Install Windows Vista (any edition) – Is it a good idea?

My definition of a successful clean install:

1. Accomplished within the minimum possible time
   
2. All devices work
   
3. All software installs and works
   
4. No loss of personal data
   
5. All maintenance tasks are automatic
   
6. System optimized for best performance
   
7. Reinstalls will require a fraction of the initial amount of time
   

Several scenarios are possible, depending on your specific needs:

1. Install Vista and start using it as it is, any applications and tweaks will be applied in the future on an "as needed" basis: fair enough, it will take some 30 min
   
2. Install Vista with all your apps and system tweaks, you don't plan to repeat the process on another machine: approximately 10 hours depending on how many and which apps you need. A reinstall will take 3-4 hours
   
3. As above, but you plan to repeat the procedure on several PCs: 15-20 hours. Subsequent installs will take 5-6 hours.
   

The one major factor that prolongs installation time and makes it into a long suffering is problems that occur during the installation process. Most of these can be avoided though. In the case of a Vista (any OS really) install, the following check-list is a must

-Hardware: does your hardware support Vista?

• The PC as a whole: the manufacturer's web site will give an indication, I highly recommend googling for some reviews and user feedback
  
• Any attached peripherals: web cams, printers, USB flash drives, external hard drives........... Same as above: check manufacturer's web site and independent reviews and user feedback.

• Hardware requirements (real world, not MS defined)

  -CPU: AMD or Intel, but Dual Core. The AMD platform is still cheaper, the latest Intel CPU are faster and don’t run as hot as they used to.

  -Motherboard: tough choice! There’s a plethora of them out there in a wide range of choices. The most important question is “What do you plan to use the PC for?”. If you are into movies and music and intend to hook the PC to a wide screen HDTV and watch protected content.....don’t get Vista. The work around where you pipe in the sound to the graphics card for HDMI output in Vista has the added twist that you can no longer use the PC speakers.

  -Memory: 1GB of RAM. Anything less and you're in for a very frustrating experience.
  

  -Graphics: get a good card that supports DirectX 10, but beyond that.....all the fancy HDMI/HDCP stuff comes at a premium cost and “allows for playback of high definition content on HDMI enabled devices”. Emphasis on “allows”: it will play, but if you are a true media type you won’t enjoy it as the video might be what you expect, but with all current implementations the sound part takes a hit. The only reason to pay the extra money for this kind of feature is if you already have a top of the line HDCP compliant TV which you want to hook up to your PC (most of them don’t allow video display if the source is not also HDCP compliant)

  -Sound: most sound cards will work in Vista. More advanced features like echo cancellation and EAX won’t. Partly re-written architecture, mostly DRM-related, it’s going to be a while before more advanced features will work in Vista. Soundblaster’s Alchemy is the only software that often/almost works, and is only available for high end cards.

-Software: make a list of all the apps you use and repeat the steps above for each of them.

-Personal data: is it recently backed up? Is the backup readable from within Vista? A "user files backup" should include documents, music, pictures, video, but also mail folders (mails, contacts), favourites and user names/passwords for various sites, various kinds of digital certificates, licenses and serial numbers for proprietary software, personalized settings for applications that allow personalization, saved games.

At this point you might face some hard choices, if all your hardware and software is not Vista-compatible. In most cases there are workarounds or a newer edition available. The first option might result in loss of functionality, performance or both. The second might prove expensive. If installing Vista is still an option we will start gathering the various bits and pieces necessary for a successful installation in my next post.

Core Vista experience-for business users

XPS Document support: the new format pushed by Microsoft.

Microsoft XPS is designed as a direct competitor to Adobe PostScript and PDF. Just like PDF, an XPS document is displayed identically on every computer and will represent the "printed page". XPS uses XML to describe the layout of documents and how they should be rendered.

It does however suffer from several problems: MS is only providing viewers for Windows, all other platforms will have to wait for specific viewers to be created; if your default browser is not IE, you need to set the xps files to open with IE (not the xps viewer). Not to mention that MS intended this as non editable, or at least not easily editable (there is a component that ships with the SDK that can accomplish this, so it's aimed at....developers????). For the average user, if you ever want to edit an xps file you're good for 100 to 300 USD in fees for 3^rd party software.

