Slashdot Mirror
MS Confirms Six Different Versions of Windows 7
darien writes "Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 will be offered in six different editions. In a seeming admission that the numerous versions of Vista were confusing to consumers, the company says that this time its marketing will focus on just two editions — 'Home Premium' and 'Professional.' But the reality is more complex, with different packages offering different subsets of the total range of Windows 7 features."
I would hesitate to use the strong language of "confirmed" as the sites in the summary just link to other PCPro articles and it's all PCPro. I can't seem to find any really formal news release or website with Microsoft's official stance on this. I think this is a bad decision but they know their business better than I do.
... are they really going to use the same marketing strategy they did with Vista?
From Paul Thurrott's site (which breaks each version down by feature--don't ask me how he got them).
Here's the most reliable source I can find where it is revealed in a Q&A with the general manager for Windows at Microsoft.
The AP has picked it and quotes passages from the Q&A session. So I think the majority of this is coming from a Q&A session with Mike Ybarra, general manager for Windows.
Which gives me pause and causes me to wonder
My work here is dung.
From TFA:
Starter Edition: A lightweight version for netbook computers, that will only be capable of running three applications concurrently.
Maybe someone can educate me here: are EeePCs and subnotebooks so underpowered that they can only run three programs at a time? It seems like a purely artificial limit repackaged as a "performance" feature.
Yeah, I don't know where they got that data point in the article. From the original source, Mike Ybarra mentions netbooks twice:
The second change is that we have designed Windows 7 so different editions of Windows 7 can run on a very broad set of hardware, from small-notebook PCs (sometimes referred to as netbooks) to full gaming desktops. This way, customers can enable the scenarios they want across the broad hardware choices they have.
Ybarra: At beta we've had a lot of people running our most premium, full-featured offering on small-notebook PCs (netbooks) with good experiences and good results. So we're pleased to see that on this class of hardware Windows 7 is running well. And of course we will continue to tune Windows 7 for performance as we move through the engineering cycle.
Nowhere does he say anything about the 3 app limitation and you'll note he mentions that in beta their most full featured offering runs on netbooks.
I do not know where PCPro got their information but I think this Q&A session is what started it. He seems optimistic about all versions of Windows 7 being usable on netbooks but who knows without getting field results (Vista capable, anyone)?
My work here is dung.
Is there a reason Microsoft cant put BitLocker, AppLocker, Cornerstone, Direct Access, Branch Cache etc into Windows 7 Professional and then just have Enterprise be a volume license product (like XP pro corp was for XP pro)?
Is it purely a case of "those who need it can pay extra for Ultimate and get this stuff, those who dont shouldn't have to pay for it"? (i.e. money) Or is there more to it?
the inability to permenantly remove the toolbar warning that I do not have my security settings on
the solution is here
There's money to be made selling 32-vs-64 bit editions? You are aware that if you buy 32-bit Vista, you can get the 64-bit version from Microsoft for free? The CD keys work on both.
Since just this morning apparently....if 10x my salary as a software engineer is a limit....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This is why we won't see dx10 on XP.
There was no architectural reason why DX10 couldn't have been ported to XP.
The reason we won't see DX10 on XP is because it was a gimmick to get you to buy Vista. They had dropped WinFS and so many other features. IE 7 had an XP port. Except for Avalon, the new UI, MS had no leverage to get people to migrate. Too bad they botched the initial release of DX10, because that niche market (gamers) were totally turned off by them dorking it up.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
If we're playing server OS then Microsoft's offerings breakdown like this:
Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition
Windows HPC Server 2008
Windows Web Server 2008
Windows Storage Server 2008
Windows Small Business Server 2008
Windows Essential Business Server 2008
Windows Home Server
And until recently you could also buy the server licenses with and witout Hyper-V. There's no way anyone can argue Microsoft aren't playing games with their various editions, the server OS editions are in-particular are selling a slightly less crippled version of the same thing but at least from Server 2008 onwards they're being honest, anyone who has a volume license gets two dvds one with 32 bit OS and one with 64 bit.
The Windows 7 Beta does still have the Windows Classic style (just as Windows XP and Vista do, giving you the plain style titlebars/menus/taskbar/etc.) but it lacks the Classic Start Menu, so there's no way you can bring back the old nested menu structure first introduced in Windows 95 - instead, you're stuck with the Vista-style Start Menu and its scrolling treelist view.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
Having used both I call tell you simply the difference. Video Games.
Back in 2000, my Dell came preinstalled with Windows me. Which was horrible. As soon as Win2k came out (shortly after) I installed it and it was fine. However it did have problems playing some games. Windows XP came out shortly after, which I then installed, and it had no problems playing anything. So while Win2k was good, it was responsive, did mostly what I wanted, it did have problems running some non-business type software.
Also another advantage that I did use back then on a built machine was dual processors. XP Pro could handle two. Win2k is only one. Also there were 64bit versions of XP, and not for Win2k. Today everything in hardware is 64bit, and 2 and 4 processing cores, none of which Win2k can handle I don't think (I know the software isn't there yet for 64bit or parallel optimized programing, but all the same...). So I guess there are quite a few reasons XP was superior to Win2k after all.