Windows Vista software comes in six different marketing editions. All editions support both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) processor architectures, except for Windows Vista Starter, which supports only 32-bit architectures. The six editions are: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. The Windows Vista Starter edition is only sold in the emerging markets. It has some hardware limitations. Windows Vista Enterprise is sold by Microsoft directly to enterprises with volume license.
In the following table, we list the major features of each edition:
| Features | Windows Vista Starter(1) | Vista Home Basic | Vista Home Premium | Vista Business | Vista Enterprise (2) | Vista Ultimate |
| Windows Security Center | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Defender(Anti-Malware) and Firewall | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Parental Control | x | x | x | x | ||
| User Account Control | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Basic Backup and Recovery | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Automatic Updates | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Schedule and network backup | x | x | x | x | x | |
| Windows Movie Maker | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Windows Photo Gallery | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| IE 7/Instant Search | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Aero desktop with Flip 3D navigation | x | x | x | x | ||
| Windows Mobility Center and Tablet PC support | x | x | x | x | ||
| Windows Meeting Space | x | x | x | x | ||
| Windows Media Center | x | x | x | |||
| Media Center output on TVs, XBox 360, etc. | x | x | x | |||
| Windows Fax and Scan | x | x | x | |||
| Advanced Business backup features(Shadow copy, Incremental backups, Complete PC backup) | x | x | x | |||
| Business networking and remote desktop | x | x | x | |||
| Windows Right Management Service | x | x | x | |||
| Encryption File System | x | x | x | |||
| Windows Internet Information Services | x | x | x | |||
| Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption | x | x | ||||
| Windows Multilingual User Interface | x | x | ||||
| UNIX application-support | x | x | ||||
| Windows DreamScene | x | |||||
| Microsoft Group Shot (a photo combining program) | x |