Windows XP to Vista Ultimate

[drmario]

This is how a MS prices their Vista products. The Home Basic edition $199.95, the Home Premium $259.95, Business $299.95, and what some of you are saying to get; Ultimate $319.95. Whereas S. Jobs pointed out that Mac OSX has the same four editions going for the low price of $129. Plus announced just this week you could get all in the same box Mac OSX, iLife 09, and iWork 09 for $169. Which is still lower by $30 compared to the Home Basic, that's $30 that I could use towards the upcoming Pokemon Platinum pre-release.

And OS X only runs on macs.

 

[Mew*]

Not to mention the Price for Apple hardware is WAY WAY WAY more than computers shipped with Windows which wrecks that lower price for the OS. But I must say I think the prices for Windows are way too high, especially the garbage Home Basic.

 

[vaporeon]

The only reason why I stick with PC and Windows and not mac is because I like to have full upgrade control with my computers hardware. Every mac I saw was ether a laptop or one of those all in one things that I rather not mess with, and plus I heard the OS X crashes any Adobe program.

The reason why I use Vista is because I wanted it for some time now. Yeah, Vista has a compatibility issue but you can download drivers for your hard/software so, its not really a problem. I do want to try Windows 7 to see what is is about.

Back to back posts merged. The following information has been added:

Not to mention the Price for Apple hardware is WAY WAY WAY more than computers shipped with Windows which wrecks that lower price for the OS. But I must say I think the prices for Windows are way too high, especially the garbage Home Basic.

Yeah, I said the same thing too. You have to pay to get the hardware and you have to pay someone to put it in. My friend buys a new Apple laptop every time a new one comes out.

I think most of Vistas hate comes from Vista Home Basic.

 

[Mew*]

Well, Apple actually does make tower computers and has been for awhile that are upgradeable and extremely powerful. However they are uber expensive. I've seen them at my local Apple Store. If I got my choice of Mac I'd definitely go for one of those since they'd actually be great for virtually running Windows with all their power. http://www.apple.com/macpro/design.html shows what they look like. It says you can get them with up to 4,000 GB hard drive space and 32 GB RAM.... can't forget the EIGHT core 3.2 GHz processor... pretttty aweesome lol

 

[unknown]

ColdCoates90- Actually it can only recognize 3 GB of RAM. If your system is picking up 3.3 then your video card must have .3 GB or RAM. It's not Vista's fault - in other words: it's not Microsoft's fault - that the 32-bit version of Vista doesn't recognize past 3 GB of RAM. It is a fate for all 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit architecture cannot map past 3 GB.

I agree with you that Vista is a very good OS (when the computer can run it well). I suggest it for the most part to everybody, but there are some people where I will say to get XP.

I just want to clear up one thing I dont agree with you about. A 32-bit OS can map past 3 GB of RAM. While I agree with you that it is not an issue with Vista, I belive the reasoning is false. The average 32-bit OS will see between 3 and 3.5 GB of ram. See the techincal stuff below.

As for the upgrade...

A clean install is always reccomended. It prevents a lot of issues from even starting to happen. Personally, I would back up all of your documents, reformat and install Vista.

That does mean that you will need to reinstall all of your programs again so you would need to have the install media and license/ product key if needed.

A clean install generally will also make your computer more responsive if you have a lot of unused programs on the computer. this is because a lot of programs like to start a launcher program and or service when the computer starts. Not to mention just clutter the hard drive.

One of the issues that is popping into my head right now.. is DRM issues with music that you downloaded, if any. If you downloaded music from any source that had DRM that license is attached to that install of Windows, upgrading (without reformat) should prevent the issue.


You can skip the stuff below unless you want to learn about memory addressing.

----------------- Technical stuff ------------------
A 32-bit OS can map 4 GB of total memory addressing (IRQ range). Pretty much any piece of hardware on your computer does take some of that memory addressing, just usually very little. RAM gets addressed last. So sometimes if you too more RAM than get be addressed, you cannot use the unaddressed RAM (it doesn't see it).

Graphics cards are some of the main culprits of taking away memory addresses, since the RAM in the graphics card will use its size in addresses. A graphics card will never add its ram to the amount of system ram.

This is why we see some systems that have a 1 GB graphics card, and tons of addon cards, see only 2.5 GB of RAM when there is 4 GB installed.

And if you were to swap out that the graphics card with a 512 MB card, or even smaller, that system would see more RAM.

 

[hilfmir]

i work for a company that owns both vista and xp, and i would recommend staying with xp since we find it more reliable then vista