This is, in essence, all of the above. Ultimate has all the features of the home editions, and business editions, and they're all ready to go out of the box. As such, this will likely be the one that every techie wants. It is, however, the most expensive, so it's unlikely to be the most popular version at retail.
- Pricing for the Ultimate edition is $399/$259 for an upgrade
One version I've not mentioned is the Vista Starter edition. This takes over from Windows XP Starter edition, a cut down version that is only distributed in certain regions ( classed by Microsoft as "emerging markets").
The idea is, a cheap Starter Edition will cut down on the huge numbers of pirated versions of Windows in certain countries. Starter will have less features than even Home Basic, and will not be sold in the USA or Europe regions.
Starter edition limits the number of concurrent applications (to 3), blocks incoming network connections, restricts RAM to 256mb, and only allows certain CPUs - only Intel's Celeron, PIII, and AMD's Duron, Sempron and Geode.
What's new?
The most obvious new features are those of the interface. The new Aero and Aero Glass interfaces have some new ideas, and the Glass version looks very pretty indeed.
Many people have said that the Aero interface is "borrowed" from OSX. That's not far from the truth, but for good reason: Apple know what a good interface should look like and after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That's not the whole story though. The new interface brings together some new underlying technologies, and empowers the user as a result.
A good example of this is the new search engine in Vista; Embedded into the Start Menu, the search system allows the user to quickly find and use applications and documents on their computer.
While we are talking about the user interface, we have to mention the completely overhauled Explorer. The new Explorer makes it easier to identify files and their type.
This is done by allowing the Explorer interface to change its presentation to best show the type of document or file you are looking at. Microsoft call this the Live Icon System. This allows Vista to generate a preview of the file, so if you are looking at an office document, you will get a preview of the material in it. Likewise for videos, where Vista renders a key frame as a preview.
Article comments
1 - Heather Ames
Great article, Ashleigh. Very informative. I at last feel like I have a grip on Vista's capabilities.
2 - Jet in Columbus
Ashleigh, I'd considered doing an article on this a few months back, but they kept changing requirements and capabilities and I figured by the time I finished researching it, it'd be outdated information.
Having said that, you presented a lot of useful info here. I personally have Internet explorer 7.0's final version and also I LOVE Window's hassle free Defender adn the newest media player.
I'd like to stress something here though. wait till you need a new computer and buy it preloaded.
With the new system requirements, the minimums aren't really going to cut it and to try to load Vista on a machine that's more than two years old in my opinion is folly, and it's better to buy one that's already configured and equiped (especially the 64x)to run it already.
Nicely done
Jet