I posted several days back about my stolen laptop and the challenges of rebuilding my electronic life from backups and downloads and all the rest. By Friday I had everything nailed down and working smoothly, including an older Okidata networked laser printer which I thought could cause problems but which configured just fine.
I had one more project to complete, get logged in to our office server so I could run our funeral home management package and get at the company accounting information. At first I thought I had done something wrong in trying to "find" that computer on the network but my tech support guy reminded me of all the extra steps required to log onto a Windows "domain". No big deal I thought. With my jogged recollections in mind, I knew it would take only a few minutes to get everything aligned.
I went to the advanced system properties section looking for the appropriate place to type in the information and it wasn't there. Oh boy!!! How exciting. And after a visit to the help screens I discovered that the Vista Home Premium version on my laptop did not work with Windows domains. I had to upgrade to "Ultimate" in order for this to work. Again, no big deal I've got a fairly deep geek streak running through me and I've upgraded operating systems before. It had to wait though, I had a meeting and a dinner to attend on Friday night.
Saturday morning rolls around and I dive into the project. I Look up the "Anytime Upgrade" option in Windows help and click the appropriate links only to receive an error message telling me I lived in the wrong country/region and could not use the anytime upgrade system. Living in America, this did not make a bit of sense, so I the the Sony tech support number and give them a call.
Now let me give credit where credit is due. Sony answered my call quickly. The woman on the line understood what I needed and got me an answer very promptly. Tech support did a good job. However, she told me unequivically that Sony would not support "Ultimate" on the laptop and that as a result, key hardward components would not work properly after the upgrade!!! And by the way, (cause I looked this up) Sony's Vista Ultimate compatible machines were anywhere from $800.00 to $1,500.00 more than the computer I had picked out! Honestly I think this boils down to a merchandising decision as opposed to a real technical issue but I did not have time to experiment and find out.
I will not labor this story any further. Just take note that HP does allow for the Ultimate upgrade and I managed to find an HP laptop with slightly better specifications than the Sony for $200.00 less at the local BJ's Wholesale Club. So that part worked out okay except for spending the rest of the weekend setting up another new laptop and returning the Sony.
So the next time you start shopping for a computer for the office, make sure you keep these Vista Premium vs. Ultimate issues in mind and make sure you have purchased or ordered a unit which will actually get the whole job done.
Hopefully my mistake will save you a great deal of time and energy.
Vista by the way, I like it. I'm getting used to it. It will work fine for my purposes and I don't see any reason to go back to XP. Microsoft Word 2007, that's another story. I find the new format tabs very confusing because I've done things in a certain way for so many years and they've taken away the menus. This too shall pass.
Have a fantastic week,
BT
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