There's another Vista thread somewhere, but whatever. THIS is now the official Vista thread. And if anybody tells me to get a mac I'll cut their legs off- I'm not anti-mac, but that's not what this thread is about. SO GO AWAY.
Alright, so every once in a while I clear my HDD and reinstall Windows. Right now I'm using XP MCE, and at times I get quite frustrated with it. Seeing as how I'm reinstalling my OS, I figured I should make the switch to Vista- so I tried it out and I liked what I saw. It fixed a lot of the problems I was having and actually seemed to run faster in some areas (particularly with connecting to a network, and deleting large files), all while looking much nicer than XP. I'm not really ahardcore PC gamer, and the performance hits associated with Vista aren't a big deal to me- I run Oblivion at full now, so I figure I've got a lot of leg room.
ANYWAY, with Vista you basically have four options: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. In essence, Home Basic sucks, Business is not for you, and Ultimate is expensive as hell. Well, you can can actually buy the Ultimate OEM version for $200, which is relatively not bad, but still too much for something I don't
really need. Anyway, Home Premium is what I wanted, since it comes with the new interface and Media Center capabilites.
But still, Vista HP is pretty expensive. So I searched around, and lo and behold I found
this site. They give discounts for students, and for a college student (which I am not, but my brother is, so I used his info) the Vista Home Premium upgrade is knocked down to $70. That's a nice deal. Only $10 more than Gears of War
Normally, Home Premium is $240, and the upgrade is $160. I just saved $90, and I figured I'd share that with you guys.
Keep in mind, though, that this is the UPGRADE. You can only install this under certain cirumstances (but if you meet those criteria, you keep all your files and programs installed). There is a fairly simple workaround for this, and you CAN actually install this clean if you have the patience to install the OS twice, but MS is probably going to fix this soon. So you'll be taking a gamble. Anyway,
here's the chart of upgrade paths for Vista- and since I assume most of you use XP MCE or Home you can take advantage of this upgrade.
Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you. You do have to prove you're a student, but most of you probably are, and those who aren't probably know someone who is. Most people aren't ready to make the switch yet, but if you are you'll save a lot of cash this way.
So, uhh, that's it. I now christen this the official Vista thread, so if you have any questions, post here and there is a slight change they will be answered.