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Whether you're a home PC user interested in simply surfing the Web or a multi-national corporation desiring secure collaboration among workers, the Windows Vista operating system comes in an edition specially suited to your needs.

As of this writing, Microsoft plans to release Windows Vista in five different editions aimed at five different segments of the user population:

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows Vista Ultimate

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition
For users with older hardware and modest software needs, the Windows Vista Home Basic edition will be a sound economic choice that provides improved reliability and security.

Having the lowest price of any Windows Vista edition, Home Basic is equivalent to the Windows XP Home edition. However, it offers essential applications and enhancements that make your data more secure and can even warn you of coming hardware failures.

Although the Home Basic edition does not include the Aero environment, it does provide the new user interface, basic productivity applications such as integrated searching, e-mail, Internet Explorer 7, and user account management featuring parental controls to better monitor and limit the browsing of children.

Users of the Home Basic edition will lack features designed for organizational use such as the ability to join a Windows domain.

Windows Vista Home Premium
For users desiring a richer digital media experience, the Home Premium edition offers all of the features of the Home Basic edition plus the Windows Aero user interface, improved digital media management, and enhanced mobility features such as Windows Tablet and Touch Technology.

The Windows Vista Home Premium edition includes the Windows Media Center application, which effectively replaces Windows XP Media Center edition. Media Center works like a complete home entertainment center allowing you to watch and record television programs, to create slideshows of your favorite photos, to listen to music, and much more. You can even create your own high-definition movies and burn them to DVD.

The Home Premium edition, like the Home Basic edition, lacks features needed for organizational use such as the capacity to join Windows domains.

Windows Vista Business
Designed to meet the needs of any business user, Windows Vista Business edition is designed to keep PCs running reliably and securely, thereby freeing up IT resources. It is also more easily deployed and managed than previous versions of the Windows operating system.

The Business edition features all the core navigation and security improvements of Windows Vista plus it incorporates applications for emerging technology such as Windows Journal for Tablet PC.

Windows Vista Enterprise
For global organizations, Microsoft has created the Window Vista Enterprise edition to better address complex computing infrastructures. The Enterprise edition also provides tools to improve application compatibility such as Virtual PC Express that allows users to run applications in legacy Windows operating systems in a virtual environment.

The Enterprise edition also incorporates hardware-based security features such as Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption which helps to protect data if a computer is lost or stolen.

Windows Vista Ultimate
The Ultimate edition incorporates advanced business features, mobility, and digital entertainment into a comprehensive operating system.

Some of its business solutions include Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption, the ability to join a domain, and support for Group Policy Management.

Learn more about this author, Anmol Gul.
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