Installing Vista Home Premium Upgrade Plus Mini review

How I install Vista Home Premium Upgrade
I have always recommended doing a clean install and it is no different with Vista. Windows XP Home/Media Center can be used to upgrade to VIsta Basic/Home Premium. But Windows XP Pro can upgrade only to Vista Business/Ultimate. Windows 2K can not upgrade to Vista any version.
With Vista to do a clean install, you have actually install twice. Installing (at least for on my PC's) have taken at up to 30 minutes with the full versions I have. Doing a clean install of the Upgrade versions usually takes me about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours from start to finish.
So just how can I clean install Vista Upgrade.
Well the upgrade path for Vista Home Premium is WIndows XP Home/Vista Basic.

But can your OEM or Homebuilt PC run Vista
With the OEM Laptop or Desktop, you need to check with the manufacturer to see if they have drivers for Vista. With computers that you built your self, goto the manufacturer of the motherboard and all of the other hardware in the computer and see if they have Vista drivers. Just because it runs Windows XP does not mean Vista will run.
Thing is the same for XP PC's, you have to have Vista chipset drivers plus drivers for the other hardware in your PC.

But won't I be unable to use/Dual boot with Vista/XP
True, but with a free program(EasyBCD.exe) http://neosmart.net/software.php ) it is posible to restore the Vista boot loader and not to have to reinstall Vista. I have added this just for those who are not sure they really want Vista but want to try.

So how do I upgrade to Vista Home Premium without installing from XP/2K Operating System
That is the easy part. One of the upgrade paths is from Vista, it's self. So insert the DVD for Vista Home Premium Upgrade in the drive. Then boot the system up using the dvd drive. Answer all till it gets to the point of asking for a product key, just click on the next key. From the next window choose the version of upgrade you have, be it Home Premium/Business or Ultimate. Since this is Home Premium choose that.
The rest of the setup is just like the full vesion taking about 25 to 46 minutes. After the setup installs Home Premium and all questions answered. I setup the OS just like I do the full version-all the updates-hardware drivers and setting up my email/newsgroups plus Media Center. You are then able to use Vista for 30 days as a free trial version. I usually then install the upgrade by starting the setup within Vista but this time when it ask's for a product key, I put the product key in that is on the DVD case. Now I have to warn that this will take an hour and half or more but this time all my emails/media center/drivers are already installed.

Mini Review or what I like about Vista Home Premium
I have written a more complete review of Vista Home Premium here. Is Vista better than XP(Partition Magic not needed.) I have used Vista since it's release. At first there were problems with the video drivers, they would stop working then the system would restart them without having to reboot the OS. After ATI and Nvidia finally got their drivers written correctly for the system I have had no problems since. Because I design my computers to be Vista Premium Ready. I have no problems.
What is next in this review is parts of my review on Vista Home Premium Full version with added comments.


Media Center
I use Media Center more than any other program on my computer. I have all my pictures-music-home video's in Media Center. I can have all of them arranged so that is easy to find any I want.
With the ability to have up to 4 seperate TV tuners, I am able to record 2 TV Shows/Movies at the same time plus watch a DVD movie and have no missed frames. With this I am also able to burn the movies/photos to DVD with no added software.
I can watch a DVD movie as the director wanted because Suround Sound is included and it sound great with the right hardware.

Speech Recognition
One of the things I like about Vista is speech recognition is included. I am using speech recognition to write this review. All versions of Vista has this software included. At first it's at a little hard to get used to. But with training for you and the computer, it becomes easier as time goes by. The more you use it, the more the computer recognizes how you talked.
You can also use this to control what the computer does and many other programs on this computer.

Vista Firewall
Is not the best as exception rules need to be created. Plus it is not made easy in Vista. So for Vista, I have to recommend to use a third party firewall. There are some free on the internet, not as many as there used to be. There are also some commercial ones.

User Account Control
This is a new feature for Windows, in that if you are on a administration account. If you want to add a new program, it will ask if you want to continue to install. In a limited account, it will ask for a administration password to continue. This can be mildly annoying but I would rather be annoyed a little than a whole bunch if program or backdoor was installed that I would prefer to not have on my PC.
I have now used this for nearly a year and 1/2. I may once a day have UAC bother me if even that offen.

IE7 in Vista
IE runs in protected mode, which isolates the browser from the rest of the computer. IE7 now includes something that the other browsers have included for quite a while. Tabbed browsing has been finally included in IE. IE starts up only slightly faster than Firefox. Both will display a webpage at no noticeable speed difference. Now I still prefer IE to Firefox for tabbed pages, but that is my personal preference. IE also includes a popup stopper and a phising filter.
Parental control is better in Vista. You can set time limits that your kids can be online, also set what websites they can goto. Another thing you can set what programs you don't want them running or what games they play. With UAC if you visit a website that wants to install a program-it can not as UAC asks if you want it.

Games
There are some old favorites Hearts,Mine Sweeper and Solitaire. There are 2 new games just for kids.
Ink Ball and Purple Place. Purple Place which is for the younger kids.
Plus 1 new one
Chess Titans which is a pretty good chess program-I have played it . Even at novice level the ~!@#$%^&*~!@#$% game beats me everytime. It still beats me every time(#!@#$%^&&*).

Is Vista better than XP or the other way around?
Having used XP Pro RTM 3 months before it was on sale(MS Beta Tester). Plus having used Vista RTM since November of 2006. Personally I think Vista is much better. It is more stable, multitasking is better. As far as performance is concernd, to me, Vista SP1 and XP SP3, in some things XP has Vista beat and in some things Vista is better than XP.