Well, Acer seems to think that the Basic edition is. Take a peek at this blurb courtesy of The Register:
Microsoft is effectively smuggling through a price hike for Windows Vista – by making the entry-level version so poor that no-one will want to use it. So says Jim Wong, senior veep at Acer, the world’s number four PC maker, who told UK hack Jon Honeyball: “The new [Vista] experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won’t feel it at all. There’s no [Aero] graphics, no Media Center, no remote control.”
So…what do you think? Quite frankly, I think XP Home Edition is a piece of limited crap too. Why does entry level or basic always have to be so limiting? Gees! 