Network Diagnostics and troubleshooting

Yet another wizard.....The feature existed in XP pro, but was rather difficult to use, not to mention well hidden (Start >Help And Support > On the Help And Support Center page, select the Tools button under the Pick A Task category > select Network Diagnostics from the scrolling list in the Tools panel....). Most of these functions are now performed automatically b a user friendly wizard. For those who insist on knowing what the MaxBaudRateToSerialPort is configured to, the netsh command still works.

My personal grief with these wizards is that they don't help at all in 9 out of 10 networking problems. The usual "disable and reenable adapters-reboot router/modem-check all your cables-reseat cards-disable firewalls" is still what works most of the time, and they are much faster to just do then to go through a wizard which will eventually tell you the same thing.

Improved wireless networking

The GUI is much improved, and while you still need to know what kind of encryption your network uses, it is as easy to set up a wireless network as it used to be to set up a wired one (that kind is practically plug-and-play in Vista)

Improved peer networking

The much debated wireless ad-hoc PC to PC connection. The ability existed in XP also, but it has been improved and polished for Vista, with added security and the possibility to opt out of being "seen" by other PCs

Improved VPN support

Setting up a VPN connection has also received an overhauling of the GUI. However the web is full of people having trouble VPNing to and from Vista.

Improved power management

Allows for a much more granular configuration of the power options. Besides 3 built-in scenarios, users can change timings independently for hard disk, wireless adapter, USB, display and multimedia streaming. So why is this "for business users"?

Windows HotStart: Launch an app from a button mapped to it.

This feature allows the user to immediately start any application regardless of power state (sleep, hibernation, on or off) by pressing a pre-mapped button. Not something you can't live without, and you need a machine with a BIOS that supports this feature, but it is kind of neat to resume your session directly into the power point presentation you are about to give.....

Sync Center

That's what replaces the XP's Offline Files. All the devices/networks shares you want to synch with are gathered in one location, with scheduling capability. Sadly still no versioning support, but definitely usefull.

Improved file and folder sharing

In XP you could share or not share a file/folder. In Vista you can decide with whom to share, and give different users different permissions for different files/folders. Definitely useful.

Ad hoc backup and recovery of user files and folders

You can' schedule the backups in Vista Basic, but you can choose which types of files to backup and from which partitions/drives, however no edition allows a more granular choice (files in specific folders only, for example). Once again, how is this labelled "for business users"?

Vista Basic vs XP: IT pros

These are the features Microsoft labelled the "core vista experience". There are quite a few of them, so in this part I will go through those more specifically targeted at IT professionals.

Pluggable logon authentication architecture: correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this something that has been available in Unix systems for years? Anyway, Vista has it. The way I understand it, this feature sits between an application requiring user-authentication and the actual user-authentication method used by the system. The application requiring the authentication does not need to know what the system uses in order to authenticate users. The request is passed on to the authentication module who communicates with the system and returns the appropriate response.

Application Compatibility features: no kidding, it's actually listed as a feature in the official MS documentation.

And some steps have been taken to ease the transition from older systems, the most relevant of which is the virtualized folders and registry keys. When an application tries to write to folders/registry keyes for which it has not been granted write permissions, a folder will be created under the logged-on user's name and the app both allowed to write it's data there and "fooled" into thinking it's writing it in the intended location.

Another step is the "Program compatibility" tripod, comprised of

• the "assistant" which is supposed to detect when an application needs to run in Windows XP operating system compatibility mode and does the necessary modifications allowing the app to run.
  
• The properties tab in the right-click context menu which enables the user to manually do what the assistant is supposed to do automatically.
  
• The "wizard" which will pop-up when the above mentioned methods have all failed and offers to look for compatibility fixes.
  

