Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition FULL VERSION with SP2

Windows XP Home makes it easy to use your Computer for those Personal projects you enjoy. Service Packs round up the bug fixes and product updates you need for operating more smoothly. This Service Pack bridges the gaps between the original software and user requests more fully, responding to customer wishes — and making XP even better. Share your home computing resources with simple-to-use Networking tools Service Pack features - Security Center offers a central control system for your Windows XP security — work with the firewalls, auto updates and antivirus tools Great news for people sick of pop-up ads - The built-in pop-up blocker controls them, with a new submenu and status bar icons New Add-Ons manager gives you instant access to all the Browser Helper Objects and extensions, enabling and disabling them easily Firewall now has its own control panel Enhancements to the Windows Update service make installing new updates easy Wireless Networking - Multiple wireless connections to choose from

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Still the best Microsoft OS available.
After seeing how friends and coworkers have struggled with their Windows Vista machines more often than not, I decided to purchase Windows XP for an upgrade to a one of my home computers. XP is by far the better operating system when compared to Vista. And with the release of Service Pack 3, Windows XP is even more stable. Something that Service Pack 1 for Vista did not do…

1 Star NOT AS ADVERTISED
THIS PRODUCT WAS TO BE SOLD WITH A NEW COMPUTER, NOT INDIVIDUALLY. IT IS A ONE TIME USE ONLY SO MY RATING IS AS LOW AS IT CAN BE I WOULD NOT BUY FROM THIS VENDOR AGAIN.

3 Stars Just a warning
Someone mentioned that with XP the “blue screen of death” is no more. This is actually false. While the “blue screen of death” does not happen often, it does happen. Except it isn’t just a matter of restarting the computer, as it just pops up again and again and again until you reformat your computer (and lose everything). Just a warning for anyone, but overall XP is a very well thought out product and has a great interface that’s similar enough to old editions, but with a modern flair.

3 Stars It was what my computer needed
I’ve heard bad things about Vista so wanted a copy of the XP on hand.

4 Stars Bought for Mac “Boot Camp”
I bought this for my daughter’s MacBook, She had a Windows-only program she needed long term for school and we did not want to buy a Wintel computer just for that. She uses it with the Macintosh “Boot Camp” program that allows the Mac to boot up w/the Macintosh Finder or Windows operating system. That requires a full version of Windows (not an upgrade). We did have to upgrade Finder to the “Tiger” (10.5) version which had the production version of Boot Camp. We could not get the downloadable Beta version of Boot Camp to work w/ the earlier versions of Finder. It took three shots to get Windows to install, all related to how Windows does a new “clean” installation; it goes back to it’s MS-DOS roots for the initial setup. As with any Windows product, the amount of on-screen information was minimal, so I guessed wrong a couple of times during the installation process. Not for a complete novice, but I’m no expert/geek, either. Technophobes should definitely get help. Once the installation was complete, everything worked as advertised, both for the Mac and Windows.

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Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic 64 bit for System Builders DVD

1PK VISTA HOME BASIC 64BIT EN DVD

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star Avoid like the plague. No wait, this is worse.
This OS does not work with 99% of all hardware devices due to its mandatory driver signing policy. This means that a hardware device and/or driver that does not implement DRM cannot be certified and therefore used with this OS. If you can, get the 32-bit version instead. Or better yet, get XP.

4 Stars Not for Boot Camp Macs with OS 10.4
This rating is for the package, not the OS itself.

Just a warning…this will NOT WORK CORRECTLY if you plan to install using Boot Camp on your 64 bit Mac. It will install, but as of OS 10.4, many of the drivers are only supported by the 32 bit version of Windows Vista (so get that!). Parallels can not handle 64 bit either. Just a warning.

3 Stars Vista 64
New rating: 4/5

Just a quick note before I begin: I run 2x 1GB GeForce 8600 GT on an MSI n570 SLi motherboard with an AMD Phenom @ 2.6 Ghz with 8GB DDR2 RAM. I am not a hardcore gamer or PC enthusiast; this is the first rig of this calibur that I have ever built.

That being said….

Ah Vista. How anxious I was to try you out myself. I’ve heard lots of different things about you, some good, and lots of bad. I’ll reflect on my initial experience with this OS in this review.

Installation was a breeze. Vista rarely prompted me unnecessarily (for example, it just restarted instead of prompting me and waiting for 30 seconds), and the whole process couldn’t have been longer than ten minutes. And for those of you updating your system from XP (or some other Microsoft OS), Vista has an “update” feature and a clean install feature; the former saves all of your personal information while the latter is pretty self explanatory.

My initial reaction went something like this: wow, this looks pretty slick. And it continues to look pretty slick. Microsoft piles on the visual goods with window shadowing, transparencies, and tight color schemes. All of these effects work right out of the box, so if you’re a sucker for visuals this won’t disappoint you. On the other hand, if you reminisce about the days of 3.1, you can always turn these features off. I would recommend this for users that experience lower performance than they desire.

Vista is also loaded with control features. I ended up removing many of them in favor of less hassle and better performance, but for those of you that like prompts and many security features, Vista will again support your desires. Vista’s initial settings will prompt you whenever ANY program tries to access the web and whenever ANY program (that isn’t started by the OS) runs. I felt that this was a little much and disabled both. It comes with a firewall, Windows defender, performance monitors, a new look for the control panel, a new sidebar, and an improved search engine (which I’ve heard plenty of complaining about, but it works great for me… its on the start menu people, its not hard to find!).

There are some down sides. If you’re looking to disable security features that Vista insists on running as defaults, you’re going to find it pretty difficult. As in, look around for a half hour, give up, get a coffee, come back with friends and look for another half hour before you find it difficult. Also, it could boot a little faster. I was expecting blazing booting speed with the rig that I built but honestly my family’s computer with XP gets up and running quicker, and it runs on spare blender parts. Additionally, when you see “32-bit compatibility” advertised, they mean that you can run a program that allows a single program to run in an XP environment, and choose whether or not to run it in this format permanently or not. Forget about playing older games or running old software as well; 64-bit Vista does not support 16-bit code.

All-in-all, the goods far outway the bad. It runs smooth, looks great, and allows great flexibility while providing excellent security and features designed to aid any kind of user. I would recommend this to anyone that plans on running a lot of 64-bit software, or to PC builders that plan on using more than 3GB of RAM (32-bit OSs don’t support any more than that!). Other than that though, I would say just stick with 32-bit Vista as you will run into less compatibility issues in the near future.

3 Stars I wish I got 32 bit Vista instead.
It is a good operating system, and updates have fixed more then a few problems, but before buying this I did not realize that quite a number of programs did not support 64 bit windows. I wanted to use the zonealarm firewall and spyware doctor, but they’re not supported on this. I thought 64 bit would be better than 32 bit (which it is in some ways) but not enough software is supported on it. So I would suggest that you stick with 32 bit vista (or XP) for now.

P.S I did not have any problems with PC games working on it, they worked just fine, even Oblivion did.

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