Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate OEM/OEI DSP - 32-bit Edition (PC DVD)

This is a great, legal means to get the worthwhile feature packed version of vista at a manageable price. Although vista is quite unremarkable considering its development span and the strength of its predessor, there are benefits that are really nice to have... i was sceptical at first, but using vista for 2 weeks now, Ive found my computing experience to be much more... for want of a better word... enjoyable. The truly fabulous graphics/GUI and media center, along with the faster 'sleep' setting, a replacement for hibernate, are the improvements I have found most useful in my first few weeks. I also Love the chess game, but I'm weird like that :)

The OEM version, as oppossed to the full, ridiculously priced full version of vista ultimate, has 2 limitations. Firstly, no manuals or packaging, so if you are a computer amateur who is more comfortable getting used to vista with a paper booklet, I'm sure a quick google search would accomodate that in download form. The other more complicated ramification is the single license that the oem version restricts you to. This means you cannot install the vista ultimate disk on more than one computer, once you have installed to a computers motherboard, it is tied to it. Since few people will find this to be an issue, it certainly isn't worth paying another 200+ quid for a paper brochure full of microsoft's irritating 'wow' marketing campaign... and a license to install on more than one motherboard.

If you are just a simple guy like me, who uses his computer for moderate gaming, emailing, web browsing, word processing, digital photo storage, editing and watching dvd films... usual stuff... but finds xp annoying, unreliable, or you're just plain bored of that awful green start button, then windows vista will be a satisfying, but familiar upgrade.

If you think that 125 quid is still a lot for this, you'd be right... but if you are not a power user and ONLY want to do what I detailed above, you could save more money and go for vista home premium OEM version... its like 80 quid or something, which is a great price. It also depends on whether you are upgrading just software, and sticking with you current pc, or whether you are buying a whole new PC.... in the latter case, dont buy a new computer with great hardware and vista home premium, only to go and install an oem version of ultimate on top of it. I recommend a laptop such as the Sony Vaio AR21s, which has XP on it, but has top line, vista premium ready hardware stuffed in, and then upgrade that to vista ultimate/home prem using this oem.

Thats what i did. Lol

Hope this was helpful

I hope you find this helpful

I bought my OEM version of Vista Ultimate from my pc builder so it was preloaded, but the disk I got with my system was this one. Vista looks great but you should proceed with caution. The OS is very new - lots of new programming rather than just a rebuild of XP - and it has lots of problems. In effect it is more like a beta than a fully-fledged new OS.

Many of the problems seem to be caused by drivers, even ones which say they are for Vista, and there are many reports on the internet of conflicts with software especially virus detectors.

Everything I ordered for my new PC I checked in advance would work with Vista but I found that my virus software, my sound card software (especially the automatic updater) both conflicted. I also gaily used the wonderful easy transfer program to bring over all my files and settings from my old PC and I wonder now if that was a mistake.

In the event my beautiful all-singing, all-dancing new PC looked wonderful for about five minutes and then began to go wrong. I saw so many blue screens that it was like running Windows 98 all over again. I saw black screens, I saw endless hangs of OS programs like Windows Mail, and every few minutes one of the OS features like Superfetch or Search would crash and Vista would ask if it could look for a solution online. I couldn't even play the Spider Solitaire that comes with the OS.

I hunted the internet for advice and solutions and came across other people having the same problems as me - lots of them. My PC builder reported that at a rough guess about 80% of their new Vista customers were happy, and nearly 20% were having problems like me. In the end I gave up and tried to reformat my disk to reload my faithful old XP.

But Vista doesn't let you reformat your hard drive - unless you are pretty techie you won't be able to get into your master boot drive to boot from the XP disk - you get a slave boot screen instead which Vista then overrides. After weeks of increasing frustration I had to send my desktop back to the manufacturer who are kindly sorting it out and loading XP for me.

So do be warned - Vista looks gorgeous and has some wonderful features such as the built-in anti-phishing controls in Windows Mail. But it could cause you a great deal of grief. I ignored the advice of people who knew better than me to wait at least for service pack I - now they are welcome to say 'I told you so!' for they were right.

Oh, and the OEM version appears to be slightly different to the full retail version - for example Vista has drivers for my portable hard drive pre-loaded, but sometimes it can find them and sometimes it can't. When I asked the hard drive manufacturer for help they asked if I was running the OEM version of Vista - all the problems they had had calls about were from people running OEM. Coincidence? I don't think so. So yes, it's a lot cheaper, but unless you're a system builder you're not meant to buy this version, and if you have an experience like mine you'll wish you'd never wasted your money.

As a web developer I researched Vista pretty thoroughly before deciding to take the plunge. The OEM version is great value for money, you even get a smallish installation booklet/manual with it. I really can't see the point in buying the full version - everything you want to know is probably on Google anyway.

I decided on the fresh install rather than the upgrade. I've learnt from past experience that trying to load one OS on top of another OS leads to slow and sluggish performance. So would recommend getting a usb hard-drive and backing up your files and then doing a fresh install.

Word of warning - not all applications are supported on Vista and many have incompatibilities. Microsoft products should be fine but Norton Ghost 9.0 didn't want to play ball at all. I installed Coldfusion 7 with some tech help I found online but could not do any upgrades to the application. If you rely on a host of non-Microsoft applications and are not prepared to purchase updated versions (some of which have yet to become available) then I would hang fire for the time being.

What am I running it on? I decided to upgrade my Latitude d610 to 2gb RAM which involved removing the keyboard (but that was easier than it sounds). Even though the compatibility checker said I couldn't run Aero (transparent windows and 3d flick thru tabbing graphics) the upgraded D610 handled it with ease. So don't always believe everything the compatibility checker tells you. But Aero isn't all that really, I could quite easily turn it off and be none the wiser - just a bit of fun.

So what's different - well the whole thing just has a better feel to it, its generally kinder on the eyes - and generally i enjoy working on it - a feeling that up until now has been the privilege of Mac users. Things work more smoothly and the filing system is more logical - more Mac OSX and less clunky in presentation than XP. There is better security although so obtrusive for the experienced user I had to turn it off. Overall stability is excellent, no crashes as yet. The new gadget bar is pretty pointless, although will be interesting to see what gadget's third parties develop for Vista.

Why it took MS 5 years to develop it though is a mystery (maybe because they scrapped their direction 3 years in, so this is only really 2 years development). Lets hope now that they've found their direction they can begin to accomplish all those things that they said they were going to do 5 years ago.

If I'd bought Ultimate at the full price I would probably only give it 3.5 stars, but this is good value.

My Advice: If you're the early adopter type, go for it, its fun. But if you're a technophobe steer well clear for another year at least OR buy it when you next get a new PC.

HTH