Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic FULL VERSION [DVD] [OLD VERSION]

Customer Reviews

HATE IT WITH A PASSION!!

2008-01-30
Oh my gosh! I hate Windows Vista. My laptop is brand new and it's a good quality laptop and it goes sooo slow! It will freeze with one program running! It takes forever to restart the computer, turn it off..anything I do it takes forever!! I literally sit here and wait for it to do normal things like open up the internet browser window! I have no good things to say about it at all! Sure it looks all nice and pretty but its horrible horrible horrible! I wished I would have read reviews about it before I bought my laptop so I would of known to get it with XP. I'm seriously considering wipping Vista off completely and installing XP. Everyone I've talked to that has it hates it. I haven't heard of anyone that likes it! I gave it way too much credit for giving it one star but it made me.

Whatever you do, DON'T "upgrade" to this pile of %&#@!!!!

2008-01-04
Pathetic performance, near-universal incompatibility with external applications and hardware, and nonexistent technical support; what more could anyone ask?

If you've got Windows XP on your computer already, KEEP IT THERE. If you're getting a new computer, you need to consider buying a Mac (like I eventually did). No amount of tinkering by Microsoft is going to make Windows Vista worth the effort of learning.

This is, without doubt, the techno-turkey of the decade.

Vista Difficulties

2008-01-01
I now have several experiences with this new OS on a number of platforms and can offer a bit of advice/experience from the perspective of someone often asked by friends and family to work on their computers. I generally prefer to build my own systems from parts. However, most of my experience below is on machines that were purchases - 2 HP systems and a Lenovo laptop. I'm still choosing XP when I can.

1. Don't assume things will work in Vista like XP. Driver incompatibility, and differences will slow you down -- budget mucho time to resolve these issues. For example, many cite driver and device incompatibilities, some virus and spyware programs work, and some don't. The mature members in my family use Juno over dial-up. Forget this in a web client -- dialup is way too slow. The Juno remote client that downloads email for off-line reading in XP doesn't work in Vista. Supposedly, one can configure Windows Mail to do this (Outlook is gone). However, I haven't had an opportunity to try it. I usually suggest taking them back to XP since the look and feel will be similar to what they've had on their Win 98 systems.

2. No matter how hot your box, Vista is slow to start and shut down. I recently worked on a Vista box having a Pentium quad core processor and 3 GB of ram. The system takes several minutes to start and shut down. Vista loads about 2x more resident processes than XP. On the same hardware that translates to about 2x as long for Vista v. XP.

3. Make the restore disks! My daughter's Lenova laptop running Vista stopped booting up. Lenovo service is pretty helpful (Cheers to them in NC)and we had no hardware errors- just a corrupted drive that had to be re-imaged because the onboard restore files were also corrupted. If we had made the restore disks when we first got the laptop, we could have fixed it ourselves from the backup. When you make them, the first disk has to be a CD, then the others should be DVDs or you'll have a huge number of restore disks. Its better to do this when you first get the computer. This is different from XP where I had the disks in hand (ie you don't have to create them).

Summing Up

Vista has a nice look and feel to it. I can navigate it OK from my XP experience, and we prob. will all have to live with it at some point. Understand that its slower than XP to start and shut down, and it may not be the best choice for everyone (esp mature users, those that are challenged). Budget lots of time to work out the incompatibilities and make the backup/resote disks asap!.

Best wishes!

It is not compatible with Windows XP! And, it uses too much resources!

2007-12-27
Windows Vista is horrible software. It should not even be called "Windows" because it is not based on Windows XP or 2000! While its graphical interface looks like XP's, Vista uses a different file system.

SO, NO SOFTWARE THAT WAS COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS XP OR WINDOWS 2000 WILL WORK WITH VISTA.

Not only that, but Microsoft chose graphics over functionality: Vista uses 500MB of memory just by itself. After adding Anti-Virus and other software, your computer's performance will grind to a halt.

