Home Premium or Ultimate?

[fruees]

Guys i'm deciding between the two - what are the pros and cons, if any?
8gig DDR2, 4870HD, Q9550
Cheers lads

 

[Scotteq]

Let me ask a question - Do you use Other Than Microsoft® applications for media?? I other words, are you likely to replace Media Center and Movie Maker with something else?

If so, then you might want to consider the Business edition.

Why? Well.. You would pick up automated/complete backup and restore functionality, some half-decent system management tools, remote desktop... (and fax...). And since you would be installing your own media apps, you would now have the functionality of Ultimate, except for BitLocker encryption. Just a thought, yah?

If the answer is 'No Scott, Media Center and Movie Maker do what I need and I'm not planning on replacing them..." then you should be plenty well served by Home Premium.

Ultimate has all of the above - All the Business edition and all the Home Premium features, plus Bit Locker encryption and some extras, like a 'Dreamscape' (animated desktop background). But MSFT haven't delivered much in the way of the much touted 'Ultimate Extras', and again there are 3rd party apps that do the same things, and better. Though you do have to pay for those as well...

 

[fruees]

well, I'll probably download the classics live VEOH, Xvid, Dvix, possibly Winamp, Excel (oops...), all the usual codecs etc.... but in terms of other applications I probably couldn't give a cr*p!!!
Will I be able to download these with vista 64 Scott?

 

[Scotteq]

V64 runs 32 bit code just fine, and with almost no overhead - I haven't tried all of those, but you should be fine as long as you're using updated versions.

 

[notherdude]

I play a lot of media stuff on V 64, a lot of the usual suspects, including mkv/h264. Nothing has failed yet. Virtually all apps run fine on v 64. There are a few exceptions but I doubt you would run into them. XP on a VM is a good idea for people who like to run old stuff.

Flash player has no 64 bit ver but as long as you use a 32 bit browser which is the default in vista 64 (which also has a 64 bit IE) then flash plays perfectly.

 

[dsharp9000]

i really hate the fact that you have to decide between ultimate or premium...i really 'dont like all the different versions; but will say if you want to be able to fax like you did with xp...then you will need ultimate.