Vista Home Basic - $199USD ($99 Upgrade)
Home Basic is the runt of the litter, but in all honestly it's not as bad as Microsoft wants you to believe. Yes, it's virtually a scaled down version of Vista, but it's not lacking anything that will not make it function as a normal machine. This is not the Starter edition we are dealing with, after all. Here is a quick run-down of what Basic does not have when compared to the Home Premium which costs $40 more.
* Home Basic vs. Home Premium No Aero interface, including transparency in many parts of the GUI
* No Media Center
* Five included Windows games, instead of nine
* No automatic network backup
* No relationship between PC and Xbox 360
* No advanced slideshows
* No Movie Maker / DVD Maker
* Weak Tablet PC functionality
* No SideShow Support
Vista Home Premium - $239USD ($159 Upgrade)
As I mentioned in my article on Monday, I believe Home Premium will be the most obvious choice when looking to pick up a copy of Vista. When you pay $40 dollars more for Premium over Home Basic, you will actually have something to show for it. Home Premium includes all of the "losses" mentioned in the previous section, but when compared to Ultimate, here's what you will be missing.
* Home Premium vs. Ultimate No advanced complete system backup tool
* Small business apps, such as Fax and Scan
* No Ultimate "extras", which could include games and special utilities
* No BitLocker hard drive encryption software
* No automatic "Shadow" copies of your documents
* No Remote Desktop
* No advanced group policy editor
* Inability to run UNIX-based applications (through SUA)
* No support for dual CPU's (2 physical processors) or 128GB of memory
Vista Business - $299USD ($199 Upgrade)
I don't think it takes much of an explanation as to what audience this edition is catered to. Included here are a lot of business resources, including better security and the complete system backup tool that I've come to enjoy quite a bit. It does lack a lot of extra functionality that's included with Home Premium and Ultimate though, which is a good thing in a sense. Here's what Business lacks when compared to Home Premium and Ultimate.
* Business vs. Home Premium/Ultimate No games, not even Solitaire *
* No Media Center or Xbox 360 functionality
* No BitLocker hard drive encryption software
* No Ultimate "extras", which could include games and special utilities
* Inability to install new languages for use in Windows
* No Movie Maker or DVD Maker
* No Parental Controls
* Inability to run UNIX-based applications (through SUA)
* Stephen G. writes in: "Vista Business does come with all the normal games, it just does not install them by default. You can add them via the Add/Remove Windows components part of the control panel."
Vista Ultimate - $399USD ($259 Upgrade)
The only version larger than Ultimate is Enterprise, which is like the Business edition on crack. It includes various hardware based security measures to assure for good uptime. Ultimate is the version you will want to consider should you think $400 is not a lot of cash to hand over for a new OS. Below, you can see the list of what Ultimate -does- include, which Home Premium, the next competitor, does not.
* Ultimate's Advantages Ultimate "extras", which could include games and special utilities
* BitLocker hard drive encryption software
* Advanced complete system backup tool
* Windows Media Center with Xbox 360 capabilities
* Same business apps as included in the Business edition
* Automatic "Shadow" copies of your documents
* Remote Desktop
* Advanced group policy editor
* Ability to run UNIX-based applications (through SUA)
* Support for dual CPU's or 128GB of memory
* Encrypting File System (EFS) support
* Support for resyncing files for getting work done while offline
