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.
I just want to send a nice warm Thank You to my university’s Computer Science department for being a member of MSDNAA. Thanks to them, I am able to send this message thru a fresh install of Windows Vista Business Premium… for free. Of course, I’m just testing it right now. I’m running it on a 20 gig partition next to XP Pro (also free thru my university.) So far I haven’t had too many troubles, but I’m not getting rid of XP until I know that vista is solid.
hello, i have the same prblem as #46, jeff hayes, which video card is safe to buy without buying a new power supply? please keep in mind i can only use PCI and AGP
I’ve just gone through the anytime upgrade process and found that if you choose different vendors from the list you’ll pay a different price. I am upgrading from Vista Business to Vista Ultimate. Here is what i found.
Acer £141.85 €214.00
Toshiba £118.65 €179.00
Maxdata £117.53 €177.31
Comet £94.99 €143.30
Sony £78.88 €119.99
Medion £118.65 €179.00
Fujitsu Siemen Service Unavailable
PC World £109.99 €164.45
Hewlett Packars Service Unavailable
FNAC £118.00 €178.00
Microsoft Service Unavailable
And to cap it all off, It states that it takes 1 – 2 minutes to download
but in reality after you have given them your credit card details, and completed your order, you get an email stating it will take upto 5 days to process your order and send you your digital key.
What’s going on Microsoft!
everytime i start my computer up and incompatibilty window comes up after i have installed my vista saying ati control panel has compatibilty issues. how do i fix this? i have a radeon express 200 on my computer.
is this free? is vista all that good? waht is so good about it?
Want to have fun with someone. Fake them out with this Vista Upgrade prank: http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/entertainment/vista/
I am very satisfied with my purchase of Windows Vista Home Premium addition. It runs very smoothly on a decent computer with a decent an affordable graphics card, (I am running a P4 3.0, with a gig of ram, and a $70 128 mg graphics card). The Interface is extremely delightful, user friendly, and the appearance is second to none. The 32 bit version is also very fast compared to Linux SUSE 9.0.
The feel of this OS is in my opinion somewhat of a modern Linux based system without having to use a Shell for anything. I only wish it came with the freeware a Linux based OS comes with. This is probably contributed to the side bar and User Account Controls built in at initial start up.
The upside is the quantity of hardware drivers that come preinstalled, and the availability of easy to find compatible software. So far I did not have to install any drivers for my mother board, printer, graphics card, wireless card, sound cards, or for that matter any hardware device.
Overall this OS is in my opinion a better product than XP, if you have a computer built to handle the new technology. Web searches are very fast compared to Windows 2000 Pro and in my opinion faster than that of XP. Explorer 7 seems to have increased my browsing speed. I would definitional if you are not running XP pro. If you are running XP pro go with the Ultimate version.
I was in thailand on january 28th and they had a version of Vista already with serial and time crack. The DVD came with every version of vista as well, and only three dollars for the thing. Gotta give credit to the pirates for working so quickly.
why cant i burn more then 29 song on my burn?
that on a m.p.3
I think because Microsoft did put in some special protection against copying and burning cd’s. which software are you using for burning. I did use Nero for about 1 month but in Vista beta version and I didn’t had any problem. Maybe this software will help you.
Microsoft did not put in any “special protection against copying and burning CDs.” You can rip any standard audio CD and burn any standard MP3 or unprotected WMA file and the only restriction is from the hardware and media size.
same problem. just installed on my hp.
michael says:
everytime i start my computer up and incompatibilty window comes up after i have installed my vista saying ati control panel has compatibilty issues. how do i fix this? i have a radeon express 200 on my computer.
Microsoft did not put in any “special protection against copying and burning CDs.” You can rip any standard audio CD and burn any standard MP3 or unprotected WMA file and the only restriction is from the hardware and media size.