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! 
It seems it always takes Winblows a few years to work out the kinks of new software. No way I’ll buy vista… maybe not ever. Though of course work will probably upgrade to it eventually. And my next laptop may have it on there. Otherwise.. I’ll be watching how it goes.