CompleteMartialArts.com - Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 Upgrade
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List Price: $129.95
Our Price: $85.49
Your Save: $ 44.46 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Microsoft Software
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: DVD-ROM
Brand: Microsoft
EAN: 0882224661263
Feature: User-friendly software combines the features of Windows Vista Home Basic with even more impressive and user-friendly capabilities
Format: DVD-ROM
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Microsoft Software
Manufacturer: Microsoft Software
Model: 66I-02388
Platform: Windows Vista
Publisher: Microsoft Software
Release Date: 2008-03-19
Studio: Microsoft Software
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Features
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User-friendly software combines the features of Windows Vista Home Basic with even more impressive and user-friendly capabilities
Features Windows Aero, an efficient and visually stunning interface that makes it easier to accomplish multiple tasks at once by providing a three-dimensional, real-time, animated view of all of your open applications, and documents
By integrating search throughout the operating system, helps you quickly find and organize large collections of documents, pictures, movies, videos, and music
Includes Windows Tablet and Touch Technology that enables you to interact with your Tablet PC-compatible computer with a digital pen or your fingertip instead of having to use a keyboard
Includes all of the Windows Media Center capabilities for turning your PC into an all-in-one home entertainment center; enjoy music, photos, and DVD movies
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Editorial Reviews:
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Upgrade to the preferred edition of Windows for home desktop and mobile PCs. Windows Vista Home Premium includes Windows Media Center, which helps you more easily enjoy your digital photos, TV, movies, and music. Plus, you'll have the peace of mind of knowing that your PC has a whole new level of security and reliability.
Windows DVD Maker - Burn your photo slide shows & home movies to a video DVD and watch them on a DVD player or PC Windows Movie Maker - Capture, edit, and publish your digital home movies in standard or high-definition format Instant Search & Windows Internet Explorer 7 - Quickly find what you need Elegant Windows Aero desktop experience with glass-like menu bars, Windows Flip 3D, & Live Thumbnails Automatic backup of your files, such as your digital photos, music, movies, documents Built-in parental controls. Supports the Parental Controls Games Restrictions for ratings from the Korean Game Rating Board (GRB) Enhanced MPEG-2 decoder to support content protection on Media Center systems configured with Digital Cable Tuner hardware You are now required to enter a password hint during the initial setup of Windows Vista SP1 so you don't forget it later Upgrade from Windows XP or Windows 2000System Requirements 800 MHz processor & 512 MB of system memory 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space Super VGA graphics support
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Windows Vista is ok but not great
Comment: I had to do a clean install of Vista and I am still not sure if I like it better than XP. The reason I upgraded is I wanted to use Open GL features of Vista. I have had some problems getting it set up, but it is working now.
Vista still has the hangups and crashes as XP did, but seems to be a bit more stable.
The best thing I can say is "I am getting used to it."
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's not as evil as people are saying...
Comment: ...but if you must, stick to XP. I first got Vista when I bought my laptop. Best Buy didn't have XP, so I was forced to get it. I heard a lot of bad things about this program. Nowadays, every time you see it Mac ad, it rips on Vista. (Sorry, Mac, but I'll never get your computers. I have computer xenophobia.) People are hating it, blaming it for everything bad that happens to their PC's.
So, seeing that I'm using Vista for many months now, I honestly don't want to get rid of it ASAP, but I still prefer XP. First, I'll list what Vista has that trumps over XP.
. It looks cool, I'll give it that.
. In the Start menu, there is a space where you can search for anything, instead of having to go to search. Very nifty!
. It might just be the laptop, but I think that it runs the Net a bit faster.
Okay, now I'll list the bad. This will range from just nitpicks to problems.
. Some programs are either not Vista compatible, (ex. PS2 emulator,) or can mess up occasionally. (PS1 emulator and iTunes.)
. Every time you install something, the screen turns dark and a window pops up to see if you allow this. It's kind of unneeded.
. The Sound Recorder has been dumbed down. It's just a plain sound recorder now. No longer can you backmask sounds or speed/slow them.
. Some games, (Such as Minesweeper) have been terribly remade. Also, what the hell is 'Purble Place?'
. When you open up the volume control, sometimes it won't go away after you're through.
And that's about as much as I can think of right now. In all honesty, it's not Satan, and it's tolerable, but unless you really need a new computer real bad, stick to XP.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stick with trusty XP! This product is shocking
Comment: I wrote a review of Vista not long after I started using it. I gave it two stars and suggested that while it's not worth replacing XP with Vista as there are a few annoyances, chiefly the lack of some of XP's best features, Vista isn't too bad. I am not a Microsoft basher, as I think XP is an excellent operating system. I've now realised just how good it was after a few months with Vista. I have wasted more time sorting out problems in Vista in two months than I did during the seven years I had with XP. It is fair to say that I now hate this OS to the point that it turns me into a kind of Basil Fawlty with Tourette's more often than not. My shiny new laptop has the imprint of my fist following a time when Vista just pushed me too far. Therefore I have deleted my original review and replaced it with this new one.
Let's start with Vista's good points. It looks marvellous, with its transparent windows and 3D effects. There is a display pane which gives you an overview of the contents of many file types without you having to open them. The sounds that herald failures or errors are far less annoying than those in XP. The colours are lovely too. And, er... that's it, unless you're the kind of computer user that enjoys spending hours and hours solving OS problems. If so, you'll have a field day here.
