This brief guide is geared for typical Short-Media members: technology enthusiasts of all skill levels. Of the five Vista editions that have been released, there are only three that apply to us.

Home Basic is basically useless, so we won’t consider it. It lacks multi-processor support and the Aero interface (pretty much the most significant new feature in Vista). Consider Home Basic to be Grandma’s version of Vista. This is probably what you’ll see on $299 computers at major big-box retailers. Enterprise is similarly not for us. It’s only availble through Software Assurance and is strictly volume licensing for, well… enterprises.

That leaves us with the three we care about.

Home Premium (green box) is comparable to XP Home. It has a lot of the Media Center functionality, Xbox 360 extender functionality, Movie Maker, and DVD Maker. It lacks network domain capabilities.

Business (blue box) is comparable to XP Pro. It has volume shadow copy, the ability to join Active Directory domains, EFS, built-in faxing, and IIS (Internet Information Services – a web server). It lacks media capabilities.

Ultimate (black box) is XP Pro bundled with a lot of Microsoft applications – it has it all.

For users like me who have an Active Directory domain controller at home, Business or Ultimate is the way to go. For my media center PC, I’d probably go Home Premium. However, if I wanted to hook it up to my home domain, I’d have no choice but to go Ultimate. Kids computers can be Home Premium, but my main workstation would have to be Business.

Of these three, only Ultimate has the full-drive Bitlocker encryption.

All are available in either OEM or retail. Just like for XP, Vista OEM copies cannot be transferred to another motherboard, but retail can. If you buy OEM, you are buying it for that computer (and Microsoft considers the motherboard to be that computer). Retail editions contain both 32bit and 64bit versions. If you buy OEM, you are stuck with whichever one you buy – 32bit or 64bit.

Those factors should be sufficient for any of us to make our choice.

Short-Media’s comprehensive analysis of Windows Vista will be in Issue 7. In the meantime, be sure to check out our guide on the Windows Vista upgrade process.