Questions about Vista Ultimate (Full vs Upgrade) Pls help-buying today

[Darkmatterx]

I'm sorry for the "Pls help" but I'd like to pick this up tonight while I am out. To do that I'll need these questions answered soon. Beggers can't be choosers though, so if it can't be answered that fast thats OK, I'll just have to wait. I'll live.

Sorry, I know you guys are SO sick of these questions but I didn't see this question asked in the first couple pages and its a bit of a complex question/s so I didn't think a search would work well. I appriciate any help I can get!

1. I have read that with Ultimate you can set up an image of a fresh install with all your drivers and whatnot installed and ready to go. Then when you want to reinstall Vista you just install the image and your ready to go with all your drivers already installed. I wanted to know if my understanding of the feature is correct and if it works in the Upgrade version as well as the Full version. If it does work in the Upgrade version does that mean that I wouldn't have to do the "install twice" trick once I had an image set up because I would just be installing a pre-set up image?

2. Is there any indication that MS will close the loophole that allows you to install twice so you can do a clean install of Vista?

3. Does the Ultimate Upgrade (they're all retail I believe) allow you to install it onto other computers without limit like the Ultimate Full version as long as you remove it to from the previous computer first?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Darkmatterx]

Incase anyone was curious, this is what I was talking about in regards to the Vista image.


For Q 1. I found a site that describes what I meant.

http://apcmag.com/3834/inside_vistas_new_image_based_install
Automated Installation Kit 2.0 is apparently part of what I need and at the time of that article it wasn't known if it would be made available to regular users. I still haven't found out.

That site describes what I meant. Its basically a way to make your own install DVD that is customized just for your system. You can then use that custom DVD to install Vista with all the most up to date drivers and software you would want on your system instead of having to do it all separately after you've installed Vista.

 

[mazuk]

From what i know you are talking about windows preinstallation environment (PE) which basically allows you to create an image on a dvd of your files and settings and allows you to mirgrate these settings onto a pc fresh to vista.

As far as this goes im not too sure if this is the case with the upgrade, i know that for def you can perform this for clean installs. As far as copying goes if you buy one copy, one copy you shall get other wise it breaches copyright infringment the only way you could do this is if you bought say an enterprise version which allowed you to install on several systems.