Upgrade to Premium or keep Basic?

Look, I never meant to offend anybody. All I am saying is that you CAN upgrade your Vista Basic to Premium after ordering online by simply calling dell customer service. If you don't want to get Vista Premium that is fine with me and with everyone else recommending it. Just don't ask us why you should get it, if you are not going to in the first place.

 

I read somewhere on the internet that.. Aero is faster because it's offloading most of the work to the 3D graphics card in your machine, this frees up the CPU to get on with other work. Once you switch to Vista basic the DWM shuts down and all drawing code is done by the CPU again (as it was on all previous versions of Windows) which has the net effect of slowing the machine down.

 

Home Basic have Aero as well.
Home Premium have Aero Glass
Home Basic have Aero Express


actually if you have Vista Basic and want Home Premium, just use that Dell automated OS disk request form and seems like they ship out Vista Home Premium

 

All I see in there is one somewhat confusing slide which can be interpreted either way IMO, and would contradict everything else Microsoft says.

No, it can't. Not even close. You CAN NOT do that type of feature decently without a modern compositing engine like Quartz/Aero.

Microsoft DIDN'T add any equivalent to Expose, I'm just saying versions of Vista that include Aero (or hte full Aero, or whatever you want to call it-the actual 3D engine) COULD do Expose-like features. Is it "necessary". Well no. It's also not "necessary" to have a GUI, it's not "necessary" to use a computer at all. It is however a great modern interface change that's only possible with a modern engine like Quartz/Aero.

Why would you need transparancy when a window is maximized? I haven't used it enough to see all the sublties of how this is being done, but regardless Aero is *NOT* turning off when you maximize a window.

The point to having them translucent is presumably to see other windows around it more easily, which is a moot point if you've only got one window taking up the whole screen. It would be kind of annoying IMO to still see background stuff when you specifically maximized a window to STOP seeing background stuff.

Or as Offbase puts it:

 

It "seems" that's no guarantee..

 

doesn't premium give you aeros? that's worth it to me.

or you can hunt for a copy of vista ultimate. people on the internet do like to share...

 

I think its pretty clear from Microsft's presentation, Home Premium have Aero Glass, Home Basic have Aero Express.

Why do you keep saying XP can't do whatever Expose does. That powertoy does exactly that, minus the transition animations. How is that not even close.

Aero is not automatically turned of when you maximize a window, the Glass effect is thus making Aero Glass look identical to Aero Express.

 

I understand now. As someone said, I thought Aero WAS the transparency option; It's just the glass effect that disappears when a window is maximized, not Aero.

For me, a laptop's aesthetics is of huge importance. I was simply disappointed that the transparency effect does not continue on with the taskbar nor when the window is maximized.

It might not be a "good enough" reason to get Premium, but I'm pretty sure a lot of us were under the impression that the glass effect was consistent and thus was one of the most differentiating aspects of Premium.

 

I already own 2 copies of XP Pro, so I'm after the Vista Premium, well ... cause Aero looks really swell. Pricewise they are about the same cost, so why not start dabbling with Vista?