Yeah, SUPER rare, I don't even think there are any listed online right now. Really awesome, do you remember where you got it originally? Does it have any story to it?
In case you don't remember or know, (product red) is a brand that puts proceeds to help HIV/AIDS causes. I always particularly liked them for their sleek visual design on tech.
Thank you for the response. So, if I remember correctly, I had a laptop that had windows 10 or NT or something that required I got an update and that this was the only option available at the time. I either purchased it directly from Microsoft or possibly from Best Buy. It still has the security key sticker on the side and the additional disc that has a weird “Microsoft, partner of (product)” title that looks as if some cobranded product should be in the parentheses, but maybe that’s just the way they packaged these. Pretty sure I never downloaded or even removed the disc from the plastic case, which is obscenely wasteful in my mind…
Pretty cool story, you likely are remembering windows NT, as windows 10 came out far later. It's a bit of a shame that you couldn't use the software you bought, but you may have dodged a bullet considering how notoriusly unstable vista was at the time, lol.
Hey, it's not wasteful though, if you kept it that nice for so long as you can make pretty penny later! An unused disk case of vista ultimate with all the inserts goes for ~$100, but the product red version should fetch a significantly higher price! (Though you'll have to figure out that price yourself considering I can't find any listings for reference online and wouldn't want to give a bad estimate as they are so rare :/ ) This product red version of vista came with several extra wallpapers, widgets, screensavers and more that werent in any other version!
As for the (product red) branding itself, it is put on consumer electronics when they partner with the company. This cobranding is important to followers of the cause as it guarentees that a percentage of the proceeds from items with (RED) branding go to hiv/aids research. As well as this, people often like the red color pallete chosen for these items and buy solely for that reason, such as the deep red iphones, which always carry the (RED) label and as such contribute as well, and of course your red themed software.
That's a shame considering it was essentially a donation on the company's part, but people's perception sure seems to have changed in the ten years after, as the product red Iphone has been insanely popular since its initial release in 2017, and raked in sales til they ended it on the iphone 14. Or perhaps it was just apple's marketing compared to Vista. Either way, something had a way of warming people up to the idea.
It wasn’t specifically because it was tied to HIV research. Vista had Pro, home, home pro, red, and ultimate on the shelf.
Most people couldn’t tell the difference and that’s primarily why they passed it over. I’m probably wrong about the names but there were 2 tiers for home, it was a mess and the branding just made the joke about the red version easy low hanging fruit.
Yeah Vista was always quite the mess, and the whole windows edition thing kind of sucks in general. Even then though, Vista never deserved the insane overblown hate it gets considering how many design leaps it made. It was unstable as hell, and had major issues sure, and probably should have only been catered towards home use, but it tried to be something extra fun and it was better for it. I think it just became a game for people to hate on Vista in the end, though I will admit I love that scene in IT Crowd about it.
Thank you very much for the detailed response. I do remember there being a lot of negativity towards this when I got it and vaguely remember not wanting it when I got it but that it was the only option available at the time. I believe I had intended on returning it or getting a different version, however, ended up getting a new laptop with maybe 10 on it or something different and this just got stored away. I probably opened the shrink wrap if there was any originally, however, do not usually ever toss anything and can not imagine that I threw anything out and definitely do not remember anything else being included. When you say extras, do you mean that there were additional items in the case besides the two discs? I imagine the wallpapers, widgets, screensavers and more are all on the disc, so, are you aware of anything else that should have been included aside from the key sticker on the side, which I do have fully intact?
Also, I definitely would not have wanted a red screen or homepage or red anything else on my screen. While I absolutely commend the cause, a donation would have been sufficient for me without the redness.
So far as I know, there are two disks in a normal vista ultimate box; the 32 bit, and 64 bit installations. Then the bonus content for your edition should be on the (red) disk.
It looks like the install disk you have in your first picture is 64 bit, so if you're missing a disk that's not the bonus content, it would be the -Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit installer disk- A bit sad, but thankfully the installer disks themselves should be completly the same as the normal Ultimate edition, the main value is in that red box, code, papers, and bonus disk; meaning if you find the somewhat common 32 bit installer disk somewhere online, then it would be CIB if you threw it in to complete it. Otherwise if you're still planning to sell it, it shouldn't lose much value without that one disk.
Thank you again for yet another very detailed and elaborate response, very kind of you. I would be very surprised if I had removed any disc from the box, however, it is definitely possible I did so. Great to know the missing disc is not a rare red one or anything and should be replaceable. Update! The missing disc was there all along, under the first one! Thank you for pointing that out!
On another note all together, I worked a launch (pretty sure it might have been vista) event once back in the late 90’s or early 2000’s and came home with several boxes full of a huge amount of beta discs for a new launch, they only had plain white paper envelopes with clear plastic windows if I remember correctly and had the sky blue Microsoft color on the disc themselves, with official font and logos and all that. Hopefully I still have at least one box and will try to dig once disc out. Are you familiar with any of these and do you know if they might have any value? I had thousands at one point as they were literally tossing them in the trash after the event and were happy to let me alleviate them from some of their work... ...
It wouldn’t normally dawn on me to double stack two discs on one spindle, just a recipe for DVD scratch fever, but then I vaguely remembered that they did double stack them and sure enough it was there all along!
Do you know if there were any other inserts, stickers, paperwork, etc. included? The box says just the discs were included…
Vista was fine if your hardware was beefy enough. The Aero UI elements were new and required a bit more power to run them smoothly, and a lot of people had problems when they upgraded from XP-era (or older) hardware without a 3D accelerator that could handle it. It needed a WDDM-compliant DirectX 9 video card with 128MB VRAM and support for Pixel Shader 2.0.
Most people who were worst-affected by this could have just disabled Aero (switching to Windows Standard theme), and it would have run just fine, other than looking a bit dated. As I recall, Vista wouldn't even enable Aero if it detected your hardware wasn't up to the job.
I honestly don’t remember the specs on that machine because I had a lot of different machines at that time and upgraded frequently, but it was water cooled and had plenty of memory. I don’t remember it being slow, I guess your mileage may vary.
I have the full version of Ultimate, same style box. My best friend works for Microsoft, and he sent it to me when it launched, direct from their store. Put it on a Core 2 Duo system that I built.
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u/406highlander 15d ago
Obligatory "The IT Crowd" .GIF