Sadly running in compatibility mode or writing to virtualized locations is far from sufficient for running many older applications, so a thorough research is highly recommended before spending hard earned cash on either Vista or newer versions of software. Microsoft is aware of this and in at least one document (Windows Vista Product Guide) mentions Virtual PC as an interim solution "Virtual PC 2007 makes it possible to simultaneously run multiple operating systems on a single PC. This allows you to migrate your computers to Windows Vista for a more secure and manageable experience, while keeping a previous Windows environment available to run non-compatible applications until developers can modify them." No mention however of how this modifies hardware requirements (2GB of RAM, hard disc space for the virtual discs....)

File-based image format (WIM): for people who spend their lives installing and maintaining PCs, this is truly the best thing since sliced bread. It's not very easy or intuitive to use, and it has it's quirks, not to mention an extremely poorly written documentation, but

• hardware-agnostic image file
  
• multiple images stored in one file + use of compression and single instancing
  
• service the image offline, including adding and deleting optional components such as patches and drivers without starting up the desktop or creating a new image.

Vista Premium features

In one word video: Media center, DVD playback and authoring and themed slideshows are only available in the Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista.

Let's look more closely at these features:

1. Windows media center
   

I confess that I am not into this entire media on your PC stuff. I don't even own an Xbox. I watch DVDs and TV shows on a 30" HDTV connected to a DVD with integrated HD and to a high quality wireless 7+1 surround system. I do computer work on the PC. I listen to music mostly on the PC. So, for what's different in Vista as opposed to the XP Media Center (besides the fact that is a part of the OS, of course), see Jeff Atwood's review "Windows Visa Media Center" and some of the comments to that review.

For non US users, please note that HDTV and cablecard are not officially supported outside the US.

As far as I know, of all "preVista" media center extenders, the only one compatible with Vista is the Xbox. On the other hand Microsoft has a lot of things coming in this area, some of which will ship this autumn and will probably not be backwards compatible with XP.

1. DVD Maker, Movie maker HD, native DVD playback
   

This is something I'd really like to have some time to play with: Windows DVD Maker. It sure does have some unresolved issues that mainly boil down to DVD maker not playing nice with any non vista codecs and/or sound software that might be installed on the PC. But it also has the potential to do some really cool things with your home movies and pics, not to mention editing some other video material.

Just one thing: this is designed for home users. It's not a professional-grade video editing/creating application. The people who will use and like this app are users who are either new to video editing or have tried and been put off by a steep learning curve for more advanced applications.

1. Themed slide shows
   

I would probably not pay extra for it, but if I have it anyway, it's one of those cool visual features you get with Vista. When you open a pictures folder in the Windows Photo Gallery and click on the large middle button, you get to choose between several ways to view he slideshow. The "pan and zoom" one makes me motion sick, but the "spin" thing is a big favourite.

That's it. Not really what I use a PC for, but if you're into videos/pics/ music, Vista Premium is your Vista edition of choice. And it's way better looking and more features rich than even the Media Edition of XP.

The case against Vista Ultimate and Business editions

Two last features are only available in these editions of Windows Vista: support for 2 CPU's (two sockets) and support for more than 16GB of memory. In the context of a home user, the two should prove totally irrelevant.

Let's recap:

Bitlocker, Multilanguage support and native support for Unix based applications are the only bits that are exclusive to the Ultimate version. Of course Microsoft couldn't make it his easy on users to skip their flag OS.

Not listed as a feature is the "Ultimate extras" section of windows updates. To date here are 3 "ultimate extras" (except for the language packs of course): a poker game, enhancements for bitlocker and EFS, and Windows Dream Scene.

I'll skip the poker game part. The main Bitlocker enhancement is that you no longer need to preconfigure he harddrive in order to use Bitlocker. As to Dream Scene, I'll quote from the source:

"Your desktop background comes to life with Windows DreamScene™. When you download this Ultimate Extra, you can select a video for your desktop background the same way you select a stationary picture. You can choose one of the high-quality looping videos that we've included, or use a video from a company that produces content for DreamScene. You can even use your own video as a background."

