok on Vista) told me that there was an update available but I decided that I would just DOWNLOAD and Save the patch and install later only to be told that I can't save the file to any folder on the system and to:-

"Contact your administrator to obtain permission"

$%#@% I AM the bloody administrator!! There is nobody on this computer but ME! My profile IS administrator. How much more of an administrator do I have to be! Do they mean the administrator of the Microsoft Head Office Network???

It is this message that is driving me crazy. I already gave up and uninstalled my Adobe Acrobat 7.0 because of it (I've since been able to re-install & update), almost pulled my hair out when trying to update Starry Night Orion Special Edition that I got LAST YEAR (need to right click the link and select 'run as administrator').

I am giving serious consideration to ripping out Vista and installing XP on my BRAND NEW LAPTOP. I hear you can get those gadget thingies for XP too. I guess the moral of my story is that unless you are buying completely brand new software that is Vista compliant and new Vista compliant hardware, you are an antique decrepit old fogey and should stay away from such modern sophisticated software as Vista!!

By the way Small Business Accounting 2006 does not work on Vista either - but that is a straight incompatibility issue.

I use Windows Vista Home Basic on my Mac Book Pro along with Mac OS X using Parallels. It is, much like the larger versions, a hog on system resources. This version doesn't have the lovely Aero style and seems like a happy medium between XP and the Home Premium version of Vista. It does provide a simple way to complete tasks for everyday computer users who don't need incredible visual styles or the other perks of the other Vista releases.

We spent a lot of time researching to buy a system with vista. I found a pretty good system configuration and bought it. To my surprise after exploring the system I figured out. It was an exact copy of xp with a few more features. The laptop is so slow; it takes it 3 hours to open the start menu. So I took action disabling all of the startup items and a few things that I also do on my xp desktop. Still nothing! I bought it in 2006 and I am still trying to fix it! Wait until windows 7 comes out please. Vista basic, premium, ultimate, and business stink. Lastly why can't they release 2 versions like xp? buy:Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgradeor Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition UPGRADE with SP2 i love xp! come on! it is so reliable! this is by far the worst os ever. mac or windows. i wish amazon let you do 0 stars because this is zero stars.

There's a reason that many IT shops are sticking with XP, even today. My old computer motherboard crashed so I figured I'd get a new computer. I could only find Vista computers. That was a mistake. I'm a computer professional and my home computer with Vista has 2GB RAM. My computer crashes about once a week. It probably needs about 4GB RAM to work properly is my guess. Unfortuantely, my motherboard on my new PC can't take that much so I'm out of luck.

I just got a machine pre-loaded with VISTA Home Basic on my home desktop. I must admit, after hearing all horror stories and crticisms, I was prepared to dump the OS for my trusty old XP Professional, but after using it for couple of days, I decided to keep Vista.

I can say, for home use, it turns out, Vista is better than the old XP. And why should it not be?

There are couple of things you have to keep in mind though. My new desktop is fast. It has 4GB RAM and a powerful dual processor. Also, the harddrive is 7200 RPM so that helps a lot too.

It has nice features for my home usage. I like the fact that even though I have admin rights, it runs me as a poweruser, so I cannot do any damage accidentally, and more importantly, a program infected with a virus cannot wreck havoc. Time will tell whether this feature works though. For now, I dont mind running programs that need systems access specifically as administrator. Caution: It requires some training and getting used to.

I liked the fact that it arranged all my photos very well. It also offers a very beautiful user interface, better and easier way to search files and contents within files. Programs on your system can also be searched which is easier.

I love the overall user interface, and its pretty fast. I think its important that you have an adequate hardware if you plan to run Vista. Dont run it on a 1GB RAM machine with poor processor. You will probably hate it.

My advise, dont listen to people who said, Vista sucks..It doesn't. If you are not sure, goto bestbuy or Staples, and take it for a test-drive.

The sole porpuse I want a windows machine is to have Flight Simulator on it. I am a mac user, for 99% else. Well I bought a pc with Windows Vista Home Basic SP1. Here are the list of problems i have found.

1.) For some extrange reason Vista wanted to be activated twice. The second time It will tell me that I could not activate because the key was already in use. It never told me that the solution was to activate by phone, but I guessed so by posts in the internet. I called the phone number it give in my country, It was busy all the time. I tried for a couple of hours and it was busy. So I called a phone in the US, and I succedded, and went to that lengthly proccess of 9 blocks of six number. It worked. Well It took me more than 3 hours to figure all this,

2.) I tried to install Flight Sim x, and installation will hang without any reason. It will just stop ! and that is it. Not a single error message. It will just die there. I tried twice and the installation died in different places.

3.) I tied to do a windows update. It found an update for my video card and a realtek usb controller. It falied installation with a cryptic error.

4.) I am doing a share of a drive in a windows xp virtual machine, to try to install flightsim. I hope I succeed.


Its terrible how Microsoft assumes that we all are software pirates by inforcing that horrid activation proccess. It will be beareable if windows vista will do its work after that.

...it didn't crash on a regular basis. Yeah, it looks cool, the security may be better, but its bloated beyond reason and acts like a beta, even after SP1. This is, hands down, the worst experience I've ever had with an OS.

I just bought XP and will be downgrading as soon as it arrives.

Cheers.

I know that the program is good. I really wanted it on my system. I, for some reason, could not get my system to recognize the disk. I spoke to tigerlaura about my problem via email and I was handled in a very professional manner. I was able to return it and get a refund. I would buy from here again, simply because of how I was treated. Excellent place to do business.