Taking Advantage of Your Ability to Upgrade Vista Table 1-2 shows how flexible Vista is in allowing you to upgrade to a more powerful version. It also describes some of the limitations of the various versions. This table, and the others in this article, are based on information provided by Microsoft in its Vista Product Guide. The information was accurate at press time but can be changed by the Redmond company whenever it pleases. If a specific feature is crucial to your needs, ensure that it’s still in a particular Vista version before you lay out your dough.

Windows Anytime Upgrade Unlike previous versions of Windows, Vista installs itself with the capability to upgrade from a weaker version to a more-capable version at any time. You simply run the Anytime Upgrade applet, select a source to purchase an upgrade license from, and your PC is quickly enhanced with the more powerful version you’ve selected.

Vista Home Basic can be upgraded in this way to Home Premium or Ultimate.

Vista Home Premium and

Vista Business can be upgraded to Ultimate. At this writing, it doesn’t appear that the Home versions of Vista can be upgraded in this way to Vista Business or Enterprise. It also doesn’t seem likely that the Enterprise version will allow an easy upgrade path to Vista Ultimate. Purchasing a more capable version of Vista at retail and installing it over a lesser version may be the only way to migrate in these cases.

RAM Limitations of Vista Versions The Home versions of Vista suffer from some stricter limitations on available main memory and peer-to-peer networking than the non-Home versions. We’ll summarize these limits as follows:

32-bit Vista versions will always be limited to 4 GB of RAM, due to limitations of x86 processors.

64-bit Vista versions have dramatically different limitations in the various editions:

Home Basic is limited to 8 GB or RAM.

Home Premium is limited to 16 GB of RAM.

Business, Enterprise, and

Ultimate can access over 128 GB of RAM.

Peer-to-Peer Networking Limitations Peer-to-peer networking, called SMB (for small-to-medium business) networking by Microsoft, is also artificially restricted:

Home Basic can support only 5 peer-to-peer connections;

All other Vista versions can support 10 peer-to-peer connections.

Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate can support many more connections, of course, with users logging on to one or more network servers. The home versions of Vista are more limited than the business versions in general, but they also include some multimedia functionality that’s not available to Vista Business users. If the restrictions of a lesser version prevent you from using a feature you need in a more capable version, it’s easy to upgrade Vista’s Home and Business versions to Vista Ultimate. To do so, you can use the built-in Anytime Upgrade applet ( s 1-1 and 1-2).

Choosing Between Home Basic and Home Premium Table 1-3 shows the distinct features that differ between the Basic and Premium versions of Vista for home users. If you’ve decided that a Home version of Vista is all you need, Table 1-3 will help you decide which of the two available versions will best suit you.

Choose Home Basic if you don’t need Media Center capabilities, the ability to burn DVDs, or any of the other features shown in Table 1-3 that come with Home Premium.

Choose Home Premium if you have a tablet PC (actually, it’ll be hard to buy a tablet PC that doesn’t have at least Vista Premium installed on it) or if you need the more extensive multimedia features of the premium version. The list prices for the upgrade versions of Home Premium are about 60 percent higher than the same versions of Home Basic. But the full versions are only 20 percent higher. So, if you find yourself buying a retail copy of the full version of Vista Home, paying a little extra to get Home Premium seems like a pretty easy decision.

Choosing Between Vista Business and Enterprise Table 1-4 shows the features that are present in the Business and Enterprise versions of Vista but not the Home versions, and a few features Enterprise has that Business doesn’t. Vista Ultimate, as we’ll discuss later in this article, also supports all of Vista’s non-Home features.

Both the Business and Enterprise versions, unlike the Home versions, support domain networking. This enables users to log on to a network server using Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) technology and share centrally managed resources.

Enterprise supports a few additional features, which might be crucial for your business:

•BitLocker drive encryption enables you to securely encrypt files and folders. You can require that users must have a physical token to decrypt and access these resources, protecting them from view if a PC is stolen or otherwise used by an unauthorized person.

•Applications written for Unix can run under Vista Enterprise. This can greatly expand the number of programs your company can run on a given system.

•Virtual PC Express enables you to run one virtual computer session in Vista Enterprise. This session could host a different operating system - Windows XP or even Windows 95, for example - in which you might run a legacy program that isn’t compatible with Vista. As you can see, most of the features of Enterprise are also in Business, except BitLocker, multilanguage support, Unix capabilities, and virtual-machine support.

Features Available in All Vista Versions For completeness’s sake, features that exist in all versions of Vista are listed in Table 1-5, in no particular order. If this table offers you all the Windows features you’ll ever want, then Vista Home Basic may be enough for you.

This would particularly be true if you plan to use Vista solely to browse the Web and occasionally check your e-mail. In that case, the improved Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Mail programs - present in all Vista versions - might be adequate to serve your needs. Microsoft, of course, hopes that the features of Home Basic are, well, too basic for you. If so, you’ll have to pony up a higher amount for one of the pricier versions. We hope we’ve presented in this article all the details you need to make an informed decision. With the exception of the Remote Desktop and the Mobility Center for portable PCs - both of which are limited in the Home versions - most of the features of Windows Vista are the same in all versions.

One big feature you don’t get with Windows Vista Home Basic is the beautiful Windows Aero user interface, which we’ll look at in detail later in the article. If you want the absolute best graphical experience, don’t pick Home Basic.

Choosing the Whole Enchilada - Vista Ultimate You can use Tables 1-2 through 1-5 to compare those features of the lesser Vista versions that come together in Microsoft’s priciest product: Vista Ultimate. To get it, you’ll pay a list price of $60 to $100 more than Vista Business or $100 to $160 more than Home Premium. Without knowing what your specific needs may be, it’s impossible for us to say whether you’ll want or need this enormous package. As we stated previously, the only serious reason to pay extra to get Vista Ultimate is if you absolutely must have two features, one of which exists only in Home Premium (such as Windows Media Center) and the other of which can only be obtained in Business or Enterprise (such as domain login).

At the time of this writing, Microsoft promises to release a number of add-ons called the Windows Ultimate Extras. These weren’t well defined at all, however, when we went to press. You’ll have to be the judge of whether these extras are worth anything to you or your business. Of course, you might purchase Vista Ultimate just because you want everything Microsoft has to offer, and cost is no object. If so - enjoy!

Summary Windows Vista certainly offers a lot of choice when it comes to picking a product version, but with a little know-how, you will be able to make the right choice, one that matches both your needs and your budget. We’ve given you what you need to know to match a Vista version to your needs. Now, you just need to figure out how much the upgrade is going to cost. Remember that it’s often much cheaper to acquire a new Windows version with a new PC, so if you’re going to be buying a new PC, be sure to get the right Vista version at that time.