As cool as the idea sounds, it's the most distracting piece of desktop enhancement I've ever stumbled upon.

 

The features available only in Ultimate and Business are heavily ITpro oriented, and might be needed if the PC is to be used to VPN to work. Might is the operational word here. My best advice is to ask your IT department. If the business is small enough that you don't have a dedicated IT department, you won't need all of this stuff.

The mobility center is one cool feature you might miss if you choose to skip Business. As to the Fax and Scan center, it is a nice centralized way of doing things, but it will only work with hardware new enough to be Vista compatible and it is only truly useful if you fax/scan a lot.

 

Conclusion

For home users the Vista version of choice should be the Premium edition. In exchange for missing out on the above described features, you get the whole Windows Media package.

Price wise, the difference between Vista Premium and Vista Ultimate, on Amazon is as follows:

OEM versions: £55 (110USD)

Upgrade versions: £68 (136USD)

Retail versions: £115 (230USD)

I have provided a link to an article that describes pretty well the limitations that go with an OEM license. In brief: either 32 or 64-bit edition on the DVD, no free 90 days support, and you might not be able to reuse it if you change your motherboard.

For the upgrade version, the only limitation is that you have to have a previous version of Windows installed. Microsoft has provided a list of available upgrade paths, which I find confusing at best and not entirely accurate when it comes to real life experience.

Retail versions: can be installed as a new OS and you get 90 days free support from MS, but only after you have activated your copy. Can also be transferred to a new PC as long as you only use it on one PC at a time.

Features not available in Vista Premium: for business users

Offline folders

In the beginning there was the need to access files stored on a network folder even when the network was unavailable. Another compelling reason to use this feature is the fact that not all networks are created equal: some are slow; some have a tendency to crash just before you saved your work.

For businesses, this is a must, no question about it.

The problem is that more and more home users are beginning to use networked files and folders. Microsoft is well aware of this, and prepares the launch of a file server for home use, possibly as early as the fall of 2007.

There are though differences in the way this feature is used/needed in a business environment and at home. He main point of using Offline folders as opposed to manually copying and transferring files, is that

a. The synchronization is done automatically between the local copy and the networked copy whenever the network connection is re-established

b. If both the local copy and he networked copy have been modified since the last synchronization, he user is alerted and given a choice of which version to keep.

These 2 points are likely to be less important in a home environment: what are the odds that both you and another family member are editing the same movie at the same time and without telling each other about it?; and if after all that editing you forgot to replace the networked copy, chances are you’ll just do i as soon as you discover the omission with no other dire consequences.

I’d give this a maybe towards justifying the price for an Ultimate version of Vista, and that only for those who DO use networked files.

Small Business Resources

Domain join, corporate roaming, remote desktop, full support for the mobility center are the features available in Ultimate and Business editions and not listed elsewhere, so I suppose this is what Microsoft means by “small business resources”.

If you want to use your home PC to VPN to work, you might need the Domain join and Corporate roaming features (and a very nice soon-to-be-fired network admin, but that’s another story). Problem is small businesses don’t generally use these features, and large businesses don’t allow the home PCs to be tied directly into the corporate network.....

The mobility center is not a bad idea by any means, and it even has some cool features like the ability to choose a “presentation” mode for your laptop (In this mode the screen saver and system pop-ups are disabled), easier connection to external displays, a centralized view of battery and network status (together with the other settings like sync, presentation mode, screen orientation, brightness....). If you use a laptop you might find these improvements useful.

The feature is however also noted as partially supported in the Premium edition. I have been to date unable to determine exactly what is missing from that edition, so until I know more, I’d say this one is only a YES if your wallet is thick enough.

Windows fax and scan

If you need to fax/scan from home....bummer. Not only the feature is only available in the Business and Ultimate editions of Vista, chances are it won’t work with your existing hardware. Anything bought before 2006 will face major compatibility problems. For hardware bought during 2006, you might get lucky, if you invested in the latest models. Otherwise add the cost for new hardware to the price difference between Premium and XP or consider being creative (Essentially use an XP PC to do the job. The creativity is where to find one handy...)

