Microsoft Windows Vista Business UPGRADE [DVD] [OLD VERSION]

We purchased a compaq laptop with Vista Home on it for a great price. I'm MCP and A+ certified, so I felt an upgrade to Vista Business would not be a problem. This software did exactly what it was supposed to do. However, if you decide to perform an upgrade, be aware that some of the drivers may not be included in the upgrade. I spent a couple of hours with Compaq chat technicians to help me locate the drivers for the wireless network card, and about 4 other items that did not function after the upgrade. I expected this to occur, but felt it was worth getting the functionality for our network from Vista Business rather than staying with Vista Home. I briefly considered XP Pro, but having had experience trying to get a new OS platformed laptop to 'go backwards' to an old OS, I decided that staying in the Vista family was preferable. Another consideration when moving to Vista (especially from XP or W2K) are printer drivers. We had a terrific, newer HP all-in-one (copier, printer,fax) which lost its photo software after we moved from W2K to Vista. The copier/printer/fax operations worked, but I had no photo processing software and HP said they were sorry, but had no plans to provide a Vista version.

The product did not work with my system.
I don't know if I can return it.

I have XP running on a bootcamp partition on my MacBook and it is doing just fine. I spend most of my working time in Word, hardly ever using any of the other programs in the Office suite. However, I use the Adobe products Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator a whole bunch. Other than that I play solitaire, watch videos and, of course, use both Explorer and Firefox when I go online. That's about it for me, software wise, and XP handles it all without fail, without crashing and without giving me any headaches.

And I will miss it when I upgrade to Vista, however my machine can handle the upgrade, so I'm giving it a try.

Okay, I like the look and feel of Vista, however it's not as snappy as XP or even System X. I like the AERO bit, quite snazzy and one of the reasons my machine runs a bit slower, I suspect, however I'm loath to turn it off as it's so cool.

Word works fine and that's to be expected. My Adobe software runs well too. The browsers, no problem. I did have to upload a printer driver, but that only took a few minutes and I was good to go.

I've read a lot of reviews by people who are having problems with Vista and I'm getting the SP1 upgrade any day and I'll instal it, but I'm not experiencing the problems others appear to be having. Maybe because it's because I only use four or five programs on my Machine. I don't use iTunes or Windows Media as I still listen to my CDs the old fashioned way and only then if I don't have the phonograph record.

As an upgrade, this version just does not work. It hogs all the CPU power your system can put out. I wasted alot of man-hours on this version and regret buying it. I recently bought a new Mac Pro with 2 quad core Xeon CPUs, and tried installing vista on the Mac with Boot-Camp, and to my suprise, vista finally works. However most people do not have a Mac Pro, so again, I would say "don't WASTE your money". Either stick with XP, or buy a Mac.

My business software did not work with Vista and it is rigged to make it impossible or difficult to downgrade without buying a new Windows XP.

There are serious speed and compatability issues with Vista. Count on some of your software not running at all and if your computer is less than brand new it will probably slow dramatically as Vista is Processor and memory heavy.

No one therefore should be considering upgrading a less than brand new this year computer to Vista and would be putting their business at risk with compatability issues. Wait at least a year and check all of your hardware and software for compatability issues.