Vista Upgrade - Yay or Nay?

[MartinS]

I have been looking into purchasing an upgrade to vista premium for the laptop I recently purchased, and as it's inside the eligible period, thought I'd look at the cost.
First page - chose the existing OS (XP Home) and edition to upgrade to (Home Preium) - £49, then after filling in all the details, it came back with just under £70 (VAT plus shipping) - I appreciate that once the offer expires, I'll lose the option, but just wondered if anyone had any comments on whether it is worth the money?
I don't play games, and it will be for surfing/work via a Citrix link.
I'm assuming £70 is the cheapest I'll get a legitimate upgrade for?
Thanks in advance
Martin

[aqua0]

Originally Posted by MartinS

I have been looking into purchasing an upgrade to vista premium for the laptop I recently purchased, and as it's inside the eligible period, thought I'd look at the cost.
First page - chose the existing OS (XP Home) and edition to upgrade to (Home Preium) - £49, then after filling in all the details, it came back with just under £70 (VAT plus shipping) - I appreciate that once the offer expires, I'll lose the option, but just wondered if anyone had any comments on whether it is worth the money?
I don't play games, and it will be for surfing/work via a Citrix link.
I'm assuming £70 is the cheapest I'll get a legitimate upgrade for?
Thanks in advance
Martin

I'm far from being anywhere near clever when it comes to this sort of thing
From what I've seen of it and the research I've done, it looks to be pretty damn good (I've ordered the upgrade option because it was only £16 with my laptop) The only bad thing I've found out so far is that should you have any not quite legit windows programmes (Office and such like) (cough cough splutter splutter- who moi? ) then it wont allow you to run them.I trust someone will find a crack to get around this minor glitch fairly rapidly
Other than that - it seems to be the dogs danglies

[Hellenic Diver]

dont have any experience of the vista upgrades yet, but the xp upgrades were a nightmare. a clean xp build was far better.

Also time wise if your going to go for the upgrade, leave it until the last possible minute - more chance of a service pack coming out.

why do you feel the need to upgrade? and what spec if your laptop? you may find that although it is 'vista capable' it will grind to a halt under the processing demands... plus if your doing large percentage of work via citrix the o/s wont make any difference

your choice, but I also recently bought a new laptop (6 weeks ago) and declined the £25 upgrade to vista -

[Bardo]

Originally Posted by MartinS

I have been looking into purchasing an upgrade to vista premium for the laptop I recently purchased, and as it's inside the eligible period, thought I'd look at the cost.
First page - chose the existing OS (XP Home) and edition to upgrade to (Home Preium) - £49, then after filling in all the details, it came back with just under £70 (VAT plus shipping) - I appreciate that once the offer expires, I'll lose the option, but just wondered if anyone had any comments on whether it is worth the money?
I don't play games, and it will be for surfing/work via a Citrix link.
I'm assuming £70 is the cheapest I'll get a legitimate upgrade for?
Thanks in advance
Martin

I've been running Vista Home Premium on a Dual Core 2 laptop for a few weeks now and I have to say that it's really grown on me. I really, really didn't like the 'UAC' (User Account Control) system protection as it prompts you every time you try to do anything - if you create a folder, for example, it'll prompt you about three times during what should be a very simple process! I switched it off which - although not the smartest thing to do in terms of keeping my system safe - makes Vista a lot more enjoyable to use.

Whether you should upgrade to Vista really depends on how fast your computer is. If it's less than 6 months old then it's probably worth upgrading as your PC will be fast enough to handle it. If it's older, however, don't even think about it - stick with XP until you buy a new machine. What's good about the Vista upgrades is that they don't install on top of an existing XP installation - they use it just to validate that you are performing an upgrade rather than a fresh install and then immediately wipe the old installation. With Vista, it's definately worth reformatting the hard drive to get the best performance out of it - clogged up hard drives only slow it down.

It's definately worth paying the extra for the 'Home Premium' version over the basic Home version as it includes a lot of extra bits and peices that are definately worth having (and the Aero interface is very cool!).

