One of the few things I'd hoped to do with Vista Home Basic (which came with my laptop...) for was to put the free IIS on so I had some form of Windows server check for my web pages.

There may be ways round it but while it (or formerly PWS) would work on every (98 was the earliest I used this) Windows I tried, MS have stripped needed code out of Vista Home so it won't run.

Up until then, I'd believed "Basic" meant it was lacking in more advanced configuration tools, utilities and I suppose "eye candy" but it means you can't even install at least this software as MS have decided "Basic" users should not need (read they will try to "persude" everyone they can they need to pay more and upgrade) it.

I can of course run a full blown (the free IIS is limited) free web server on it - Apache works fine...