Microsoft gives a new meaning to Windows Vista Ultimate and extras

In retrospect, I was one of the fools who paid full price for Windows Vista Ultimate back when the OS was first released with the promise of “extras” that would be coming later. While there were some extras (like moving wall paper [useless] and drive encryption that would not work for my purposes), I feel as if I was cheated by Microsoft. Now there is one additional “extra” that Microsoft is going to give me: extra expense to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate.

The current price for the upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate is currently $219.00 versus the $119.00 (Home Premium) or $199.00 (Professional) and there was no pre-order pricing available for Windows Vista Ultimate users whereas the Home Premium and Professional users received deeply discounted pre-order pricing (e.g. $49.99 for Home Premium). This gives a whole new meaning to Windows Vista Ultimate and “extras”.

Some people have suggested that perhaps the way to beat the system would be to purchase a Windows Home Premium upgrade and then use it to upgrade my Vista Ultimate. Well, unfortunately, there would be a different kind of “extra” for that method. In this case, I would not be able to upgrade the OS but would be required to use the “upgrade” to wipe my hard drive clean and do a fresh install of Windows 7, after which I would still have to reinstall my software and also pay the anytime upgrade fee to get to Windows 7 Ultimate. While I agree that monetarily this is less expensive, when I consider the several hours of time it will take for me to do this, I consider this overall process more expensive than just purchasing the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade for $219.00.

As for the notion of “upgrading” the operating system, if you are one of the users who are running on the 32 bit version of Windows Vista and want to “upgrade” to the 64 bit version of Windows 7, you are not able to load the 64 bit version of the OS on top of what you already have installed. Instead, the “upgrade” will wipe your system clean and then install the 64 bit version of Windows 7, forcing you to re-install all of your software. Lastly don’t forget that you will need to re-load all of your data from backups too. In my opinion, this is not an upgrade. I’ve heard all of the excuses about why this is necessary, and that it is always better to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade, however, I do not accept that as an answer as I have seen other operating system manufacturers (IBM) allow other operating systems to be upgraded from 32 bit CISC to 64 bit RISC without requiring programs already installed to be re-installed. In fact, they did not even have to be recompiled. As a result of my experience, it is clear to me that upgrades from 32 bit to 64 bit without a re-install can be done, and anything else that anyone tells you is just an excuse for Microsoft laziness, shortsightedness, and lack of concern for their customer’s time.

Lastly, I want to address Microsoft’s upgrade pricing policy. First, if I want to upgrade from Windows Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit, I need to rebuild my system, by way of reinstalling all of my applications and reloading all of my data. In this case Microsoft should give me some kind of rebate for providing me with a flawed upgrade that was not able to properly upgrade my system. Secondly, the upgrade pricing, from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium, is currently $119.00 (Amazon 7/13/09). However, the Vista Professional to Windows 7 Professional is $199.00 and the Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate is $219. I would understand the difference in price if I was going from an inferior version of Vista to a superior version of 7, like switching from Windows Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate, but in my opinion, making a lateral move should have a single upgrade price, let’s say $119.00. Consider this; did the Professional users of Vista really get $80.00 more value in their upgrade process? The question applies to the Vista Ultimate users also, are they getting $100 more in value?

The whole Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista extras experience over the past few years, coupled with the thought of upgrading my systems to Windows 7, has left a bad taste in my mouth as it relates to the overall Microsoft upgrade process and pricing.

Do you see the new meaning of Windows Vista Ultimate and extras too?

Windows Vista after 2 months

Now that I have had windows vista for almost 2 months, my assessment is that I like it, but it is much more of a resource hog than Windows XP was. For example, prior to upgrading to Windows Vista, I used to have one Gigabyte of ram on my machine and World of Warcraft used to play very smoothly (60 frames/second). After upgrading to Windows Vista, my frame rate went down to 30 frames per second.

I did a lot of research on the Internet regarding this issue and read things about video drivers being slower in Windows Vista than in Windows XP, but nothing that I read seemed to indicate that I should have seen such a significant drop in my frame rate. Especially considering that I have an Nvidia GForce 7800 GS. I was puzzled.

Then, one night, while playing World of Warcraft, I realized that in addition to the drop in frame rate, I found that when I would hot-key out of World of Warcraft to look up information on a quest for the game on Google, I noticed that Internet explorer or Mozilla Firefox would take much longer to start than they used to on Windows XP. This got me to thinking that perhaps 1 Gigabyte of RAM might not be enough for the way that I was using my system. So off to the local Best Buy I went.

Initially I was thinking about purchasing only 512M of ram and using it to fill in the last available RAM slot on my motherboard (ASUS K8N-E Deluxe), but when I read the manual, I found out that this would slow down the RAM access from 333 Mhz to 200 Mhz . But, I found out that if I purchased 1 Gigabyte of RAM, I would be able to swap out one of the 512 Megabyte modules for the 1 Gigabyte module, resulting in a 512 Megabyte RAM increase while at the same time being able to retain the 333 Mhz speed.

When I got home with the RAM, I decided to experiment a little. Prior to inserting the RAM into the system, I booted the system and checked the Windows Experience Index. 4.1 was the measurement. I then shut the system down and added the 1 Gigabyte module to the remaining slot and re-booted. Just like the manual said, the ram would only run at 200Mhz. I even tried moving the module around to see if I could find a configuration that would result in a higher clock rate. I was unable to do so. So, I let the system boot with this configuration and then checked the Windows Experience Index. I was surprised by what I found, the experience index had gone from 4.1 to 2.0 even though I added 1 Gigabyte of ram. In addition, World of Warcraft had become almost unplayable. So, I shut the system down once more, removed one of the 512 Megabyte modules, and re-booted. The result was that the system was back to 333 Mhz. Here is one instance where adding RAM could slow down your system.

After the system rebooted, I checked the Windows Experience Index and found that it had returned to 4.1. The big difference being that now, when I hot-keyed out of World of Warcraft, Mozilla Firefox and Internet explorer, and just about anything else that I ran was much more responsive. In addition, the World of Warcraft frame rates returned to 60 frames per second.

Should you decide to upgrade your computer system from Windows XP to Windows Vista, I would recommend that you increase your system RAM by a minimum of 512 Megabytes in order to achieve performance similar to what you are used to on Windows XP. In addition, whenever you are thinking about adding RAM to your system, always check your system manual or contact support for your system to make sure that you will get the increase that you expect by adding the ram you intend to add.