Vista SP1 Upgrade costs much less than Full Edition
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) April 3, 2008 – Microsoft customers can install the "upgrade edition" of Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) on any PC without having to purchase a "full" version of Microsoft Vista, according to an article in today's Windows Secrets Newsletter. Associate editor Scott Dunn says users can take advantage of a trick to upgrade to Windows Vista SP1 regardless of whether any older version of Windows is running on their machines, which can result in cost savings.
"The latest upgrade edition of Windows Vista SP1 allows the upgrade to be installed and activated even if consumers don't currently have any previous version of Windows running," says Dunn. "This is a great cost break, because the Vista SP1 upgrade edition is around $100 cheaper than the full version, depending on your country and what retail version of Vista you buy."
The upgrade "trick" involves installing an unactivated version of Vista from the product DVD. The user then launches setup from within Vista, reinstalls using the operating system's "upgrade" option, and enters the product key.
This procedure was originally published in February 2007 by Windows Secrets editorial director Brian Livingston. He explained then that the earlier, "gold" release of Vista allowed upgrades without requiring an existing version of Windows or even a CD of an older Windows operating system to be present. Fourteen months later, the download trick continues to work with the Vista SP1 upgrade edition.
"The fact that the company has not taken steps to remove the upgrade trick from Vista SP1 leads us to believe that Microsoft executives knowingly support the trick," said Livingston. "I think the feature was deliberately included to make it unnecessary for more advanced and price-sensitive users to ever buy the full version. There is no ethical dilemma with people using a feature that Microsoft has specifically programmed into Vista."
Instructions for performing the Vista SP1 upgrade trick, as well as a table illustrating the cost savings by country and version, can be found at Windows Secrets.
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