I'll start with the minor irritations, in no particular order.
Searching in XP was easy. You typed in the name of a file, specified your search criteria and you always found your file if it existed. Alas, Vista is very different. Search is done by indexing, which means that although the searches are faster your initial search won't find files in all but the most obvious locations. You can index every file on the computer of course, but this takes ages, uses a lot of space and (I am told) slows the computer down. There is an option for searching non-indexed files but you can't do this until you've done the indexed search first. Even then I have found search results to be unreliable. I would bet that people use Search to find system files rather more than they do to find a letter (it's likely to be in Letters, right?). Worse still, Service Pack 1 removed Search from the Start menu, and you have to download third-party programs or do a registry tweak to get it back.
There is no Network Connections folder - one of XP's more useful features was this folder where you could check and modify your internet connections all in one place. You can get it back, but it also involves a registry tweak.
Windows Update in XP installed the majority of the updates while the computer was running. Vista does this on shutdown and startup - which means that if updates have downloaded and you do a restart you can wait over 10 minutes to get your computer running again.
XP had a facility to associate a particular icon with certain file types. Not Vista - you have to download a third-party program to do this.
Screensavers often don't work properly.
In XP you were given useful information when you copied files, for example which particular file was being copied at any particular time. Vista doesn't do this, it just gives you a progress bar and a time estimate which is usually wildly inaccurate. Copying is painfully slow, too.
Say goodbye to Outlook Express - with Vista you get Windows Mail. It is similar to OE and indeed has some improvements, but whereas OE used your spell check from Word, Windows Mail only has a choice of 4 languages and the English option only allows for US English. I am not one of those Brits who gets sniffy about US spellings - they're just as valid as British spellings - but for work I need to use British English and get fed up with having to tell it that "realise", "marvellous" and the like are NOT wrong.
Unexpected shutdowns, freezes and the dreaded "not responding" are far more common than they were in XP. At least with XP you could, as a last resort, pull the plug and XP was savvy enough to recover from it. Do this with Vista and more often than not you'll have to wait while Vista repairs itself - admirable in one way, but it created the flipping problem itself!
I've gone on too long already, but please indulge a little further. I would like to describe how Vista ruined my computer today. I tried to copy a large collection of files from one folder to another. Halfway through the OS froze and stopped responding. I managed to restart - same thing. I mirrored this on my XP computer and there was no problem. Third time lucky...not quite. Halfway through the copy Vista froze and all the screen icons disappeared. No way to get Task Manager so I had to pull the plug. Vista then spent hours repairing itself on restart. Eventually I moved the files in small batches. Then I wanted to transfer some of these to DVD and got an error half way through. Another freeze - no way to restart normally so another unwanted switch off with the off button. Since then Vista refuses to start at all - any attempt to do so generates an error or just sits there halfway through startup. Somehow it has corrupted the hard drive and I am now waiting for those nice people at Dell to send me a new one.
There are worse things in life than OS problems, I know that all too well. But if you want to save yourself a lot of hassle, time and stress, stick with XP as long as you can. It sounds like Microsoft have already recognised that this shoddy product is a disgrace and if you're lucky, there will be a better OS (or at least a decent revamped version of Vista) before you are forced to change OS.
Thank you for listening.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More trouble than it's worth
Comment: I bought a new Dell XPS 1330 a few months ago which came with Vista as the OS and it's an inferior and buggy product. Here are the issues I've had to deal with:
1. Right out of the box, Windows would not shut down. Vista gives you something like seven options but all of them led to the same thing--the system froze. The only way to turn off my computer was with the power button.
2. The problem with the system turn off mysteriously solved itself after a month, but then I had problems connecting to the internet. I kept getting a dialog box saying "limited connectivity"--the basic issue was I was connected to my router, but for reasons best known to itself Vista wouldn't let any of my browsers access the net. This drove me bats and I ended paying a tech service a hundred bucks to fix it. It took them about 30 minutes--they said they were seeing the same problem over and over with Vista (they may be the only demographic to really love this OS, it must be making them a fortune).
3. The display driver just doesn't work with Vista (it's an nvidia driver, and this issue is all over blogs and net forums). It repeatedly causes the system to freeze, crash, and when that doesn't happen the screen will at odd moments fizzle into mandelbrot fractals or trippy 60s style lines. These inevitably end in the blue screen of death experience. I've downloaded a series of "updated" or "improved" drivers from Dell and nvidia and, if anything, the problem has gotten worse. This problem happens randomly, and it basically means I no longer use the $2,000 laptop I bought expressly for work for anything but casual web surfing--I simply can't afford to do anything on this computer that is work critical because chances are I'll lose it.
I've got some of the same nitpicky complaints about Vista aired elsewhere (it's HUGE memory hog, the Aero "experience" is more of a pain than a delight etc etc), but really the bottom line is that I just can't fathom putting out a product that is so bad; the biggest fan of Vista has to be Steve Jobs, it's almost as if Microsoft wants people to shift to Macs.
I'm no innate Microsoft basher (I used XP and NT for years w/no complaints), but my strong advice is avoid this OS if you can.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Do not buy
Comment: Never recieved item. Tried to email seller several times, no answer. Had to go to Amazon to get money back. I would never buy from this seller again.
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