[MartinS]

Thanks guys.
My son and I both have XP Home, and yes I remember the upgrades - did it with Windows ME to XP and decided to wipe and install from clean as it was not nice.
The laptop in question is only running 512MB RAM, and I've heard I'd need at least 1GB - can anyone confirm this?
As it wasn't me who purchased the laptop new, I didn't get what seems to be the cheapest option to upgrade - your quoted prices are much more acceptable that the one I mentioned above! I guess my concern was if I left it and then decided to upgrade, the cost would be extortionate compared to doing it whilst within the eligibility program. I'm also guesing that you would not have to install it straight away and could 'sit on it' for a while until SP1 (due out very soon aparently) was released?
I think I'll keep umming and ahhing for a few days more!
Martin

[MartinS]

Originally Posted by Bardo

I've been running Vista Home Premium on a Dual Core 2 laptop for a few weeks now and I have to say that it's really grown on me. I really, really didn't like the 'AUC' (Automated User Control) system protection as it prompts you every time you try to do anything - if you create a folder, for example, it'll prompt you about three times during what should be a very simple process! I switched it off which - although not the smartest thing to do in terms of keeping my system safe - makes Vista a lot more enjoyable to use.

Whether you should upgrade to Vista really depends on how fast your computer is. If it's less than 6 months old then it's probably worth upgrading as your PC will be fast enough to handle it. If it's older, however, don't even think about it - stick with XP until you buy a new machine. What's good about the Vista upgrades is that they don't install on top of an existing XP installation - they use it just to validate that you are performing an upgrade rather than a fresh install and then immediately wipe the old installation. With Vista, it's definately worth reformatting the hard drive to get the best performance out of it - clogged up hard drives only slow it down.

It's definately worth paying the extra for the 'Home Premium' version over the basic Home version as it includes a lot of extra bits and peices that are definately worth having (and the Aero interface is very cool!).

Thanks Jason - food for thought!

[Bardo]

Originally Posted by MartinS

Thanks guys.
My son and I both have XP Home, and yes I remember the upgrades - did it with Windows ME to XP and decided to wipe and install from clean as it was not nice.
The laptop in question is only running 512MB RAM, and I've heard I'd need at least 1GB - can anyone confirm this?

1GB is a definite minimum requirement with Vista as is a pretty pokey processor and a decent graphics card (if you want to use Aero). Mmmm...... Aero... bubbly chocolate.... sorry, went off on one then!

[scubadoguk]

Did it-want to get my old xp back?
driver issues for hardware is a pain
just stuff that drives me mad like the security that pops up every time I want to open a exe file
xp did ok for me for ages just upgraded as I was told we had a bad xp disc by a "tech"
I later found out it was a motherboard gone bad went back to my old M/B set up, installed VISTA and regreted it ever since?

[Bardo]

Originally Posted by scubadoguk

Did it-want to get my old xp back?
driver issues for hardware is a pain
just stuff that drives me mad like the security that pops up every time I want to open a exe file
xp did ok for me for ages just upgraded as I was told we had a bad xp disc by a "tech"
I later found out it was a motherboard gone bad went back to my old M/B set up, installed VISTA and regreted it ever since?

That 'security' feature (UAC - User Account Control) that drives you mad can be switched off, you know - just do a search for 'disable UAC' and the appropriate control panel will pop up. Whilst I appreciate what Microsoft was trying to achieve with UAC, it's just too much of a pain in the arse to be useable...

Disable it...

Disable User Account Control in Windows Vista

...or make it work without prompting you (the best option)...

Tweakvista - Windows Vista RTM Tweaks

[scubadoguk]

Originally Posted by Bardo

That 'security' feature (UAC - User Account Control) that drives you mad can be switched off, you know - just do a search for 'disable UAC' and the appropriate control panel will pop up. Whilst I appreciate what Microsoft was trying to achieve with UAC, it's just too much of a pain in the arse to be useable...

Disable it...

Disable User Account Control in Windows Vista

...or make it work without prompting you (the best option)...

Tweakvista - Windows Vista RTM Tweaks

Like a lot of other people I hate to have a system that makes life difficult, as does the interface.
Because of the fact I have to disable it means that its intrusive and unable to recognise a pattern.
That means it does not do what it says on the box, I dont like I have to feck with it. I should not have to either.
The question I have is should I have to mess trying to get drivers for a 8x 256 agp card that is less than 6 mths old or a old 10/100 network card find its old drivers are not working now.
I think all new op systems have the same issues to a degree, for me its better to wait 12 mths for a new pc with faster specs and some one to iron out the bugs in VISTA the $165.00 mistake ??