Product Details
Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition (Upgrade) (PC)

Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition (Upgrade) (PC)
From Microsoft

List Price: £189.99
Price: £89.99

Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Dispatched from and sold by pc-software

13 new or used available from £88.99

Average customer review:

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #455 in Software
  • Brand: Microsoft
  • Released on: 2007-01-30
  • Platform: Windows Vista
  • Format: DVD-ROM
  • Dimensions: .75 pounds

Editorial Reviews

Manufacturer's Description:

The Microsoft Windows Vista Business (DVD-ROM) helps your business run more efficiently than ever before. Designed to keep your network running smoothly and securely without excessive reliance on dedicated IT support, Vista Business is the primary edition of Windows Vista for business desktop and mobile PCs. Ideal for organizations of all sizes, this software provides dramatic new infrastructure improvements, enabling IT staff to spend more time adding strategic value to the business and less time troubleshooting glitches. Vista Business also offers powerful new ways to organize, find, and share information, while helping people stay better connected in the office and on the road.


Windows Sidebar gives you quick access to gadgets like picture slide shows, Windows Media Player controls, or news headlines. You pick the gadgets you want to see in Windows Sidebar. View larger.

Easier, Faster Access to Information
Vista Business features Windows Aero, a new interface that delivers higher levels of efficiency for any business user. This easy-to-use interface makes it a snap to navigate through the operating system and from application to application. Most importantly, Windows Aero helps you juggle multiple tasks at once by providing a three-dimensional, real-time, animated view of all your open applications and documents.

In addition to these navigation improvements, Vista Business makes it easier than ever to manage huge volumes of business documents. By integrating search throughout the operating system and providing new ways to organize files, this software helps you quickly find exactly what you are looking for.

Collaborate and Communicate More Effectively
Vista Business helps your work teams collaborate and communicate more effectively, regardless of their location. By helping users find and use information quickly and easily, this software can dramatically improve how people in your organization access and apply essential knowledge and resources on PCs, in e-mail, from corporate servers, and on the Internet.

Improved Security and Compliance
Protecting your business information and complying with regulations places increased demands on your IT staff. Vista Business' more sophisticated data protection and auditing capabilities help simplify IT management and can help lower costs for regulatory compliance. In addition, with features like the Encryption File system, Windows Vista helps organizations manage security risks by protecting information and services in a more controllable and secure environment.

Safe Operation
For businesses of any size, Vista Business makes it possible for your IT department to configure users' systems so that they can log onto their PCs as standard users instead of as administrators. This helps minimize compatibility and usability issues that might have occurred in previous versions of Windows, while also making those issues easier to resolve. Moreover, this new capability significantly reduces the likelihood of a malicious attack causing damage to your organization's PCs.

Keep Your Network Running Smoothly
For small businesses, Vista Business includes new technology and tools to ensure your PCs are always up-to-date, more secure, and running smoothly. For instance, this software helps make your PCs safer with built-in protection against malicious software, or malware. And because Vista Business warns you of impending hardware failures early on, you don't have to worry about the devastating loss of any important business data. No matter what potential problems arise, an array of sophisticated new backup technologies helps protect your information even in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure. When it comes to management, features like Domain Join and Group Policy support improve the efficiency of your workgroups.

Small Business Resources
And for those who are not full-time IT professionals but have roles that require them to support their organizations' PCs, Vista Business includes Small Business Resources. This built-in how-to guide leads you through everyday tasks and troubleshooting in easy-to-follow, non-technical language. By giving you the ability to solve problems as they arise, you can help keep your business efficient. Vista Business also provides business specific features like fax and scan that increase productivity.

Image-Based Installation
For larger organizations, Vista Business has been designed from the ground up to improve the deployment and management of the central operating system. For instance, image-based installation is now the default method for installing the Windows Vista operating system, and the images are no longer hardware-dependent. These two key design principles enable your organization to dramatically reduce the number of images you are required to manage and streamline the process of deploying new PCs and updating existing PCs. The end result is faster, easier operation than ever before, which helps improve the overall productivity of your business.

More Mobile and Better Connected
Today, more businesses rely on an ever-expanding mobile workforce as a way to enhance their scope of service and reduce enterprise costs associated with supporting a large on-site staff. Vista Business gives mobile professionals easier and more secure access to corporate resources so they can readily collaborate with colleagues-- both on and off the network. Employees and colleagues will also find it easier to make wireless connections and synchronize mobile devices. The success of any business depends on communication, and Vista Business helps you easily and quickly connect with your organization, your customers, and your partners, whether you are in the office or on the road. This software package includes all of the essential infrastructure required to more securely connect you to your business information whether you are sitting at your desk, working at home, connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot, or even if you are using your cell phone to connect to the Internet.

