Windows Vista To Come In 7 Flavors

Dionne writes "Microsoft is really milking it with this one: According to an Ars Technica report, there will be 7 versions of Windows Vista: Starter Edition, Home Basic Edition, Home Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Ultimate Edition." From the article: "Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition, so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online "Club" services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product)."

Flavours?

[Lifewish]

Chocolate, Vanilla, Pecan, Mint, Banana and BSOD?

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure ..it'll come in seven flavors, but they'll all taste like crap.

So they're finally competeing...

[El Tonerino]

...and trying to beat the number of linux distributions available. Nothing short of confusion shall reign.

Re:'Ultimate' Edition

[lheal]

>one registry key

And rebooting. Don't forget the rebooting.

The infamous Missing Vista Editions...

[pieterh]

- Vista Secure Edition: completely redesigned kernel and win32 libraries make this edition secure against virus, worm, trojan, spyware, and phish attacks!

- Vista Compact Edition: with just the software you need, including the much appreciated MSOfficeCompact, this edition runs on your P100 with 128Mb.

- Vista Instant Edition: bootable in so many ways, this is all the software you need to boot that recaltricant box and get it working again. Comes complete with legacy support for every known device.

- Vista Grandmother Edition: simple, fast, and based on all the best of Windows Secure, this is the software you wished you'd had when your parents asked, "How do I get onto the Internet?"

- Vista Open Edition: free, and packed to the hilt with first-class open source, all verified and tuned by MicrosoftOpenLabs for that smooth experience. Comes with full source code.

Hrm it seems every slap of the wrist helps them

[tod_miller]

They realised that by offering extra versions, they can sway the sales of units, by giving competitors the chance to sell 'ultimate edition' windows for cut prices etc. Seems that this version play will come back and bite some people in the ass.

Also, this is a bit of a 'hey EU, we are suing you but, look, you can't get us on not offering enough versions now, lol'.

BTW, I don't get it, Microsoft is suing the EU, that means they are reaching into the pockets of every tax paying EU citizen, and taking money, you know, EU lawyers and teams are not free to deal with this crap.

I say, you cannot have corporations bullying europe like this, no a flame, but honestly, US is PWNED by microsoft, things are going swimmingly for them, but with patents and their flagrant disregard for the laws and judgements of europe, I think people should wake up soon and jump ship.

Oh well, it wouldn't suprise me if Microsoft bashing has become a moderat..able offense, see you in -1 land, any second now.

Will there be...

[lunax]

one flavor to rule them all?

Article Text

[slashflood]

• Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
• Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation. Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
• Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
• Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
• Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
• Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.

More Windows confusion good for Linux

[Novus]

This makes choosing the right Windows version to install almost as hard as choosing the right Linux distribution. Imagine the sales:

- 1 copy of Windows Vista, please.
- Will that be Starter Edition, Home Basic Edition, Home Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition, Enterprise Edition or Ultimate Edition?
- Uh... Never mind, just give me the latest openSUSE Linux.

One can only hope...

Alternative ending:

- Does the Enterprise Edition come with Kirk or Picard?

Two problems

[Anonymous Coward]

First, this will create tech support hell. A lot of users today don't even know if they're running Win2k or WinXP, and MS wants to spread that out to SEVEN versions?

Second, this is going to require a lot more global bandwidth as people download illegal copies of all those versions.

New Motto

[Comatose51]

New Microsoft motto: "Gotta Catch'Em All"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:'Ultimate' Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Ultimate Edition is going to be brought back to high school age and started all over again. It won't be getting into its BSOD costume until somehwere around the fifth issue, and Uncle DOS won't die until maybe three issues in or so.

Me, I prefer the original Lee/Ditko Windows, but the Bendis/Bagley Windows does have its charm.

Customer confusion

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

At first, I thought having this many versions of the same product would be confusing to customers, but then I realised that M$ has an easy way to determine needs:

Customer: I want to upgrade my Windows 2000 machine to Vista. Which version do I need?

M$: Oh that's easy. How much money do you have?

Re:So six of them have artificial limitations?

[zr-rifle]

Yes. Chinese crackers will eventually speed up the OS, make clippy do a blue hadouken and unlock Microsoft Bob as a playable character.

Then Microsoft will be forced to release Windows Vista Champion Edition.

Re:Two *Other* Versions

[Adelbert]

Sorry, are you talking about Vista or Debian?

Re:Windows Vista Forum

[Anonymous Coward]

Well considering his broken english it wouldn't surprise me if what he meant when he wrote that he "found" the forum was that he "founded" the forum.

Given his posting history your interpretation is certainly the most likely, but there's at least a little wiggle room for a benign interpretation.

Better nip this one early

[Trejkaz]

Just so that less people are confused, can we please make sure that only the Ultimate edition gets leaked onto BitTorrent? That will avoid most of the confusion. :-)

Re:The infamous Missing Vista Editions...

[tokul]

- Vista EU Edition: Starter or Home Basic without Media Player.

- Vista Monopoly Edition: clippy destroys any software that does not belong to Microsoft.

Re:Will there be...

[JoeCommodore]

Um.. that would be the Windows Vista Cracker Edition.

Re:Wow... are they also going to include Cedega?

[dtdns]

Two of these three is...

Second Brother: First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

Maynard: Amen.
Knights: Amen.
Arthur: Right! One!... Two!... Five!
Galahad: Three, sir!
Arthur: Three!
[angels sing]
[boom]

There goes Vista! Sorry, I just had to...

Re:Wow... are they also going to include Cedega?

[jaavaaguru]

It's three, using the Microsoft Word page number counting system.

Warez

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the right version to download is the ultimate, right? Glad we solved that one

I'm moving to linux

[spideyct]

That's the last straw. I'm moving to linux, where the choices are much simpler.

