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Windows Vista Upgrade - What to Watch Out For
by Dean Chafee
With the with the final release of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007, you may be
wondering if your computer is "Vista Ready". This article is designed to point
out a few potential pitfalls.
Much of the WOW factor surrounding Vista is the new graphics capabilities called
Aero with glass like effects and themes. Aero also supercharges your task switching
with Flip33D. This all sounds cool and looks great, but can your existing computer
hardware support it? Find out by running Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.
Upgrade Advisor
You can download the
Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
from the Microsoft web site and run it on your existing computer to produce a
comprehensive report of how well Vista will be supported. This is actually a
very nice tool that does an excellent job of scanning, reporting and helping you
to choose which edition of Vista (flavor) is right for you and your computer.
This should be your first step if you are considering an upgrade to Vista on
your existing computer. However, here is the first pitfall. If you currently run
Windows 2000 or anything older, the Upgrade Advisor is not supported.
No upgrade path from Windows 2000
Here is my first gripe with Vista. If you are currently running Windows 2000,
there is no upgrade offered to Vista. You must purchase the full version of
Vista. As mentioned above, you can not even run the Upgrade Advisor to find out
if your hardware will support Vista. This to me is an outrage and, in my humble
opinion, a big mistake of the Microsoft marketing department.
You would think that they would allow you to run the Upgrade Advisor tool and
have it let you know that you would need to purchase the full version, then
still report on your hardware support for Vista. So, what are your options?
Well, option one is to upgrade your Windows 2000 computer to XP, run Upgrade
Advisor, evaluate your options and choose your Vista upgrade.
Option 2 is to manually analyze your current computer hardware based on the
requirements from Microsoft, decide on a flavor of Vista, purchase the full
version and go for it. Either way, Microsoft has made this difficult and costly.
Flavors of Vista - Picking the Right Edition
There are a total of six flavors of Vista to choose from... yes six. The top two
are for enterprise customers and require volume license agreements. For home and
small business, there are four flavors to choose from. They are Starter, Home
Basic, Home Premium, and Business. I will not go into detail of each flavor so
please look up a comparison chart to choose the one that is right for you.
I will however, let you know that only the Home Premium, Business and Enterprise
editions contain the Aero Glass graphics support. If you are able to run the
Upgrade Advisor tool, it is the best method to choose the correct edition
because it will match each edition to your hardware capabilities and guide you
on upgrades that may be needed.
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