Product Description

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1 Upgrade

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1331 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 66I-02388
• Released on: 2008-03-19
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Windows Vista
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• User-friendly software combines the features of Windows Vista Home Basic with even more impressive and user-friendly capabilities
• Features Windows Aero, an efficient and visually stunning interface that makes it easier to accomplish multiple tasks at once by providing a three-dimensional, real-time, animated view of all of your open applications, and documents
• By integrating search throughout the operating system, helps you quickly find and organize large collections of documents, pictures, movies, videos, and music
• Includes Windows Tablet and Touch Technology that enables you to interact with your Tablet PC-compatible computer with a digital pen or your fingertip instead of having to use a keyboard
• Includes all of the Windows Media Center capabilities for turning your PC into an all-in-one home entertainment center; enjoy music, photos, and DVD movies

Amazon.com
Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (Upgrade) is the preferred edition for home desktop and mobile PCs. It provides a breakthrough design that brings your world into sharper focus while delivering the productivity, entertainment, and security you need from your PC at home or on the go.

Compare Windows Vista editions.

Use Instant Search to quickly find the information you need. View larger.

Windows Vista Aero provides spectacular visual effects such as glass-like interface elements that you can see through.

The redesigned Windows Media Center in Windows Vista lets you enjoy your media throughout your home, even on your Xbox 360. View larger.

Improved Reliability and Performance
Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 and improvements delivered by hardware and software partners increase the reliability, performance, and compatibility of Windows Vista-based PCs.

With Windows Vista with SP1, many of the most common causes of operating system crashes and hangs have been addressed. Windows Vista includes new, innovative technologies that help pinpoint and diagnose issues reported anonymously by Windows Vista-based PCs from millions of users who have elected to have their PC send us system information.

Windows Vista with SP1 supports a number of important new technology standards, so it will keep making your PC easier and more enjoyable to use for years to come.

Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 delivers more ease of use, security, and entertainment to your PC at home and on the go.
Here it is: the preferred edition of Windows for home desktop and mobile PCs. Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 delivers the productivity and entertainment that you need from your PC at home or on the go. It includes Windows Media Center, which helps you more easily enjoy your digital photos, TV, movies, and music. Plus, you'll have the peace of mind of knowing that your PC has a whole new level of security and reliability. All together, Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 redefines enjoyment in home computing.

It starts with a breakthrough design that makes your PC easier to use every day. With Windows Aero, you'll experience dynamic reflections, smooth gliding animations, transparent glass-like menu bars, and the ability to switch between your open windows in a new three-dimensional layout. Instant desktop search capabilities, coupled with powerful new ways to organize and visualize your information, means you can instantly find and use the e-mails, documents, photos, music, and the other information you want, when you need it.

Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 also helps keep your personal information, your PC, and your family computing experience safer than in previous versions of Windows. For example, Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista includes automated defenses against malicious software and fraudulent websites so you can use your PC online with greater confidence. Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 also provides automatic backup of your files, such as your valuable digital photos, music, movies, documents, and other files, so you can relax and focus on the things you care about most. And, by using the built-in parental controls, parents can help ensure their children's computer use is appropriate and safer.

And what about fun? A major advance in Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 is the dramatically improved digital entertainment experience. Windows Media Center makes organizing and enjoying photos, music, DVDs, recorded TV, and home movies easier and more fun. Enjoy the entertainment on your PC or even on your TV in the living room with an Xbox 360 wirelessly networked to your PC. Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 makes it easier to burn your photo slide shows and home movies to a professional-looking video DVD that your friends and family can watch on a DVD player or PC whenever they like. Combined with unbeatable support for gaming and music, Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 delivers a complete home entertainment experience.

If you want a PC that can keep up with you while you're on the go, then you'll appreciate how Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 helps you get the most from your mobile PC. It provides simplified power management, easier wireless networking, and streamlined ways to sync with the devices that keep you connected. Because it's incredibly flexible, you can even draw and write by hand on a Tablet PC, and enjoy all of your entertainment through Windows Media Center when you're on the road, in a coffee shop, or relaxing on the couch. Mobile computing has never been like this before.

Finally, Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 makes it easier than ever to set up and maintain your new PC. There are new features that make it easier to transfer all of your data and settings from your old PC to your new one and technology that helps keep your system running quickly and reliably over time.

Whether you're balancing your checkbook, studying for school on your mobile PC, watching a downloaded or recorded movie at home, or sharing your favorite photos with friends on a custom DVD, the experience is much better on a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1.

Windows Sidebar gives you quick access to gadgets like picture slide shows, Windows Media Player controls, or news headlines. You pick the gadgets you want to see in Windows Sidebar. View larger.

