Vista Business or Vista Home Basic for a gamer/student?

I'll be buying my laptop soon, and it comes standard with Vista Business. I know nothing about Vista, I've never used it before. For $14 cheaper I can get Vista Home Basic. It says nothing about 32 vs. 64 bit, so I'll assume they are 32. I've looked at this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

But I would still like some suggestions. I'm going to be a grad student, but I'm also a big gamer. I want the most simple and low key OS possible. I hate extras, I like things minimal and function over form. I'll be watching movies on my laptop, but I won't be doing any photo/video creating/editing, I won't be using a TV tuner, or anything like that. I usually just download a program like the excellent VLC Media player to watch all videos of all formats.

So given those ideas, which OS would suit me better? Am I OK to stick with Business? Does that come with too many extras over Home Basic? Or vice versa?

 

Heres a better breakdown of Vista:



Whatever you do, dont be fooled by Vista Ultimate.

 

Actually, I would say stay with Vista Business. You'll get more Remote Desktop Capabilities, which is a huge thing for me (a student).

 

Without more to go on I cannot really advise you. Does your school require you to be able to join a domain? That, to me, is really the only defining reason to go with Business or Ultimate over Home Premium. I would be hard pressed to come up with any situation where I would recommend Home Basic.

 

Nope, I have no requirements like that. I can upgrade to Vista Home Premium for a price, but is it worth it? Like I said, I'm doing nothing special with this laptop. It will need to connect to the internet, run new and old games, play DVDs/video files, run some anatomy simulators, and have functional powerpoint.

Does Vista Business have a lot of extra features that will prevent me from utilizing the most of Vista or will effect performance in games?

 

Home Premium has Media Center (good for TV stuff mostly) and some OS games. Business has the capabilities to log into domains and act as a Remote Desktop Connection server.

The extra features in either will not really affect gaming, as most of them are turned off by default.

 

Compared to Basic, Business adds:
- Aero interface (transparent window borders, taskbar thumbnails, etc.)
- Previous versions (automated backups of your data files on the local drive in case you screw up and need to go back)
- Complete PC Backup (disk imaging) and scheduled backups
- Ability to join/log on to a Windows domain (corporate-type network).
- Ability to connect to your system remotely with Remote Desktop
- Snipping Tool (and tablet utilities)
- Fax and scan
- IIS web server (and FTP server)
- encrypting file system

Now... there are free equivalents for most or all of this stuff... but $14 isn't bad for the package... but it's up to you. As a student, you might get mileage out of the Previous Versions and/or Remote Desktop features... and I personally find Aero's Taskbar Thumbnails to be actually useful... but it's up to you.

I'm not aware of any multimedia-related differences between Basic and Business... you'd need to look at Premium and Ultimate for extra media features.

 

I usually recommend Home Basic, but $14 for an upgrade to Business is really cheap. It has some features that you may find useful, and perhaps more importantly, has the ability to downgrade to XP Pro if you find Vista not to be to your tastes due to compatibility or whatever else (which is more likely to occur if you are a gamer).

 

For $14 I would jump at the chance to get vista business. It's a $100 upgrade on many sites.

 

Do not get Vista Basic; it is a severely limited OS with all functionality stripped from it. It doesn't even have Aero. For $14, Business is definitely the way to go.

 

No, Basic isn't really all that limited. So what if it doesn't have Aero? Why don't people say that XP is severely limited because it doesn't even have Aero?

Sure, I think the extra features in Business is worth an extra $14, but... Basic has all the essentials, there's nothing really wrong with it IMO.

 

Vista basic will do fine for everything you listed in the first post. It's not a bad system at all. I have it on one of my laptops. It's great for surfing, office apps, watching Netflix movies, etc. I love that computer. If you Don't want aero or the snip it tool or media center, then it's just fine. Basic on a newer machine is as fast or faster than xp on an older machine.

However, for $14 you can future proof your machine. Just because you don't need to join a domain or use a remote desktop now, doesn't mean that next year you won't be offered a job that requires the ability to join a domain. The backup functions alone are worth the $14 (but not $100).

Aero is very easy to turn off and on. If you don't like it, just change it to look like vista basic or XP.

 

Basic isnt that bad. Its stripped bare so you just load it up full of freeware programs and you can make it nearly as good as home premium or even ultimate. There are some features you just cant get though, like domain user

 

I strongly disagree because, as a Linux user, I am accustomed to fresh installs having basic functionality outside of the purpose of the operating system; aside from serving as an interface between the user and the hardware. I think that operating systems should have more functionality out of the box. Vista on the whole has improved in this aspect, however its more basic versions have utterly no functionality to begin with. Having to go out and hunt for free programs one at a time is largely a waste of time, and brings UI inconsistencies and quality inconsistencies into the OS.

You didn't think I made that statement without a good reason, did you?

 

More than half of the programs you use are third party or needed to be installed anyway. Think about it (AV,Browser,utilities, etc). Out of the 10 programs im using right now, only 1 is by Microsoft (MSN messenger) which didnt even come pre-installed.

 

I use Vista Basic...and mine has more features than any average Premium or Ultimate user.

it depends on the user.

and ya ...i ve got a better aero than u

 

Me and Bog have ubuntu with compiz-fusion, keep dreaming

 

For most people, basic will suffice. Though , since I dont know much about how you are going to be using your computer I can give no other advice than to get vista business.

This is simply because the difference is only 14 bucks, and for some people home basic lacks some functions that are really important to them like remote desktop.

True, a lot of the functionality that you lose can be regained by using 3rd party software. But still, for 14 bucks you can ensure that you wont miss out on something you might want.

 

Also, if you resell the computer, it will be easier to find buyers for it with vista business on it. You will get more money back too.

 

Why is the XP downgrade only offered on Business and how does it work?

 

Downgrade was meant for people to be able to use XP until they were "ready" to switch to Vista, particularly business people who are used to XP. It's just a clever scheme by M$ to gradually force users to move from XP to Vista. They can't just cut off XP overnight, so instead they slowly stop selling XP. I would recommend you get Business. You don't really need media center (there are a lot of 3rd party applications that do the same thing).

 

Get Business.

Complete PC Backup rocks. <3

 

Vista basic has less features than XP home. It was solely created with the express purpose by Microsoft to help Intel offload surplus chipsets that failed to meet the minimum hardware requirements of Vista, and is a stripped down featureless O/S.
For a gamer Business is fine. The most important issues are the memory, cpu, and gpu. If you are seriously thinking of Basic, then seriously think about running xp home/pro instead.
For gaming you want:
at least a class 2 dedicated graphics card. card listing according to performance class
Minimum 2.0 Ghz core2duo processor or 2.0 Ghz AMD Athlon/Turion x2 (dual core)
4GB of RAM (Vista is harse on RAM. Anything less than 2GB will make gaming look like a slideshow)

 

Home Basic is a joke. Do NOT bother with it.