I did all of the research on which version of vista to buy and ran the compatibility tool on my computer to see if it had the juice to display all those cool aero effects. The Dell inspiron I bought last year failed the test, but ironically, my new MacBook passed with flying colors.

I bought the upgrade version of “Home Premium” as it had all of the features I wanted and I was sure that I was eligible for the upgrade because the label on the front said “For users of Windows XP”. I had XP Pro so I thought “No problem”. Famous last words. Before I installed it, I made sure to read the package and skim the instructions, it said that a “clean install” might be necessary. Not taking any chances, I went ahead and wiped my old XP partition to make way for the new boss. A clean install should be no problem right? Plus it was recommended right there on the box! Well once I got to the install screen it said that, since this was an upgrade I had to run it from within my installed copy of windows XP. Ok, a minor setback, I’ll just re-install XP and I should be ready to go in just a few hours. XP installed no problem and I went for that vista disc again.

But a new problem surfaced – “Upgrade Disabled: XP Pro is not a valid upgrade for Vista Home”. I almost fell out of my chair! That couldn’t be right! But sure enough it was. Sad. I thought maybe a call to Microsoft might fix me up, like maybe this was a bug or something. No-go there. The (very courteous) support tech said that I was in an upgrade “Gray Area”. He explained that you can upgrade to Home premium from XP Home or 2000 Professional. But with XP Pro, you can only upgrade to the “bare-bones” Business edition, the “Gimmie a break” Enterprise Edition or the “Who cares” Ultimate Edition.

So now I’m stuck with a useless, opened copy of Vista Home Premium. I now will have to buy a license for either XP Home or 2000 Professional. Hence the Redmond 2-for-1 special. It’s not as good of a deal as it sounds.

My advice? BUY A MAC!