Use Flip 3D to navigate through open windows using the scroll wheel on your mouse. View larger.

Safety
Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 helps protect your family and your personal information from threats from malicious software and phishing scams and helps you keep your PC backed-up and running smoothly.

Parental Controls help parents keep children safer while using PCs through convenient tools to manage and monitor children's computer use, access to websites, and ability to play certain games and use certain applications.

PCs running Windows Vista are 60% less likely to be infected with viruses, worms and rootkits than PCs running Windows XP SP2.

Windows Internet Explorer 7 helps protect your PC and your personal information against malicious software, fraudulent websites, and online phishing scams. New phishing attacks are more than 25 times as common as new viruses, and over 20,000 fraudulent phishing websites are created every month. Internet Explorer 7 is now blocking nearly one million inadvertent attempts to access fake phishing sites per week.

Help defend your PC against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software with Windows Defender. Windows Defender in Windows Vista automatically scans Internet Explorer 7 downloads to help bring spyware to your attention before it can infect your computer.

More easily back-up the content on your PC--including digital photos, music, movies, and documents--with Scheduled and Network Backup.

Entertainment
Windows Vista with SP1 is more entertaining. With Windows Media Center, you can enjoy your digital photos and music on your TV as well as on your PC. And it can turn your PC into a digital video recorder, so you can record TV and watch it on your schedule, not theirs.

Sit back and enjoy recorded TV, photos, music, home videos, games and DVDs from the comfort of your couch with Windows Media Center.

Access and project your TV, music, photos, and movies to any room in your house using an Xbox 360 console connected to your wired or wireless home network. It's like having your Media Center PC wherever you have an Xbox 360!

Author and burn movies, photos, and music to DVDs you can play on your PC or a DVD player with Windows DVD Maker.

Live the game! It's easier for you to find, play, and manage your games with GAMES EXPLORER. Games Explorer provides detailed information including when you last played, game genre, and rating of your games. With DirectX 10, play vivid and engaging games with unrivalled realism. Also, use the same game controller with both your PC and your Xbox 360 system.

Ease
It's easier and faster than ever to find, use, manage and share the information on your PC or on the Web with Windows Vista with SP1.

Most Windows Vista-based PCs boot in less than a minute, which can be an improvement over Windows XP boot times.

The Windows Vista sleep and resume features can bring your PC to life in a snap. The vast majority of Windows Vista-based PCs resume from sleep in less than six seconds.

See everything you're working on more clearly with Windows Aero and quickly switch between windows or tasks using Windows Flip 3D.

Find it fast! Simply type something about a file, picture, or song, such as a word contained in a document or e-mail message, the artist of a song, or the date a picture was taken, and Instant Search will bring back any matches instantly.

Organize a lifetime of photos and movies with ease using Windows Photo Gallery. Tag your photos by date, keyword, star rating or any identifying label you choose--so you can find them anytime you want them.

Display live information, like weather, stocks, and news, directly on your desktop with easy-to-use Gadgets and Windows Sidebar.

View multiple web pages simultaneously with Quick Tabs in Windows Internet Explorer 7.

Get up and running faster than ever with Windows Easy Transfer that automatically copies your files and settings from your old PC.

Mobility
With special features to help you go mobile, Windows Vista with SP1 makes computing and connecting away from home or the office easier than ever.

Work the way you want with touch and digital input and handwriting. Tablet and Touch Technology makes your notebook PC experience truly personal.

Set up a wireless network at home with Network and Sharing Center--so you can experience the freedom of working virtually anywhere in your home. Then easily find and join a wireless network at your favorite hotspot--so you can stay productive wherever you go.

Optimize your power and mobile settings centrally with Windows Mobility Center.

Easily sync and manage your music, contacts and pictures across your devices and other PCs with Sync Center.

Share your desktop or any program with Windows Meeting Space. Co-edit documents, and pass notes in class, a favorite hotspot, or where no network exists.

Customer Reviews

Stick with trusty XP! This product is shocking
I wrote a review of Vista not long after I started using it. I gave it two stars and suggested that while it's not worth replacing XP with Vista as there are a few annoyances, chiefly the lack of some of XP's best features, Vista isn't too bad. I am not a Microsoft basher, as I think XP is an excellent operating system. I've now realised just how good it was after a few months with Vista. I have wasted more time sorting out problems in Vista in two months than I did during the seven years I had with XP. It is fair to say that I now hate this OS to the point that it turns me into a kind of Basil Fawlty with Tourette's more often than not. My shiny new laptop has the imprint of my fist following a time when Vista just pushed me too far. Therefore I have deleted my original review and replaced it with this new one.

