Instant Windows Vista upgrades are on the way

Today at Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report on ZDNet, I listed some of the upgrade scenarios that will be possible when Windows Vista ships. All three consumer versions – Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate – will be included on the same CD or DVD. You don’t need to go to the store and purchase a new shrink-wrapped box to upgrade; all you have to do is go to Control Panel and run the Windows Anytime Upgrade program.

I’ve just installed Windows Home Basic on a test computer here and snapped some screen shots to show what the process looks like.

Here’s the opening screen:

When you click past this introduction, you get to the step-by-step upgrade path shown here:

Note the text in step 1, which makes it very clear that you’re about to go to “one of our partner’s websites to purchase a license….” Microsoft clearly has no desire to upset its retail and OEM partners by trying to sell licenses directly to Windows customers. I suspect that in the final release big OEMs like Dell, HP, and Sony will have a custom version of this upgrade utility to send customers back to their website to purchase the upgrade license.

If you try to upgrade using one of the current beta test versions, of course, you get sent to a placeholder page, which contains no pricing or other details.

A very interesting approach, to be sure.

66 Thoughts on “Instant Windows Vista upgrades are on the way”

Ed Bott on March 1, 2006 at 4:17 pm said:

Brad, can you point to any Critical Updates or Service Packs that were different for different XP versions? The code is identical in those two instances.

Yes, for some advanced features there might be optional updates that you’ll need, but that’s a pretty minot burden.
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L on March 1, 2006 at 5:31 pm said:

Ed, interesting news and thanks for a great blog. I agree with you, Home or Pro same updates normally. But in the October bulletin; the MS05-046 Client Services for Netware (899589) update said: “Windows XP Home Edition is not vulnerable to this issue. Windows XP Home Edition does not contain the vulnerable component.” But I know, even on the other versions this component is not installed by default.

This all-in-one DVD thing started people to speculate about cracking tools; maybe possible, but I agree with “goeshere”, and today we have updates of the WGA tool. My question is instead: what will happen if you, a year after an upgrade, decide to do a clean install? Somehow you have to export your license, or have your new key written down etc. so that you install the upgraded version.
dudemumbai on March 1, 2006 at 5:43 pm said:

So who will crack it first. I am not even going to bother to pay for pirated cd will download it from net. WHAT !!!!!!!! updates you can always download them from other websites… big deal
Ed Bott on March 1, 2006 at 5:46 pm said:

My question is instead: what will happen if you, a year after an upgrade, decide to do a clean install? Somehow you have to export your license, or have your new key written down etc. so that you install the upgraded version.

I am 99.9999% certain that there will be a very easy way to export your key. It might be as simple as printing out the 25-character product ID. An OEM might even mail a new Certificate of Authenticity with Product key included.

And of course, since the license is purchased via the Web and is locked to the machine it was first installed on (by activation) there’s no reason you couldn’t go to the site you purchased it from and request a duplicate copy.

So I really don’t see this as a problem.
Wes McGee on March 1, 2006 at 6:03 pm said:

Next question. Will MS then be actually be selling different versions of Vista at retail in different boxes? Theoretically, they could just offer the one box “Home Basic” and do all system upgrades online. That said, I’d still like the ability to buy the entire version i want at retail….
carls on March 1, 2006 at 6:13 pm said:

There could be a terrific side benefit to this upgrade system: it’ll force OEMs to include a Windows CD/DVD with each new system.
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Pavian on March 1, 2006 at 9:31 pm said:

Who cares is another version of Microshit….if you guys ware not so crazy to get the “Latest and the Gretest” will not be a Microshit to charge you a arm and a leg for a POS half broken OS that need like several SP to be fix…..ikkkkkkk
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HC on March 3, 2006 at 1:21 pm said:

what difference Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate.

Thanks
Giovanni on March 7, 2006 at 2:23 pm said:

Do you suppose this will mean that there will be Vista Cds floating around like the millions of AOL CDs? (;-)
pw on March 8, 2006 at 11:04 am said:

Who are the online partners that Microsoft is using to buy the license key from? Does it work?
Ed Bott on March 8, 2006 at 11:15 am said:

PW, read the next-to-last paragraph above.
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Koorosh on April 7, 2006 at 9:05 am said:

I have a problem in Activating Windows Vista BEta Build 5308 Please Help Me How to activate it and give me One Trick to do it or give me activation code because i havent the Original version
Tormoz on May 2, 2006 at 3:37 pm said:

I have a problem with activating Vista. Can you please give me some way of doing it or the code. Thank You.
Jay on May 24, 2006 at 3:48 pm said:

Hmm I am wondering the same. How can I activate Vista 5381. I have been looking. Or do I activate after the 14 days?
Thanks