Datasheet

HOW IS WINDOWS VISTA DIFFERENT FROM OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS?

Explorer if you have to share access to the system with your children. All of the new applications

are helpful as well. A home user doesn’t need all of the capabilities of Outlook. With the addition

of features such as Windows Calendar, you no longer have to decide between the cost of a full ver-

sion of Windows and the functionality you require to get the job done.

Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Media Center,

and Windows XP Tablet PC

Microsoft has provided less flexible upgrade paths for these other Windows XP editions. The

reason is that these Windows XP editions provided specific functionality that some Vista edi-

tions don’t provide. Here’s the list of update choices for each of the Windows XP editions.

◆ Windows XP Professional: Vista Business or Vista Ultimate

◆ Windows XP Media Center: Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate

◆ Windows XP Tablet PC: Vista Business or Vista Ultimate

Security is a very good reason to upgrade from these other Windows XP editions. Microsoft

does provide significant changes in security that makes securing your system significantly easier.

The new security management tools are also a plus. For example, you can now create group policies

with greater ease. In addition, the policies don’t consume as much space or lend themselves to cer-

tain kinds of corruption that plagued earlier versions of Windows.

If you get Vista Ultimate, you obtain everything that Windows has to offer, including full media

support. However, most business users will find that Vista Business does everything they need,

including providing support for the Tablet PC. You can actually access all of the Tablet PC utilities

from your desktop now.

When you’re using any of these three Windows XP editions, it pays to scan through the “What’s

New in Windows Vista?” section of the chapter. The overview will help you decide whether there’s

a compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. I’m sure you’ll agree that there are many good reasons, but

often you’ll need to add extra memory or a new display adapter to your existing system to make

it work with Vista. It’s important to consider the tradeoff of investment in new hardware against

the new features that Vista provides. In some cases, you’ll find that sticking with Windows XP for

now is the best choice.

How Is Windows Vista Different from Other

Operating Systems?

Many people would agree that Vista is probably the best and worst operating system Microsoft has

ever put together. It’s the best operating system from a security and possibly a reliability perspec-

tive. Even though it requires substantial hardware to run, Vista tends to use the hardware more

efficiently so you actually get better performance. However, there are the downsides of too much

security and very high hardware requirements to consider too. Just how much security or hard-

ware do you need to perform word processing tasks? This all leads to the topic of the following sec-

tions: How does Vista stack up against other popular operating systems?

Windows Vista Compared with UNIX

Of all the operating systems under discussion here, UNIX is probably the most similar to Vista in

terms of architecture. There are many different flavors of UNIX, however. Each flavor has a different

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