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Windows Vista Ultimate & Marketing Falsehoods


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Old 07-14-2008, 07:50 PM
Jason Dunn
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Default Windows Vista Ultimate & Marketing Falsehoods

I was checking out an HP desktop computer because my latest Media Center computer upgrade is giving me a headache (more on that later today if I can manage to write about it), and I saw something that really frustrated me. It's not the first time I've seen it, but it's certainly one of the more glaring examples of it that I've seen:

That text is, for the most part, completely false. HP charges $190 USD extra to go from Vista Home Premium to Vista Ultimate. And if you were an average consume you might read that text and think "Yeah, ok, those things sound good, I'd better get Vista Ultimate." The problem is, that would be completely wrong. Let's break it down point by point:

  • "New Look"? FALSE. Vista Ultimate has exactly the same look as Home Premium.
  • "Instant Search"? FALSE. Vista Ultimate has exactly the same instant search features as Home Premium.
  • "Built-in Windows Media Center"? FALSE. Vista Ultimate has exactly the same version of Windows Media Center as Home Premium does.
  • "Automated Security Features"? FALSE. I can't think of a single automated security feature that Ultimate has that Premium lacks.

What should the differences be listed as? Faxing capabilities, Bitlocker Drive Encryption, and Remote Desktop. That's pretty much it. Consumers very likely wouldn't care about the first two, and the third is a power user feature that someone like myself uses - but hardly worthy of paying $190 for when there are free alternatives. Windows Vista Ultimate promised to be the "power user" version of Windows Vista, something that geeks would want because it would allow them to do more. Instead, Ultimate Extras turned out to be a sham - nothing they've released to date, even taken together, is worth the price of admission.

I can't blame Microsoft for the inaccuracies in the above text - it was likely written by an HP person who decided to falsify the features in Vista Ultimate in order to sell copies of Vista Ultimate and bump up the sell-through price of online orders. Microsoft should pull Vista Ultimate from the marketplace immediately, because if an OEM partner can't accurately define the additional features of Vista Ultimate, that's a pretty good indication that there aren't any worthy of having a completely different version of Vista. I believe Windows Vista is the best version of Windows that has ever been released, and I use it on the majority of my systems, but releasing Windows Vista Ultimate was a mistake and Microsoft should take steps to correct that mistake.

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Old 07-14-2008, 08:22 PM
alanjrobertson
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Very well put, Jason - I think Ultimate has been nothing short of a big marketing scam and the sooner it's pulled the better. Remember the Microsoft 'Plus Pack!' anyone?!

Alan
(still experiencing errors trying to install SP1 onto my Vista Ultimate box!)
 
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Old 07-14-2008, 08:45 PM
uzziah0
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It didn't really say (in the part you included) that it was comparing Vista Home to Ultimate; perhaps it was from XP to Vista? OR, maybe that's what they meant, because I think all those things are true for that comparison.
 
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:43 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uzziah0 View Post
It didn't really say (in the part you included) that it was comparing Vista Home to Ultimate...
The very first line of the graphic I screen captured says:

"This series comes with genuine Windows Vista Home Premium..."

So it seems pretty obvious what they're making the comparison to.
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:46 PM
Hooch Tan
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Good idea, poor implementation.

I wouldn't exactly blame Microsoft for an HP marketing rep for getting the differences between Vista Home Premium and Ultimate wrong though. I've seen lots of other bad mistakes made on the promotional floor.

That being said, I completely agree that Ultimate doesn't really have anything compelling to it. The three differences you've listed are all easily added through other programs, not just RDP, and at a much lower cost than $190.

Of course, I've kept most of my machines on XP since for most of them, there wasn't any compelling reason to upgrade them. I will say that the Vista Media Center does look mucho nicer!
 
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Old 07-14-2008, 11:02 PM
Jason Dunn
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Originally Posted by fyresyght View Post
Of course, I've kept most of my machines on XP since for most of them, there wasn't any compelling reason to upgrade them. I will say that the Vista Media Center does look mucho nicer!
It's funny, when I use XP now I feel like I'm working much slower than with Vista. Vista's instant search, OS wide, is just a joy to behold - I cringe when I think how much time I wasted in Windows XP creating and managing program folders so I could find programs quickly. Now I just start typing and Vista shows me the program I want. For me, that's huge.
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Old 07-15-2008, 01:04 AM
EscapePod
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Yeah, but Vista Ultimate comes in a neat Black Box.

(Hey, wait a minute! ... my OEM/Builder version came in the same dumb white box as all my Home Premium OEM/Builder packs. Darn!)
 
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Old 07-15-2008, 03:50 PM
Hooch Tan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn View Post
It's funny, when I use XP now I feel like I'm working much slower than with Vista. Vista's instant search, OS wide, is just a joy to behold - I cringe when I think how much time I wasted in Windows XP creating and managing program folders so I could find programs quickly. Now I just start typing and Vista shows me the program I want. For me, that's huge.
I guess that's a difference in user needs then. With my work in general, I only have about a dozen (maybe less) programs that I use on a regular basis, so they're all listed in my Start Menu (via the "Pin to Start Menu" option) so any programs I usually need are two clicks away.

As for search in general, I usually don't use it for files, but only within Outlook for some strange reason. With that, Outlook 2007 combined with Windows Search does the trick for me.

I'll definately agree that Vista is nice and in many ways, an improvement, but I guess the biggest holdback for me is that with most of my computers, it'd involve lots of upgrades which I haven't budgeted for ... yet.
 
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