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A friend who is an avid Windows user read my post Windows Vista - What I think! and said..”How about writing something to say what you think about the various versions of Windows Vista?”. Which I thought would be a pretty useful post! So here goes

There are four retail versions of Windows Vista: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. Microsoft’s own comparison can be found at the Microsoft Site, but this article is about what I think, so here it is!

Vista Basic is usable if you are on a budget and want to go down the Vista route. It will certainly get you up and running, and with a few free or cheap applications bought as funds become available, it will do the job. But Vista Home Premium is generally not a big price difference when buying a new machine and has many additions that are worth the extra money. First and foremost the media center utility that is built in, for home users it makes playing DVD’s, Videos, Music, or Photo Slideshows nice and simple. Which at the end of the day everyone wants!

The scheduled and network backup feature is in my opinion the next significant inclusion for Home Premium. Let’s face it, most of us don’t back up as often as we should and from time to time we get a scare that reminds us that we really should be backing up our photos and documents! Well with Home Premium (and more expensive versions of Windows Vista) a utility is included that makes this simple, so no excuses!!

The last most useful feature to mention that Home Premium has over Home Basic is the ability to make DVD’s. Windows XP had a built in ability to work with CDRs & CDRWs but with multimedia being a huge part of computer usage these days Vista has a built in tool to make DVD Slideshows of your favourite photos to play on the TV to your friends!

Moving on to Windows Vista Business then. Firstly I would like to point out that the Business version of Vista doesn’t have all the abilities of Home Premium! Which is a little frustrating. For example the DVD Maker I just mentioned isn’t included in the Business edition, so beware and check out the full Microsoft comparisons before buying!

As you have hopefully guessed this version of Vista is designed for Business use, it allows the machine to be connected to a domain which the home versions don’t, you have the complete PC backup facility and fax tools. To be honest other than the ability to connect to a domain the only real benefit of having Business over Home Premium is the ability to use Remote Desktop Connection so I can log into the office machine from elsewhere. For me that is invaluable. However something I only found out last week was that there are tools that won’t work on Home editions of Vista but will work on Business/Ultimate. I downloaded Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on my laptop running Home Premium and was politely told by the install utility that it won’t work on my version of Vista. Therefore if you are planning on using any tools like Virtual PC you might be wise to check compatibility with Home Premium before splashing out (thankfully VPC is free!).

Moving on then to Windows Vista Ultimate! In some sense this is an easy one as Ultimate just includes EVERYTHING the others include just as you might expect. As yet I haven’t had a chance to play with Vista Ultimate but I am aware of one thing that is included with Ultimate that isn’t included in any of the others and that is Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption.

As data stored on computers becomes more and more valuable there is a growing concern among users about theft. Not so much theft of their machines, that is what insurance is for! but the data on that machine. Windows BitLocker protects the
data on the machine so if it is stolen the thief will find it very hard to access the data. As I have yet to test this out I can’t make a personal judgement, but from what I have read from respected sources there seems to be a generally good vibe coming from this new security feature from Microsoft. Aside from Vista it is my understanding that the Server 2008 operating system due to be released by Microsoft next year will also include the BitLocker security feature.

So to sum up then. If I had to advise which version should be used in one sentence this would be it: Windows Vista Home Premium for most home users, and Windows Vista Ultimate for Business use.