Experiences with Vista Basic

My Vostro 1400 shipped today so I should have it Monday. I was only able to get Vista Basic on it (couldn't upgrade to Vista Premium). I have an XP Pro disc lying aroung so I could wipe out the Vista install and just do a clean install of XP Pro. What's everyone's experiences with Vista Basic. Should I just give it a try for a while and see what I think? I'll be using this laptop to do photo editing with Photoshop...any suggestions?

 

It's crap, stay with XP

with Basic all the small advantages Vista had over XP are gone, just the bloaty slowness remains

 

Did they not let you upgrade to Premium? I think I'd do CSR roulette until I found someone who would let me. Many others on this forum seem to have been successful with getting a Premium upgrade.

 

Well...it looks like I lost at roulette... I must have spoken to 5 or 6 CSR's and had online chats with two more and it was a no go with all of them. Each and everyone told me that Home Premium was not an option. I even spoke with one of their supervisors and was told the same thing. I tried this all through the time my 1400 was in production. Oh well...I guess I'll be better off with XP.

I do have another question though. I also have a copy of XP Media Center Edition lying around. Would this be a better choice than XP Pro??

 

XP MCE pretty much is XP Pro with the media center extras.

 

Well, I also went with Basic and will give it a shot. I really believe that the only differences between it and Premium is the Aero fanciness (oooooo glass!), Media Center (That I don't need), and I believe that Premium supports more Ram than Basic (8gb vs. 16gb?) Something like that.... If I hate it? XP here I come! (again!)

 

make it dual boot

 

lmao I got xp home with my vostro 1500...I checked online for the differences between it and pro, and I wasnt convinced that I'd use any of those extra features. Plus I saved like $60, and thats the most important thing for me

 

Vista Basic is quite possibly the worst OS ever created, it's bull**** that they even made it.

It makes Windows ME look good.

 

Well, maybe I'll upgrade...idk, I just don't see me ever using the Premium features... Just seem like resource hogs...

 

its no different from Vista Home Premium actually, the only things are you missing is semi-transparent taskbars(which only appears when nothing is full screened,, so don't work 90% of the time) and Media center(stupid useless software, I'd rather use explorer to find my media files)

Basic does have Aero, just not Aero glass(the semi-transparent thing that works 10% of the time)

 

Aero glass is pretty stupid actually, its only active when nothing is full screened, so if you want to see semi-transparent taskbars, better keep your browser, your word document, your adobe etc all in a window.

theres no difference in RAM, both only support up to 4gb(both are 32bit)

 

Thanks everyone for the opinions. I think I'll just hose my Vista Basic and install XP Pro. I'm assuming I'll just have to grap some drivers from Dell's site?

 

Ah, I was probably thinking of the 64bit versions...

 

Getting Premium on a 1500 was no problem when I tried with Dell. I just called up, ask for it, paid $29 and got it. Getting Premium on a 1400 was impossible for me in ~6 hours on the phone with Dell (mostly on hold). At that point I just gave up trying, so my 1400 will show up with Vista Basic on it. I have an unused XP Pro license, though I suspect I will just stick with Basic on the 1400. Vista Basic is not that bad anyway, there is a lot of misinformation on it.

Other than copycat "BASIC SUCKS" reasons, why do you want to use XP Pro instead of Home Basic? What features from XP Pro will you lose in Basic?

 

That really blows. I was really hoping to be able to get Premium on a 1400. I guess it must be official policy to allow it on the 1500 but not 1400, but it's still really odd IMO.

 

it might not be as easy as you think...... to install XP, you'll need to slip-stream sata drivers to install the disc... then you'll need to find the appropirate drivers for xp

 

did you ever use ME? basic is much better than ME.

 

Some people were able to get Premium on a 1400 so its worth a shot.

 

Home Basic looks no different from Home Premium. Aero Glass is turned off automatically whenever you maximize anything

 

This shows some features only in Home Premium and above: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/footnotes.mspx

This is the comparison of each edition, showing how little Basic has: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

 

Most of the software out there (specially the ones used for academic purposes) are not comptabile with Vista. But, unfortunately my 1400 does come with Vista Basic.
I'll leave no stone unturned to put XP on it