As I have previously stated, I work as a Computing Consultant at a local University.  Since we have so many computers, we use volume license keys for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.

Dell and other OEMs are under pressure from Microsoft to stop including Microsoft Windows XP as the installed operating system that is installed by default.  Until about a month ago, the main reason we hadn’t rolled out Windows Vista to new computers, or to computers that meet our Windows Vista system requirements (at least a 2.6 GHz single Core processor, 80GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card similar to a NVIDIA Geforce 5200), was because the software that we use to install our volume licensed software (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite 3, EndNote) and to manage their licenses, wasn’t Windows Vista compatible.

Thanks to our Network Administrators, a Windows Vista compatible version of this software has been installed on our servers.  This means that clients are now purchasing machines with Windows Vista Home Basic because it saves them money because we have Windows Vista Enterprise; this is the volume licensed version of Windows Vista.

I have nothing against Windows Vista itself but I have to complain about something.  Windows Vista is capable of being upgraded from one edition to another (e.g. Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows Vista Ultimate).  Except that no other edition of Windows Vista and be upgraded to Windows Vista Enterprise.  This means that any time you install Windows Vista Enterprise, you have to reformat the hard drive and install it from scratch.  Then you spend about a half an hour reinstalling drivers from the OEM restore disc.

Microsoft should have thought about their corporate customers when they released Windows Vista.  The good thing about this kind of install is that all of the OEM junk doesn’t get installed because you are starting with a clean slate; the best kind of computer.

Feel free to leave any comments.

–Doug