Let's start with Vista's good points. It looks marvellous, with its transparent windows and 3D effects. There is a display pane which gives you an overview of the contents of many file types without you having to open them. The sounds that herald failures or errors are far less annoying than those in XP. The colours are lovely too. And, er... that's it, unless you're the kind of computer user that enjoys spending hours and hours solving OS problems. If so, you'll have a field day here.

I'll start with the minor irritations, in no particular order.

Searching in XP was easy. You typed in the name of a file, specified your search criteria and you always found your file if it existed. Alas, Vista is very different. Search is done by indexing, which means that although the searches are faster your initial search won't find files in all but the most obvious locations. You can index every file on the computer of course, but this takes ages, uses a lot of space and (I am told) slows the computer down. There is an option for searching non-indexed files but you can't do this until you've done the indexed search first. Even then I have found search results to be unreliable. I would bet that people use Search to find system files rather more than they do to find a letter (it's likely to be in Letters, right?). Worse still, Service Pack 1 removed Search from the Start menu, and you have to download third-party programs or do a registry tweak to get it back.

There is no Network Connections folder - one of XP's more useful features was this folder where you could check and modify your internet connections all in one place. You can get it back, but it also involves a registry tweak.

Windows Update in XP installed the majority of the updates while the computer was running. Vista does this on shutdown and startup - which means that if updates have downloaded and you do a restart you can wait over 10 minutes to get your computer running again.

XP had a facility to associate a particular icon with certain file types. Not Vista - you have to download a third-party program to do this.

Screensavers often don't work properly.

In XP you were given useful information when you copied files, for example which particular file was being copied at any particular time. Vista doesn't do this, it just gives you a progress bar and a time estimate which is usually wildly inaccurate. Copying is painfully slow, too.

Say goodbye to Outlook Express - with Vista you get Windows Mail. It is similar to OE and indeed has some improvements, but whereas OE used your spell check from Word, Windows Mail only has a choice of 4 languages and the English option only allows for US English. I am not one of those Brits who gets sniffy about US spellings - they're just as valid as British spellings - but for work I need to use British English and get fed up with having to tell it that "realise", "marvellous" and the like are NOT wrong.

Unexpected shutdowns, freezes and the dreaded "not responding" are far more common than they were in XP. At least with XP you could, as a last resort, pull the plug and XP was savvy enough to recover from it. Do this with Vista and more often than not you'll have to wait while Vista repairs itself - admirable in one way, but it created the flipping problem itself!

I've gone on too long already, but please indulge a little further. I would like to describe how Vista ruined my computer today. I tried to copy a large collection of files from one folder to another. Halfway through the OS froze and stopped responding. I managed to restart - same thing. I mirrored this on my XP computer and there was no problem. Third time lucky...not quite. Halfway through the copy Vista froze and all the screen icons disappeared. No way to get Task Manager so I had to pull the plug. Vista then spent hours repairing itself on restart. Eventually I moved the files in small batches. Then I wanted to transfer some of these to DVD and got an error half way through. Another freeze - no way to restart normally so another unwanted switch off with the off button. Since then Vista refuses to start at all - any attempt to do so generates an error or just sits there halfway through startup. Somehow it has corrupted the hard drive and I am now waiting for those nice people at Dell to send me a new one.

There are worse things in life than OS problems, I know that all too well. But if you want to save yourself a lot of hassle, time and stress, stick with XP as long as you can. It sounds like Microsoft have already recognised that this shoddy product is a disgrace and if you're lucky, there will be a better OS (or at least a decent revamped version of Vista) before you are forced to change OS.

Thank you for listening.

Views of a web programmer
I am a web programmer and owe my career to Microsoft products. I have to be on the leading edge (or bleading edge) so I know what my clients will want in the years to come. For me, upgrading to Vista wasn't an option -- I had to do it.

OK, let's not confuse upgrading to Vista with upgrading Office 2003 to Office 2007. Upgrading Office is a huge change but upgrading your operating system to Vista isn't providing that the following is true:
1) You have a fast computer (like one made in the last two years)
2) You have a fast video card (and I mean fast -- like for gaming)
3) You have a to have a lot of memory (4GB is, in my opinion, the minimum)

If you don't need the multi-media features, then stick with Vista Home Basic or just stay with XP. If you have a bunch of pictures, videos and music then Vista Home Premium is the way to go. If you are running a small business, then Vista Small Business is a better choice because it allows you to create a backup of your entire disk (which none of the home versions allow -- WTF?).

