14 DAY TRIAL // Facets of Windows Vista. And the downside of the operating system.
Windows Vista Home Basic ? retail $199.00 - upgrade $99.95, Windows Vista Home Premium ? retail $239.00 ? upgrade $159.00, Windows Vista Business - retail $299.00 - upgrade $199.00, Windows Vista Ultimate ? retail $399.00 upgrade $259.00.
And worth every penny. But this is not the point. There are inherent, adjacent costs to upgrading to Windows Vista. And these costs reside in hardware upgrade. You want the full experience of Vista? Well, that will cost you a tad more than pocket change.
And, in the end, it all comes down to the Windows Index Experience base score, or the sum of the sub-scores attributed to the Processor, RAM, Graphics, Gaming Graphics, and Primary HDD. You need a minimum WEI base score of 3.0 to run the full Vista. To learn more about the Windows Vista Index Experience click here.
If you break it down into components you need a 2+ GHz processor, at least 1 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD and a 256MB nPower graphics card. But that is the minimum. No more than $1,000. Compare this with the following custom Windows Vista PC put together by Microsoft and Dell.
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Processor - 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX - 4GB RAM Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667mhz - 1Terabyte RAID0 SATA HDDs (2x500MB) - 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW Double Layer Burner - Dual TV Tuners (Analog) - Full 5.1 Surround Sound
This system is built on a Dell Media Center PC. It?s $3,200 plus taxes. Add the Dell 30" Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor to this and you also increase the price by $1,499. I have jumped way over $5,000 and I wanted this. Oh, yeah, don?t forget Vista Ultimate, that?s another $400. This PC has a WEI score of 5.2 out of a possible 5.9. Is it worth it?
Let?s look at it this way. Vista won?t be available for general customers until January 30 2007. More than enough time to save up. Or you can invest in a Vista capable PC and an upgrade coupon. Meanwhile, Vista is on every peer to peer network worldwide. Even the RTM version. And you still have to wait 60 days. It just doesn?t seem fair, does it? But nothing compares with the genuine version.
And one argument that should make you steer clear of any pirated copies of the operating system is the fact that it is opened to attacks. And there won?t be security patches for quite sometime.
According to Symantec's Tunneling Past Network Security and Other Security Implications report, Windows Vista is vulnerable to attacks. Attacks that will take advantage of the Teredo protocol enabled by default in Vista won?t have security controls applied if the IPv6 traffic is detected as UDP traffic on unknown ports. To get a deeper insight about the Teredo protocol click here.
Additionally, Sophos has revealed that it has tested the W32/Stratio-Zip, W32/Netsky-P and W32/MyDoom-O worms on Windows Vista and found that the operating system inherits the sins of Windows XP. To read more about the viruses affecting Vista click here.
Moreover, with 64-bit editions of Windows Vista users choices of third-party security solutions will be limited to products that don?t use behavior based technology due to PatchGuard. That rules out Symantec and McAfee, to name just two of the top security providers worldwide.