Vista Home Premium Now, Upgrade Through Anytime Upgrade to Vista Ultimate

Got my son a Dell E 1505 laptop for college. He leaves in 3 weeks. It has Vista home premium, the school does not support Vista, but says he needs business or ultimate to work properly on the servers. I do not want business because he loses X Box stuff and a few other things, i was looking online at anytime upgrade. We do not have a disc for it. I noticed i can purchase a disc for $7.00 when i purchase the upgrade, then it has you download a file. Will i wait until the disc arrives and then do the upgrade?? Is it easy?? I am not good with computers, and i hope if this is the easiest way (the price at $170.00 is the least expensive). Will it just be installing disc, all very unclear, just want it to be easy and set up before he leaves for school..Thanks in advance!!

:crazy:

 

Why does your son feel he needs business or ultimate? The "enterprise" features of those are intended for corporate environments where machines are hooked into mail, database, and application servers, usually through a domain infrastructure. I seriously doubt the school is operating such an environment -- especially since you said that they don't support Vista.



The anytime upgrade is supposed to be a simple process of paying a fee, downloading a file, running the update, and upon an eventual reboot, you have the upgraded version. But honestly, I've not done this myself -- perhaps one of the other moderators has and can comment on this. I have done several different Vista installs and upgrades and not a single one went without serious problems of some kind.



Have you checked to see if there is a local warranty facility that will do the upgrade? At least that way, you would have an experienced tech doing the work -- which would minimize the possibility of problems.

 

I and my son would be happy to keep the Vista Home Premium, but the school said it will not work correctly on their servers (hard to believe), they said to get either ultimate or business.....It really stinks, but i wish i had the time to see how "badly" premium will work, is the upgrade thru anytime really problematic??? As i said i am not computer literate..Thanks again!:sick:

 

I find it a little hard to believe that Vista premium would not work with their networking, Its equal to XP Pro,I am quite sure most of the students are still running XP at the school, have him talk to other students and see what they are running....Vista is suppose to make the whole process easier...as far as upgrading since you already have Vista installed the upgrade should be trouble free..unlike upgrading from XP which can cause several issues..yours will be easy.....

 

Upgrading from Home Premium so to work on a network is the stupidest thing ive heard. Yes Home Premium doesn't have ALL the network stuff of Buisness (which in every other aspect is inferior) and Ultimate, but as mentioned before is equal to XP Pro network features.

I'd not bother upgrading. If it turns out somehow there is a problem (cant see why) then a anytime upgrade of the internet wul get the job done, taking an hour max to do. I have not done it myself, but the way M$ is pushing it I dont see why it wouldn't be easy to do.

Go on the microsoft website and look into anytime upgrade more, if your set to do it, just delay it untill you find that you do need to do it then pay the 100 bucks or so to upgrade.

 

It is possible that the school requires the PC to join a DOMAIN. Vista Home Premium cannot do this. Only the business and Ultimate versions of Vista can do it. In that one respect, Vista Home Premium is NOT equal to XP Pro. XP Pro CAN join a domain, XP Home Edition cannot.

Steve

 

Very true ... that's one reason why Vista Home Premium is not considered an "upgrade" from XP Pro. Also, Business has the builtin partition imaging feature that Home Premium lacks.

 

Can't join a Domain ? naturally it can, all versions it's only a name of a group of machines, even my home network has to be all on the same domain to work at all. The real problem is that up to and including 'premium' edition the home versions of vista can only form 'ad hoc' networks and what will be required by the school system will be a server\workstation system that premium cannot handle, it can join the domain but doesn't have the support for anything other than peer 2 peer networks which are uncomplicated. However if an individual was prepared to buy and install the software the server would otherwise provide there should be no reason why anyone could not join the domain on an 'ad hoc' basis, after all the entire internet works on this principal, networking seems to be made far more complicated than it actually is, by most people clearly the school's admin. are not as network savvy as they probably like to think they are.

 

If they say he needs it....there is no reason in fighting it or sending him off listening to everyone and when he gets there he really does NEED it. I agree completely that it sounds ridiculous and he "shouldn't" need to upgrade but I hate it when people try and fight so hard against something as big as a school (university i'm assuming?). Do what they say and feel better knowing you aren't sending your kid off to school with a piece of equipment that might not work.



The upgrade will be very easy and painless. I would wait to do any downloading of any sort until the CD arrives. It will come with very easy instructions and you'll be good to go

 

Perhaps it didn't come out as I had intended, I wasn't trying to empower the guy into fighting anyone. The problem is if such statements are left then other users who may not be tech. savvy will rely on it as factual, when it seriously is not, clearly not the posters fault as he is merely repeating the innacurate information he has been given in trying to find a solution to the problem.

I merely stated the facts about networking, yes I agree it is pointless fighting against Universities and the like 'cos they feel they know better, or in this case they just couldn't be bothered setting the infrastructure to cope with an array of connections which is pretty poor show. Somewhere there will be a student council or body to which such points can be put, forcing people (students or otherwise) to spend more than they need to comply with spurious rules is unforgivable. It just annoys me immensly when people quote 'system requirements' as the Uni has which has no basis in truth, so my response is really just a point of correcting a made up argument as to why something wont work. I think the poster deserves to know that whilst he might have no choice but to upgrade he should take what their 'IT' people say with a large pinch of salt in future.