Windows 7 to Follow Vista’s Edition Scheme

Oi, not this mess again. Prior to Vista’s launch, one of the biggest complaints with the OS was the number of different versions available. It was such a big complaint, in fact, that we felt compelled enough to write an article about it. Prior to Vista, things were kept simple. It was only with Windows XP when things began to become a little confusing. Although, choosing between Home and Professional is still quite simple compared to having four choices to deal with.

Like Vista, 7 will offer four main editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. There’s also a Starter edition, but like the same edition for Vista, that will be designed for third-world countries, and it will again likely limit the user to a maximum of three running applications at a time. Aside from that, given we had the same editions with Vista, though, I think we can pretty-much assume what each will include in W7.

Personally, I don’t mind all the editions. I figure if people can fine-tune what they want, and not have to pay for what they don’t, then it’s all good. I do have to wonder about the Ultimate edition, however. Needless to say, aside from the extras that came bundled with Vista Ultimate (which I’m betting most people didn’t even use), the extras on the downloadable front were a bit lacking. Hopefully Microsoft can actually deliver an Ultimate edition this time that feels worth it.

Considering that the public beta is clearly labeled as Windows 7 Ultimate, there was little reason to think that Microsoft would back off on the different tiers, despite what sort of difficulties or confusions they cause for consumers. With all the advancements in Windows 7, especially the new taskbar, we can’t help but think that users of the lower-tiered versions of the OS would feel even more left out if such new UI changes were excluded.