Vista, the "new Coke" of Windows

2007-12-05
This is a horrible product!!!! I gave it one star only because I don't have the option of giving it no stars. It's extremely slow; I spend so much time looking at that stupid hourglass! And forget multi-tasking! With Windows XP, I could have at least 2 versions of Internet Explorer open at once, along with Excel documents, Word documents, etc. while listening to music on Rhapsody at the same time. Not possible with Vista. Vista is supposed to be more secure, but it's so secure that the person who owns the computer can't use it! Since I am the "computer administrator", I shouldn't have to ask myself "permission" every time I want to change a setting (this feature can be turned off by going to Control Panel, Security Center, Other Security Settings & turning off User Account Control). Also, any audio you listen to (CD's, DVD's, online streaming music) is choppy & sounds like a bad radio with static. Avoid Vista! It's like Windows Me all over again; a big disappointment and a huge mistake for Microsoft! The only "WOW" is when it actually works.

Vista is Working Fine for Me

2008-03-21
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.

Vista Basic: The closest Vista product to XP you can get

2008-03-03
Windows Vista Basic is worth purchasing for only a few reasons.
1) It is inevitable that at some point (though certainly not now), Windows will stop creating service packs for Windows XP.
2) Regardless of Vista's RAM-consuming ways, companies have shifted and will continue to shift away from creating software compatible with Windows XP towards software compatible with Windows Vista.
3) Vista Basic is, by far, the least RAM-consuming Vista product available. You might be able to run it without using half of your RAM idling. If you want a more advanced Vista, make sure you have a gigabyte or two of RAM to spare to actually do anything.

Anyways, if you use your computer for internet and simple Word/Excel/PowerPoint documents, don't bother switching to Vista. There's no point. If you like to stay on the cutting edge, get Vista, and stand in awe of its Mac-esque bubbly-ness and ability to do nothing while frying your system resources.

paranoid

2008-02-15
Vista finds everything strange and suspicious, even other microsoft products. Even word documents you wrote yourself will not load without permission being given by a supervisor (I forget the exact title they use) even when you are the only one who uses the computer. You have to do virus checks et al several times a day even if your computer (like mine) is not connected to the internet. It constantly runs programs without asking if you want them or telling you they are running. and then turning the computer off when the program you aren't using turns itself off. Although it is supposed to be compatable with XP programs, it crashes the computer 1/3 of the time if you try to load one. The ones it will run, run at half the screen size. Even programs on your hard drive are pronounced strange and unknown if you dare to try to use them.

All style, no substance

2008-02-07
Bought a new laptop that came with Vista basic on it. I used it for about 15 minutes before I gave up and wiped the hard drive and installed XP. The pointless animations on every menu push the CPU to it's limits, leaving nothing left for, say, internet browsing, or solitaire, for that matter. What especially bugs me is that Vista has such a resemblance to Mac OSX. If I wanted a Mac operating system, I would buy a mac. But no, I guess Microsoft feels threatened, and decided to blend in with the opposition. Well guess what, it didn't work.
Buy Windows XP instead, less flair, more function.

Not bad only if used on an Intel-Based Mac even then it's nothing speical

2008-02-03
I am a MAC user and Leopard walks all over Vista, however I used to run both OS's using my new Macbook Pro and I have grown to tolerate Vista somewhat since I now have a computer than runs Vista with out a hitch. A Hitch meaning I have resources left to do other things other than just run the OS. I choose to buy Home Basic becasue it has the features I was looking for In a Windows OS and allows me access to the windows only programs and games that I cannot access using Leopard. I read the features of all the versions of Vista available and Basic was the only one and chepest one I needed. Premium has extra features that don't mean squat, and Ultimate is used for business mostly with extra features and cash costs that I don't need. So for a Mac user with the new Macbook pro computing power, and the best OS out there (LEOPARD OS X 10.5) it's nice to be able to run windows when you need it (which isn't often using Leopard). Mac's have it all friends, and you can even run Vista better than a PC can. In my opnion Vista was made to run as a secondary OS under Leopard onca MAC that can actually handle it to give Mac users access to windows only programs.

Overall Windows Vista Home Basic although buggy and lame can run on a MAC at it's full potential which again doesen't measure up.

Likewise alot of reviweres have the complaint that Vista needs 2 GB of ram min. to run. My old laptop an Athlon 3500+ 1GB ram 80gb HD system (an XP laptop) loaded Vista Home Premimum easily and handled the OS fine right up until I sold it to buy a Mac. I have yet to see a failed Vista installation, or problems using the OS with systems that have 1GB of ram and less. Still for the best Vista experience, buy a MAC and dual boot or use paralleling software to run it with Leopard.

* Removed Windows Vista Partition, I have Home basic if I need it but for now using Leopard windows is redundant and annoying to upkeep having to download so many damn updates everyday just to run the OS.