Member Avatar for Member #23858

Vista ultimate or premium?
I have xp pro on one of my machines and want to change to vista but I want to know if premium is worth it or should I go with ultimate? I have ultimate on my main machine and love it. My only reason is that I have a vista home premium disc that I have and it is fully legal but was wondering what the main difference would be. I seem to find it is very similar except for remote desktop which I think is important because I am networked. What would you do?

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Dani AI

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A few practical points that build on the replies from , , and .

Home Premium is the consumer/media-focused edition while Ultimate bundles the consumer set plus several enterprise-style features. Important items that often sway the choice: built-in Remote Desktop host and domain-join capabilities are not part of the Home editions (they appear in Business/Ultimate), and full-disk BitLocker and multilanguage (MUI) support are Ultimate/Enterprise features. A concise feature matrix is available at Windows Vista editions.

If the only blocker is remote control of a home PC, two viable paths exist: install Home Premium and use a third-party remote tool (TeamViewer, TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc.), or pick Business/Ultimate for the native RDP host. For upgrade flexibility, Vista’s Windows Anytime Upgrade lets a Home Premium install be upgraded to Ultimate without a full reinstall if the decision changes later (see Windows Anytime Upgrade).

Two deployment cautions often missed in short replies here: confirm the Home Premium disc/license type (OEM copies are normally tied to the original PC; retail copies can be moved), and run a compatibility check (driver availability and the Windows Upgrade Advisor) before replacing XP. For stability and driver support, install Vista service packs and test on a spare drive or virtual machine before committing an in-place migration.

Summary: for general home/gaming/media use Home Premium will usually suffice; choose Business if domain join/IT features are needed; choose Ultimate only if specific Ultimate-only features (BitLocker, MUI, Ultimate Extras) are required.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for Doctor Inferno

If you are just a basic user getting Home premium is enough.

Member Avatar for starfireone

Here is a link to a comparison chart from MS.

Like Doctor Inferno said. If the only thing you are planning to do the just the basic windows stuff than the Home Premium should be all that you need to be happy. Remember that even if you install the Ultimate version and spend the big dollars you may not get much more features unless you have really good upgraded hardware that supports the Ultimate version.

Member Avatar for MelechM

Premium. Ultimate just has a bit more fancy stuff, not worth it unless you NEED those extra fun stuff (like vid as your wallpaper). Also I assume that ultimate eats more ram etc. For the basics of household use gaming use and stuff go with premium, it serves me well on three laptops and two computers at home.

Member Avatar for AndyOne

I like Vista Business...it doesn't have all of the toys, but you can join a domain and such. Before you upgrade, though, you should consider that Vista is more of a resource hog than XP...if youo don't have at least a gig of RAM and a dual core processor, you may be sorry you switched....just my opinion.

Member Avatar for Member #23858

I don't run any of my machines xp, vista ultimate etc. under 2gb of ram. If you do you won't get the best of any machine. Especially for how cheap ram is. I have 4gb in my ultimate machine.

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