They left out..

[knigitz]

Pirated Edition.

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[SamSim]

Personally I'm a big fan of telling tech support I have Windows 97.

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[CyricZ]

It really isn't. You don't have Slackware Linux 10.0 Ultimate, Slackware Linux 10.0 Supreme, Slackware Linux 10.0 Super Duper, Slackware Linux 10.0 Maximus, Slackware Linux 10.0 Christian Edition, Slackware Linux 10.0 Bonus, and so on. Most Linux distros are very specific, and thus do not need to have numerous different version of each release.

Working Edition

[unoengborg]

Starter Edition, Home Basic Edition, Home Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Ultimate Edition

I don't care how many flavors they have. Just give me a Working Edition

Re:The infamous Missing Vista Editions...

[beeblebrox87]

- Vista Secure Edition
http://www.openbsd.org/ [openbsd.org]
- Vista Compact Edition
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ [damnsmalllinux.org]
- Vista Instant Edition
http://www.knoppix.org/ [knoppix.org]
- Vista Grandmother Edition
http://www.apple.com/ [apple.com]
- Vista Open Edition
http://www.debian.org/ [debian.org]

Re:Flavours?

[starwed]

Well, we know by symmetry that there should be 8 flavors. [wikipedia.org] Presumably Microsoft hasn't achieved high enough energies to find the eighth, but it's always possible before release, I guess. Getting to the fourth generation is impressive enough, though. ^_^

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[tengwar]

My cupholder just popped out, you insensitive clod!

Re:Hey Mr. Comedian - enough with BSOD

[muszek]

When it started booting to BSOD by default ;)

Seriously, my last install of windows had something screwed up with some *ntfs*.* file (it loaded straight to BSOD every time). I was under linux most of the time and I -- having spent few hours trying to correct the problem -- didn't want to re-install an OS I wasn't using a lot (plus I'd have to fix GRUB).

Solution: I installed windows on another disc, booted from it and then chose the first installation during the boot time.
Problem: linux was on the first disc with the broken windows. In order to boot to Windows, I had to go to BIOS and change order of booting (luckily one disc was SATA, so I didn't have to mess with cables).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[antiMStroll]

"Windows Server 2003 High-Performance Computing"

Hmmmm, what level of computing are the four then?

Re:Flavours?

[ilikejam]

<GARTH>Praline, and dick.</GARTH>

they also left out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Starter Plus Registry Hack Edition.

Flavours...

[rathehun]

...can I have mine in apple? ;)

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[Anonymous Coward]

When XP Pro loads, the progress bar is blue instead of green. I don't know about you, but I'd pay $100 for that.

Yes, and they would all be named...

[Ieshan]

Yes, and it would be even more like it if all 7 the editions of Slackware Linux 10 were named:

1. Slackware Spam
2. Slackware Eggs Ham Spam
3. Slackware Spam Eggs Spam and Eggs Ham Spam
4. Slackware Spam Spam Spam Eggs Spam Ham Spam
5. Slackware Eggs Spam Spam Spam Ham Spam Spam.
6. Slackware Spam Spam Spam Spam Ham Spam Ham.
and
7. Slackware Eggs Spam and Spam Ham Spam with Eggs Ham Spam.

Re:They left out..

[TheSpoom]

Windows Vista Ultimate Corporate Leaked Key Edition!

Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people

[Billly Gates]

I work for AOL and that reminds me of a call I monitored.

The user claimed he was running Windows56. Nothing right? Well the tech listened more to the users problem and then he claimed everything was upside down.

Turns out he had his monitor upside down and "95" turned into "56"/ :-)

God AOL users are the best.

MS Support Line

[rlp]

Hello and Welcome to the Microsoft Support Line!
If you have Windows Vista Starter Edition - Press 1
If you have Windows Vista Home Basic Edition - Press 2
If you have Windows Vista Home Premium Edition - Press 3
If you have Windows Vista Professional Edition - Press 4
If you have Windows Vista Small Business Edition - Press 5
If you have Windows Vista Enterprise Edition - Press 6
If you have Windows Vista Ultimate Edition - Press 7
If you wish to upgrade from your old and busted prior version
of Windows, please have your credit card ready and Press 8
For all other support requests, please hang up now.

You pressed 2, if you wish to upgrade to the Ultimate Edition
please have your credit card ready and Press 1, otherwise Press 2

You pressed 2, are you SURE that you don't want to upgrade to
the Ultimate Edition? If so, please have your credit card ready
and Press 1, otherwise Press 2

Sigh! You pressed 2 again, please contact your vendor and purchase
another PC with Windows Vista pre-installed. Thank you for calling
Microsoft Support Line. ** CLICK **

Re:Sorry, but not true.

[Rolo Tomasi]

Your post finally got me an idea what my dog must be thinking when it wants outside but can't open the door.

Re:They left out..

[Alien54]

now with built in pornograph, all for your interactive pleasure

Re:They left out..

[csguy314]

This will lead to people buying "the wrong" Windows,

I wasn't aware there was a "right" version of Windows... ;)

Re:They left out..

[vsprintf]

#ifndef ULTIMATE_EDITION
disable_gaming_support();
#endif
#ifndef ENTERPRISE_EDITION
disable_wan_support();
#endif
#ifndef PREMIUM_EDITION
disable_large_file_support();
#endif
#ifdef BASIC_EDITION
enable_random_bsod();
#endif
// splash_screen("Windows 3.1 is starting");
// splash_screen("Windows 95 is starting");
// splash_screen("Windows 98 is starting");
// splash_screen("Windows ME is starting");
// splash_screen("Windows 2000 is starting");
// splash_screen("Windows XP is starting");
splash_screen("Windows Vista is starting");
goto start_windoz;