Aero is pretty cool; but, if that's your only reason to upgrade then save your money. The real bang-for-the-buck is Windows Media Center. Let's say you have a Sony PS3 on the same subnet (your home network) as your Vista Home Premium computer. The PS3 sees your Vista computer as a Media Server. That's really cool because you can watch videos, listen to music and view photos on your HDTV with no additional cabling. The only trick is to load all of you media into the \users\public area and not into your machine-specific user account.

The cons:
1) You need a fast computer with tons of memory and a fast video card
2) Windows 7 is coming in a few months (but is uses the Vista engine). It's already out in beta format but I don't install beta products. When It's released for real, I'll write another review.
3) Vista asks you to confirm everything operation at least three times -- sometimes more. The repetative nature of this process kind-of defeats the purpose because Vista asks you to Confirm, Accept, Agree, Install, Run, etc. so often that you just fall into the bad habit of saying "yes" to everything. Once I say "Go" then just do it and stop asking me questions.
4) Adminstrator access is diffferent than XP. Even if your account has Administrative rights, you have to "Run as Administrator" things like CMD.EXE to perform many functions (like ipconfig). If you don't understand this statement, then this doesn't apply to you and don't worry.
5) There are backward-compatibility issues. If you have any third-party software (e.g. not made by Microsoft), then make sure it is Vista-compatible or be prepared for probable problems. There's an XP compatibilty mode but my experience using it has not been good. Basically, if it doesn't work in Vista, it won't work in XP compatibility mode.

All things considered, I like Vista in the home despite the shortcomings. I don't know of a single business that uses Vista -- and they probably never will. At this point, I would just wait for Windows 7 which should be released late in 2008 or early in 2009. I already have access to the beta version of Windows 7 but haven't installed it yet. Windows Server 2008 is going on my dual xeon server this week. Vista Ultimate is on my laptop and one desktop. I still have an old Dell with XP. Vista is pretty good but far from great. XP works and Vista just doesn't measure up.

I just upgraded two computers to Vista Ultimate since I get it for free with my MSDN subscription. I don't really see any tangilble difference except I can do backups -- woohoo!

I'll be putting Windows 2008 Server on (strangely enough) my dual xeon server this week. I've heard good things about Windows 2008 even though it uses the Vista engine. I'll review that product seperately.

Like being sadistically tortured
Windows Vista takes everything that has ever been fun under Windows XP and attempts to make it impossible. You liked being able to use multimedia under XP? Forget that!

The software vendors (RIAA and MPAA) have been screaming & suing the last eight years because canny computer users are pirating their products. Vista is Microsoft's way of throwing them a bone. It imposes crippling DRM all over your machine, degrades the viewing experience of HD video, and rats out the contents of your hard drive to the Mother Ship so that the RIAA and MPAA can spy on you and start sending you lawsuits if there's anything on your hard drive that might have been pirated.

Boot-up time is much, much slower, and the bloatware of this OS causes your hard drive light to come on and stay lit. I'm running this turkey on the latest dual-core machine with 2 gigs of RAM and a fast video card, and it still chokes and sits there like a dead rat, as it spins the hard drive and thinks about maybe responding to a mouse click. And then it pops up the security windows and asks if you think that you should be doing what you just tried to do. No information as to whether or not you've just clicked on an attachment that might be installing a Trojan or Keylogger. Just an annoying window that pops up that means you have to click an extra time.

Oh yeah - and here's another fun feature. If you buy into the hype that Windows actually is trying to make it easy for you to work with the wonderful world of multimedia, that is a BIG FAT LIE. Vista is designed to make it frustrating and impossible for you to 1) capture video (the system resource hog means many dropped frames and bombed-out sessions), 2) edit video (the DRM settings are so arcane and hidden that to turn on the setting that allows you to display full HD video in your editing program takes 4 (four) days of work on the Windows forums to figure out, 3) encode and compress video and most of all 4) upload and share video.

If you have any dreams or designs on being a multimedia content producer, Windows Vista is not for you. You cannot use this OS to do what you need to do to earn a living. It will not allow you to create video content. It will degrade the signal if you do manage to create the content so that the video that you see on the screen, and the video that you turn in to your clients are radically different. Your clients will ask you what happened, and you will not have a good answer.

If you travel, and try to work with clients in other countries, as I have, Windows Vista will try prevent you from logging on to the internet. You will come to know the Network and Sharing Center. It will be your new home. You will struggle and scream over all the settings you will have to know about there. Nothing will work. You will thrash and re-start and re-boot for hours. Imagine the fun! Finally, you will find out that some obscure security setting is at fault, one that is not documented in any appreciable way. And then, the next time you turn on your computer, you will have to go through this whole process all over again.