To help you be more productive when you're away from your desk, Vista Business includes Windows Tablet and Touch Technology, so you can interact with your Tablet PC by using a digital pen, your fingertip, or a keyboard. Improved handwriting recognition and easier ways to browse documents and programs without using a keyboard give you added flexibility and convenience.

Easy Accessibility
Computers that include Vista Business and an auxiliary Windows SideShow display will also allow you to access critical business information even when your computer is turned off. You can also share documents and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers--even if a network is not available. Additionally, Vista Business helps you get the most out of your portable PC by making it quick and easy to manage key mobility settings.

Cost Effective
Meeting the increasingly complex demands that are placed on your IT systems doesn't have to be expensive. Designed to be less expensive to deploy and support, Vista Business offers you a better return on your IT investments. By empowering people to work more efficiently, this system helps keep both productivity and morale high.

image

Compare Windows Vista editions.
image

Security alerts enable you to quickly resolve potentially damaging issues that can harm your Windows Vista PC. View larger.
image

Use the new Sync Centre to manage the synchronization of your data with other PCs or the devices you connect to your PC. View larger.
image

Starting and managing file sharing and application collaboration is easy and intuitive. View larger.
image

Windows Vista Provides a single destination where you can access all of the related Backup and Restore features. View larger.
image

Windows Fax and Scan simplifies your document handling and communication needs. View larger.
image

Use Instant Search to quickly find the information you need. View larger.
image

Use Flip 3D to navigate through open windows using the scroll wheel on your mouse. View larger.
image

Windows Vista Aero provides spectacular visual effects such as glass-like interface elements that you can see through.


Customer Reviews

Absolute Rubbish and a waste of money2
I had the opportunity to try out Vista Business and what a load of over featured rubbish, how can anyone do any work with all that going on? Even if you set the options to look like XP you might as well stick with XP and save your money. I am a home user but I hate gimmicks and soon despatched the sidebar stuff. The new Mail program is confusing and I do not like WMP 11, much prefer WMP 9 which I use with XP Professional.

I tried it on a Virtual Machine first and was disappointed and thought it might be the limitations of that so decided to run it properly and after creating an NTFS partition to dual boot with XP Pro Setup was very easy and you felt shut out and my first thoughts were "hey even an idiot could do this setup" and then I found that when you do a defrag you don't get to see what is going on and as someone who has done MCP courses I like to know exactly is going on with my computer. Wonder why the Windows Boot Manager just refers to "earlier version of Windows" instead of identifying the other OS on the boot screen options like XP has ceased to exist!

You cannot run decent screen savers, the ones which come with Vista are absolute rubbish with big footprints including Mystify which they have really made look horrible and if you import the earlier version it runs the same as the Vista version and many older Windows screensavers won't run.

I will stick with XP thank you. The whole thing is getting on my nerves including the much heralded Aero which certainly does not wow me. Like has been said already I do not like my computer being taken control of and I feel that by releasing Vista M$ are one more step toward ruling the world.

Waste of money1
Doesn't do anything that XP Pro can't do faster. Too many problems with security and "Digital Rights Management". Painful to use for some simple operations - 6 clicks where one was needed before. New file manager is hopeless and the "User Account Controls" are so obstructive as to make people swear out loud in the office.

The new interface significantly slows the machine down and believe me, you will need a well specced machine to run this OS anyway!

For the business user, this "upgrade" does not offer anything not currently available in XP Pro.

Horses for Courses4
I bought a new business laptop which had Vista Basic as the standard OS. I had been using XP Home on a previous laptop for most of my applications but needed to share files with the Office PC using XP Professional and this was said to be difficult with Vista Basic - hence the upgrade.

As this was the first thing I did - a clean upgrade - no problems and everything went OK. I had bought a magazine (The Ultimate Guide to Vista from PC Pro) which described how to set up the network with an XP machine so I don't know how difficult it would have been following the Windows instructions. I have even shared access to a printer which I hadn't been able to do before. A bit fiddly to customise all the power settings which is a new "feature" - initially turning off just sent it to sleep which is not a good idea for a laptop!

Only problem is that one of my applications (pdf creator) doesn't have a Vista version yet but not difficult to copy to the XP machine for creating pdf. I can see that people with lots of applications and hardware connected may have a lot more problems with this - or have to pay out for upgrades.

Not used it very much as it is only a secondary computer for use outside the office but seems to do what it says - I like the desktop appearance, being able to customise the side bar and being able to set it in "presentation" mode which disables the screensaver - but I definitely won't be rushing to upgrade my 2 XP PC's