Vista - Home Premium vs Ultimate

Compare Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

In addition to the information contained in the link posted by esquire, another significant difference is that Home Premium (and lower versions) cannot connect to a "domain" type of network. This is not important for most home users, but it might be a "gotcha" for a student who has to connect to a university network. This connectivity is only available with Vista Business and higher versions (including Ultimate).

I have Ultimate on one and  Premium on my other PCS.  The only difference I see between them is that Ultimate has what is called Dreamscene and allows for movies to be used as wallpaper.  It's pretty cool, but other than a few security issues, I dont' see a difference between the two.

 

 

One other thing is that if you buy Ultimate Retail (fancy box), you get both the 32-bit and 64-bit media.

If you buy anything 'less' you can contact Microsoft and for a small fee (shipping cost) they can send you the 64-bit media.

If you buy Ultimate from Dell, I believe they can also send you (have to call it in and request it) the 64-bit media. For the 'lesser' versions I don't believe this is the case.