Customer Reviews

Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 Upgrade [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

From the box "You must perform a clean install....unless you are upgrading from...or any edition of Windows Vista." I specifically bought the upgrade w/SP1 to avoid having to download and install the SP separately -- a no brainer for less than $8 difference in price. Currently installed OS is Vista Home Premium base. Guess what? This item can't be installed as an upgrade until and unless you first install SP1! Oh well. Again, the stars are not for the OS but for the "Upgrade" package.

Since so many of my clients have PC's that come with Vista, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and learn more about it.

I have a fairly powerful PC and decided to go against everything people had recommended and to upgrade over XP rather than do a clean install. I had my XP drive ghosted and figured the worst that would happen is I'd have to go back and try again.

The upgrade was as smooth as silk. When it was complete, I had to download new video drivers from Nvidia, but they installed properly the first time and I've had no problems with them.

So far, none of my applications or games has complained about Vista. I'm mainly running Adobe CS3 and Office 2007. A few games have had minor issues, but I've been able to tweak them and get things working.

For someone like me who does a lot of file copying and manipulation, the new Explorer is 1,000 times better than the old ones. There is much less confusion when copying files as to what will happen when the same files already exist, and it is much easier to view photos, view audio files, etc.

I really like the Aero interface. It looks slick and it's easy to move between Windows.

In short, while Vista may just be "warmed over XP" under the hood, I've been pleasantly surprised.

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.

This is by far the best version of Windows Vista. It updates its drivers for you. Vista is much, much better than XP. Runs super quick, looks beautiful and fixes its own problems. I have it on my laptop and when building a new gaming pc, I had to install Vista as newer games are Vista only and all newer updates will also be Vista only. The 64 bit vista also recognizes my 4gb of ram, no problems. Love it, since sp1 came out most of the problems that this OS had, like HD audio not working, are gone. And for those people who give this OS a 1 star review without any real reasons, I recommend that you go take some computer classes so that you might actually know what you are talking about.

I bought the upgrade version of vista ultimate with service pack 1. The installer chose the 32-bit version of the os due to my printer (no 64-bit drivers). You can actually open a ticket with MS if you expect a 64b install but don't get it. Remote windows login required domain after username to work. Media center needs to be restarted when going from window to full-screen (minor bug). Love the power management. Almost all drivers were found online by vista! Overall am pleased with this upgrade!

I had been running XP for some time, but I ended up getting a virus despite sophisticated internet security. I figured I'd upgrade to Vista and do a fresh install. The installation was easy. After everything was up and running, I noticed it ran pretty well on my system. I have a 2gig AMD 64 dual core processor. After about a week, I noticed that my computer would progessively slow down day by day. Which is funny since it hasn't gotten any more sophisticated. It just takes more memory. I have a gig of memory, but even with that, Vista was using around 68% at any given time...just to run the OS. I could use a little extra memory for my system, but why would I want to spend money to upgrade my hardware just to run the same stupid tasks? This OS takes 15 extra gigabytes of hard drive space too. 15 gigabytes can hold about 1000 mp3 files, and I'm basically subtracting it from my computer without question so I can have Vista hog it all. Now I know why Macs have been selling so well.

I don't have $1500 for a new Mac, so I put a copy of Ubuntu Linux on my computer. It took 10 minutes to install. It's just as flashy, more intuitive, and it does everything Windows can do-and it's friggin' free. It reads all my music files, it reads all my pictures and videos. My printer works and I have Open Office. From the time it takes to boot up Vista, I can log on, off, and back on again 10 times over.

I recently bought this product in an attempt to upgrade my new sony Laptop to 64-bit from 32-bit to take advantage of the 4MB installed memory. According the the statement on the package you can upgrade from Vista home Premium to Vista Ultimate without doing a re-format. First off my new system would not accept the 64-bit disc. I then tried to install the 32-bit disc and it would only accept the installation if I was willing to completley re-format the hard drive because I was not upgrading from Windows Home Premium SP1. This is even though I had dowloaded all the latest Microsoft updates to bring it up to SP1 status. Since it was a new computer and I did not want to lose all the bundled software I opted to return it and remain with what I had. It would not be economically feasible to purchase the Home Premium SP1 Upgrade just to install the Ultimate SP1 upgrade behnd it. Bottom line, if you want to save your programs and files (not do a complete re-format) Ulitmate SP1 it seems will only upgrade from another SP1 product.

I read the negative reviews of Windows Vista and was skeptical about using it. I was using Windows XP Pro and it was running really slow on my Lenovo laptop. I installed Vista Ultimate and it really sped up my computer's boot time. I'm not sure why, as I am not a computer guy, but that it did is indisputable. I've been using it regularly for a couple of months now with no problems.

I installed this over a copy of Vista Home edition not long after upgrading the motherboard and processor. Vista Ultimate does not like to be installed if a lot of peripheral USB devices; camera, memory readers, memory sticks, camera bases etc. are plugged in during the installation. I just pulled them out and it installed very cleanly for me. Then I reinstalled these devices one at a time and Vista is very graceful about going out on the web and getting the right device driver. I am still not really sure what Aero does for me (except give me an occasional bunch of diagonal windows to choose from). The CD/DVD burner support works adequately. The thing is pretty stable after it screws around with drivers and updates for a couple of days. It's nice getting the 64 bit disk with the 32 bit version but it requires a clean install, it is not an upgrade. If it ain't broke...

It's not a priority upgrade over XP but it's got some nice features and it's attractive. It has been pretty easy to live with - MS has got most of the pain removed.

I purchased this version of Windows so that I could make full use of the 8GB of memory I installed. I am using it on a new computer I built myself, using a quad core processor and the amount of memory shown above, so e although there is a significant increase in performance I am not sure if it is hardware or software-related. At any rate, the 64-Bit version works as advertised, and I would recommend it to anyone who had 4GB or more memory in their computers.