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Vista Upgrade Question?

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Wolverine690

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Location
Idaho
Well I've been fighting with MS with this about a week now...I'm going to be buying a new copy of an XP OS, Media Center or Pro not sure which yet, as I need a new one & I have some X-Mas moneys coming myway soon...

So I was checking out Newegg & they have the OEM's out there with a Vista upgrade coupon...so I starting looking into that further as I saw a review post made by a few people who purchased it.

Basically the version of Vista you can upgrade to is based on the version of XP you buy or got with the pc you purchased...this is from memory...couldn't find the link again...

XP Home - Vista Home
XP Home Media Center - Vista Home Premium
XP Pro - Vista Business

Well if I go with XP Pro which is what I use now, I'd be looking at getting Vista Business which I sure as hell don't want...I want Home Premium or Ultimate.

So anyway I've emailed MS 2 times asking them this & gotten copy & paste botted msgs which absolutely do not answer my question at all & then in one of their msgs they said if the email didn't answer my question I could call & ask them in person. So I did that & the guy was like we don't know anything about Vista but I have a note here...guy on phone reads it, and it is some lame sales speach about how great it will be & that it will be out next month for purchase. I told him that is no help I already knew that info. So he gave me another email address to try for the Vista people.

So I emailed them last week & am still awaiting an reply. So I'm hoping someone here knows the answer to my question as there has got to be some MS employees here on this site in secret.lol

My question is this...

Whatever copy of XP I get (Pro or Media Center) can I pay the difference if any if I wanted to go from the version I'd get with the OS I got to a different one? So if I got XP Pro could I pay some extra & get Ultimate instead? If so what would the cost be for this? Or could I go with XP Pro & instead of going with Vista Business could I get Vista Home Premium for no additional charge since it is a lower version of Vista compared to business?

Thanks...

PS-regardless of what version of Vista I get with the upgrade coupon I'm not going to install it till they get the bugs worked out of it & everyone is supporting it via drivers etc, and possibly also after the first SP is out for it.
 
I hope that I can upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Ultimate. Thats what im aiming for at least.

Business licenes should be only limited to companies so don't think you have to worry about getting that.

But more info will come out probably after the new year. I really hope mine will upgrade since I do love Vista. Not really sure what my disk of XP Pro is classified as though, since I got it free from MS for taking some little quiz when I worked at Best Buy when it came out.
 
deathman20 said:
I hope that I can upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Ultimate. Thats what im aiming for at least.

Business licenes should be only limited to companies so don't think you have to worry about getting that.

But more info will come out probably after the new year. I really hope mine will upgrade since I do love Vista. Not really sure what my disk of XP Pro is classified as though, since I got it free from MS for taking some little quiz when I worked at Best Buy when it came out.

Well you can upgrade to it with no probs if you out right buy it I'm sure of that.

Vista Business is not limit to business from what I've seen, and as I said there is a actual upgrade chart for the coupons, and XP Pro is listed to be upgraded via coupon to Vista Business only. Which is if you purchased a copy of XP Pro during a time period where they offered the upgrade to vista coupons.

Well if you've had your copy of XP for a while you probably don't have a upgrade coupon in which you'd have to just out right buy it...but yeah any version of windows XP can be upgraded to Vista, though they do recommend doing a fresh install of it which I would also.
 
Wolverine690 said:
Well you can upgrade to it with no probs if you out right buy it I'm sure of that.

Vista Business is not limit to business from what I've seen, and as I said there is a actual upgrade chart for the coupons, and XP Pro is listed to be upgraded via coupon to Vista Business only. Which is if you purchased a copy of XP Pro during a time period where they offered the upgrade to vista coupons.

Well if you've had your copy of XP for a while you probably don't have a upgrade coupon in which you'd have to just out right buy it...but yeah any version of windows XP can be upgraded to Vista, though they do recommend doing a fresh install of it which I would also.


While the upgrade coupon is more or less for people buying XP close to Vista so they get there copy of it with little to no expense depending on the version they get and its probably going to be the update version.

