Re: Vista Home premium vs ultimate vs. business
Your motherboard user’s manual would tell you. Or you can go to the manufacturer website and look up motherboard specs and see if it support 64-Bit CPU, If it does, then it supports 64-Bit OS as well. Then you just need to make sure your CPU supports 64-Bit OS, and again, you can do a search on the type of CPU you have and it will tell you whether or not it supports 64-Bit.
If you can post your laptop model no. and stuff, maybe we can help you figure that out.
As for side-by-side comparison, follow the link below. It gives you a side-by-side comparison of all 4 editions (Home Basic; Home Premium; Business; Ultimate) with Ultimate being the supreme of them all with all features included.
The editions you’re considering don’t particularly have any features that would “slow” it down or speed it up. Because after Vista Home Basic, all other editions come with Aero Theme (which is what would require Ram/Cpu power). So they’re pretty much equal in that sense. Otherwise, it’s about the features that are included.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx
Have a look, i hope it’ll help you decide.
Maybe some else can also shed some light on performance part of Vista, but i think i’ve stated it correctly as far as i know.
PS: For better performance, Aero Theme can be turned off. Just FYI.
Also state your computer specs. Vista requires at the very least 1GB of Ram, 2GB is recommended.