If you do decide you need it bad enough, you will appreciate the sleek interface though.

Wireless network provisioning

See Small Business Resources above. Corporate roaming on a wireless network could very well fit here. One really cool feature supported in Vista is the ability to authenticate on a wireless network before you reach the desktop, and to use the same credentials to authenticate with the domain controller. In real life, that means that only authorized machines will connect to the network, but they will do so with a minimum fuss for the user.

As for most of the other IT and business oriented features, at home you decidedly do not need this. If you need to connect to your work network though, the ones who know what they will require are the network admins, so be sure to check with them before you make a decision on which edition of Vista to buy.

Features not available in Vista Premium Part 2

Features not available in Vista Premium

IT professionals 2/2

1. Policy-based quality of service for networking

   Nice little tool that will allow network administrators to prioritize network traffic by application, user, port, source and destination address. The requirements for this to work are:
   

• The computers involved are running Windows Vista or Windows Server "Longhorn".
  
• The computers involved are members of an Active Directory domain so that they can be controlled by using Group Policy.
  
• TCP/IP networks are set up with routers configured for DSCP (RFC 2474).
  

The above means that the feature is useful only if

• You VPN to work, to a server where this policy has been enabled
  
• The policy has been configured on your home PC
  

And if you do use it, the policy will only apply on the enterprise side of the connection, and not to the connection between your home and the enterprise server.

So what happens if you don't have this on your home PC? Then your attempt to use the enterprise network will be prioritized following the rules for unclassified traffic (default is "best effort").

1. System image–based backup and recovery
   

In its full implementation, this feature does 3 things

-image based backup

Pretty limited implementation: you can add other drives, but not exclude any that have to do with the OS; once you do a full backup to a HDD the subsequent backups are incremental only; no backup to a network share.

-shadow copy

It's system restore for your personal files: if system restore is turned on the drive where the file resides, if you modify a file and then want to recover the original or even delete a file and want to recover it, the previous version will be available in the "previous versions" tab of the file property. This tool can, obviously be very useful. The limitations are that you don't really control which versions of the file are saved:

• You boot and start working right away on your Vista computer: a restore point might not be created, because in the Vista implementation automatic SR only creates backups during idle time. The "previous version" for the file will be the one from the last restore point.
  
• You modify the file, save, change it some more, save. You will only be able to return to the original version, because shadow copies are, by default, only created once a day
  
• You delete a file. If the file has been captured by a previous system restore, then you will be able to restore it, even if you have emptied the recycle bin. But then again so will anybody else, at least if they know in which folder it used to reside. The file will not be made unrecoverable unless the restore point that had captured it is also deleted.
  

  
  

  
  

-file based backup

This is also available in the Premium Version so I'll get back to it.

So do you need this feature or not? As a reliable backup solution it's flawed. On the other hand good backup solutions are commercial. The price for an Acronis True Image license is £50, less or far less than the price difference between a Vista Business/Premium and a Vista Ultimate edition. My personal choice was to go with Acronis TI.

1. Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) Client
   

This is what gives the ability to configure security settings on a per document and per user basis. A group of users can be defined that are allowed to view the document, a subgroup might have additional permissions (modify, print, copy). The feature has been available since Winows server 2000, but a client application needed to be installed on the client computers.

In order for the RMS functionality to be enabled, you need a server that holds the rights and keys for the documents, the application on the client that holds the certificates and applications that work with RMS.

Once again, a feature clearly useful only to those that might need to VPN to work from their private machines.

Conclusion

For myself I am still at a maybe concerning the usefulness of Vista Ultimate. Business seems to be a no, as all the cool media features will be missing and I can't find any killer features I might miss. Still, one more set of features to go through, the ones MS classified "for business users".