Where my issue might come in is that since I have XP, its a full version, but don't know if its Retial or OEM, or if that would even effect the outcome of getting a Upgrade version of Vista.

Back onto your issue sorry side tracked :(
Your saying if you buy XP Pro your stuck with a coupon with the Business Version? That just doesn't seem right, I'd think it would be good for at least the Home Baisc or possibley the Premium Version.
 
This link shows you how the upgrade coupons work: Vista Coupons

Looks like with XP Pro andf the coupon you get a free upgrade to Vista Bussiness. Bummer.
 
Vista Enterprise is limited to businesses, Vista Business edition is not.

I know that you can upgrade an edition of vista after the fact though vista itself. There is some new option built in that will let you unlock the options of the edition you are buying, without getting a new disc or reinstalling. The only upgrade you could do from Business is to Ultimate. Home Premium has to go straight to ultimate if I recall correctly.

I don't about Newegg, but for dell anyway, they are going to send a full install Vista disc, it won't be an upgrade. I'm getting one myself because of the Coupon program for my laptop and I've already talked to them.
 
With XP Home you can pay to upgrade to Vista Home Premium for $80, but I havent read anything about downgrading.

Just buy MCE, it is 95% the same as pro, and once you get Vista, you cant use the MCE anyways (I think?).
 
Oroka Sempai said:
With XP Home you can pay to upgrade to Vista Home Premium for $80, but I havent read anything about downgrading.

Just buy MCE, it is 95% the same as pro, and once you get Vista, you cant use the MCE anyways (I think?).


Vista Home Premium has Media Center Vista version on it...
 
I just found this site...looks as though 64 bit won't be offered up on the disks after all. I could have sworn I read somewhere that all Vista version will have both the 32 & 64 bit versions on them.

https://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/Vi...0urq2swe5z55pmpuml2e))/GlobalLandingPage.aspx

I suppose it is possible that 64 will be on the disk in some hidden way...but will just have to find out whenever Vista gets installed which won't be for a while I'm sure.
 
Na 64-bit should be on the disks. They where making the point to have both on the disk since well, there whole thing behind doing the Upgrade from say Preimum to Ultimate is that it can be done with the same disk since all disks are the same. Its to keep costs down, since well theres only 1 media instead of 2,3 or 6 different OS types.
 
what is keeping you from waiting till vista comes out? I believe it is slated for release in mid janurary. Also, if there is a college around you, you might be able to buy a windows license for cheap, if they are nice. I know at my college, when I was a student, I could buy a license for $10 from the CS department, and they would burn me a copy for free if I brought a cd-r with me, and it was completely legal. It was a large state university, so I'm sure there was some deal they had with MS about it. I'm pretty sure my school would only do it if you were a student or on the staff, but other schools might be more relaxed with that. It's worth a shot, either way.
 
Wolverine690 said:
B/C I want & need the Media Center on it for things I plan on doing in the near future...

Fair enough. For households with multiple TVs and/or X-boxes, I could see it as a useful item. I just find the interface to be terrible; way to much hassle to get to the media I want; I'll stick with windows explorer to access my meticulously organized music files...;)
 
so if all you need is the vista media center, why don't you get xp home media center now, and get the free upgrade to vista home premium that has the media center in it?
 
splat said:
so if all you need is the vista media center, why don't you get xp home media center now, and get the free upgrade to vista home premium that has the media center in it?

Because when you get the upgrade the other version becomes illegal to use.
 
deathman20 said:
Because when you get the upgrade the other version becomes illegal to use.

that doesn't seem to be his concern. If it was me, I'd simply wait to buy whatever version of Vista I wanted, outright. But he seems to want to buy a version of XP now and cash in on the free upgrade to Vista later. I don't think it matters to him that the XP version will be unusable after the upgrade.
 
One nice feature of a clean Vista install is that it saves all the old OS folders in a 'windows old' folder if you don't reformat the partition. That way you can pick through them after the install for anything you might have forgotten.
 
I purchased a copy of XP Home Edition that came with this coupon I was re-building a HP machine for someone. I went to the website and looking Premium it would cost me £46 without delivery your basically getting the new upgrade for the same price as XP HE.
 
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