Inspiron 1420: Upgrade to Ultimate

So my university is offering free installs of Vista Ultimate, and I'm wondering if it's a good idea to upgrade my Home Premium system. Has anyone done that? Is Ultimate that much better than Home Premium? Even for someone who is spending most of his time on the computer editing photos and movies, and watching DVDs here and there..

I had also wanted to partition my hard drive.. reinstalling Vista would do that too right? However, would upgrading get rid of all the preloaded programs my computer originally came with?

 

Ultimate offers some added bonuses but the hassle it would take for you to upgrade i dont think is worth it.

 

...how are they offering free installs, not like I'd want them to but my College only gives you a disk...and it's only Business

 

You have to download the image from their server and then burn it to a DVD.

 

I just ordered my 1420, and am wondering the same thing. I have a Vista Ultimate 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs, and am wondering about upgrading from the Vista Basic I got on my 1420. First, I'm a little confused about installing 64-bit. I've found a little info on doing it with the 1420, but no definite answer on if I can, and how. Second, if I want to upgrade to the 32-bit version will I have to do a fresh install? I'd really like to be able to do just an upgrade from Basic to Ultimate, and keep all the drivers and software that ship with it installed. But if I have to do a fresh install it doesn't seem worth the hassle. Thanks for any help and suggestions.

 

Moving up to Ultimate from basic is a huge step but, unless you want different language abilities, additional security or the ability to backup your whole system, Ultimate is not that feasible just because the school offers it.

You can upgrade from basic to ultimate and keep all your settings.

 

For what you say you use your laptop for then theres no real point, its pretty much the same, you might aswell not bother with the hassle.

 

hassle? it would take about an hour at most...

 

I am personally using Ultimate right now
and frankly speaking, with all the features that comes with Ultimate, i never use it anyways. All the stuff I use comes on Home Premium, so i dont think it makes a big difference.

 

I agree given that I did it myself (premium to ultimate).....

You can simply upgrade in place.

That said, the earlier you do it, the less chance for issues.

BTW, for most users the upgrade to Ultimate at this point doesn't appear to add alot.

Note: ALWAYS back up all important data before any significant change.

-LQ

 

I was planning on doing it first thing right after I received my 1420. I'm glad to hear it's an easy upgrade that will leave all my drivers and pre-loaded software installed. I didn't want to hassle with reinstalling all the drivers.

 

It took me a couple hours to install Ultimate with all the drivers. Not a big deal at all. I did not back up the data first as the laptop was only a couple days old. Anyway, all the user files are kept in the Windows.old folder.

 

yes upgrade it !

My upcoming 1420 will not even survive the first Vista Home boot. It is going to Ultimate right away.

You'll get the media center, and bit locker encryption out of it. Maybe useless for you now, but it doesn't hurt to have them

Go for it dude. Its a more expensive OS...

 

I did an upgrade to Ultimate over Home Premium, and it messed up my bluetooth settings with my cell phone. Under HP from the factory, my phone was recognized for ftp, modem, etc. via bluetooh, but after the upgrade, only the modem feature was detected. Reinstalling the Dell bluetooth software may have worked, but I ended up doing a clean install + Dell drivers to get rid of the recovery partition which seemed to no longer be accessible from the boot-up options after upgrading (the files were still there, though).

 

Did you pair your phone with the Dell before performing the upgrade to Ultimate? I'm planning on installing Ultimate first thing before I do anything else to my 1420. I wonder if that will cause less or no problems.

 

what are the advantages and disadvantages to upgrading to ultimate? My college also offers ultimate for free.

 

You can see a comparison of the 4 different versions here. The Remote Desktop and Windows DVD Maker are the two things I would like to have the most. I use Remote Desktop frequently, and just used the Windows DVD Maker for the first time yesterday. I was very pleased with the results of Windows DVD Maker.

 

Yes, I paired the phone before the upgrade, and afterwards it only listed the modem protocol as an option.