Vista features: new features/ modified XP features

Per Microsoft's classification:

Black text: features for home users

Blue text: features for IT pros

White text: features for business users

Yellow test: features for all

Features	basic	premium	business	ultimate
Application Compatibility features	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
File-based image format (WIM)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pluggable logon authentication architecture	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Universal game controller support	Yes	Yes	Yes*	Yes
Accessibility Settings and Ease of Access Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Games Explorer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Speech Recognition	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Updated games	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Calendar	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Mail	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Media Player 11	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Movie Maker	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Photo Gallery—for organizing, editing, printing, and sharing photos and videos	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Sidebar	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
.NET Framework 3.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
64-bit processor support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ad hoc backup and recovery of user files and folders	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ad hoc backup and recovery of user files and folders	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Anti-phishing in Internet Explorer 7	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Anti-phishing in Windows Mail	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Automatic hard disk defragmentation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
File tagging	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
I/O prioritization	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Improved file and folder sharing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Improved peer networking	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Improved power management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Improved VPN support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Improved wireless networking	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Instant Search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Internet Explorer 7 Fix My Settings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Internet Explorer 7 Protected Mode	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Internet Explorer 7 with RSS feed support, tabbed browsing, and integrated search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IPv6 and IPv4 support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Network and Sharing Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Network Diagnostics and troubleshooting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Next-generation TCP/IP stack	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Performance self-tuning and hardware diagnostics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Service Hardening	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stacking and Group By View.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sync Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
User Account Control	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Welcome Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows CardSpace	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Defender	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Experience Index	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Firewall	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows HotStart	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows ReadyBoost	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows ReadyDrive	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Security Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows SuperFetch	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Update	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Vista Basic user interface	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
XPS Document support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Maximum RAM supported with 32-bit system	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB
Parental Controls	Yes	Yes		Yes
Windows Meeting Space	View only	Yes	Yes	Yes
Simultaneous SMB peer network connections	5	10	10	10
Windows Mobility Center	Partial	Partial	Yes	Yes
Maximum RAM supported with 64-bit system	8 GB	16 GB	128+ GB	128+ GB
New premium games		Yes	Yes*	Yes
Automatic backup scheduling		Yes	Yes	Yes
Backup of user files to a network device		Yes	Yes	Yes
Backup of user files to a networked PC or device		Yes	Yes	Yes
Incremental backup		Yes	Yes	Yes
Scheduled backup of user files		Yes	Yes	Yes
Scheduled backup of user files		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Aero user experience (glass, dynamic windows, and a smoother-performing desktop)		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows SideShow		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Tablet PC handwriting recognition improvements		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Tablet PC touch screen support		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Tablet PC usability and navigation improvements		Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Tablet PC with integrated pen/digital ink input		Yes	Yes	Yes
Native DVD playback		Yes		Yes
Support for Media Center Extenders, including Xbox 360		Yes		Yes
Themed slide shows		Yes		Yes
Windows DVD Maker (Video DVD Authoring and Burning)		Yes		Yes
Windows Media Center—CableCard support (U.S. only)		Yes		Yes
Windows Media Center—for music, photos, videos, live and recorded TV, and online entertainment		Yes		Yes
Windows Media Center—for recording and watching high-definition TV (U.S. and South Korea only)		Yes		Yes
Windows Movie Maker HD		Yes		Yes
Windows Fax and Scan			Yes	Yes*
Complete PC Backup and Restore (image based)			Yes	Yes
Offline Folder support			Yes	Yes
Shadow Copy (restore previous versions of your documents)			Yes	Yes
Small Business Resources			Yes	Yes
Two processors (two processor sockets) support			Yes	Yes
Wireless network provisioning			Yes	Yes
Control over installation of device drivers			Yes	Yes
Desktop deployment tools for managed networks			Yes	Yes
Encrypting File System			Yes	Yes
Network Access Protection Client Agent			Yes	Yes
Policy-based quality of service for networking			Yes	Yes
System image–based backup and recovery			Yes	Yes
Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) Client			Yes	Yes
All worldwide user interface languages (36 languages total) available				Yes
Subsystem for UNIX-based applications				Yes
Support for simultaneous installation of multiple user interface languages				Yes
Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption				Yes
Years of product support	5	5	10	5