Purchasing Vista

Departmental Purchases

New computers that are ordered through Procurement or CWP come standard with WindowsVista. Desktop workstations will have Vista Business edition and laptop computers will have Vista Ultimate edition. You'll find a comparison of Windows Vista editions here.

The Enterprise edition is what our campus site license specifically covers, and departments can order the media from Central Receiving for installation on existing computers. Only the Enterprise, Ultimate and Business editions are recommended and supported for use at Notre Dame. Note: Functionality of Ultimate and Enterprise editions are the same, but the Enterprise edition is licensed specifically for university-owned workstations and requires KMS activation.

Important: The Business edition does not include Bitlocker. If you need to encrypt your data, you will need either the Enterprise or Ultimate edition installed.

Special notes about our license

Students, affiliate groups (e.g. IU Medical School, Sacred Heart Parish) and personal purchases are not covered by the ND campus site license for the Enterprise version. Contact the Computer Store at 631-7477 for information about Windows Vista media and Microsoft licenses that you are eligible to purchase.

Student and Personal Purchases

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is the recommended version for all personal purchases, for upgrade or when purchasing new hardware.

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is available through the OIT Computer Store.  The version of Windows Vista sold through the OIT Computer Store will also allow you perform an upgrade from Windows XP or other editions of Windows Vista.