Microsoft Drinks The Confusion Kool-Aid
Argh! This was one of the annoyance points with Vista, since people would buy Home Basic and get annoyed when it couldn’t do any of the fun stuff, or waste money on Ultimate and never use any of its extra features. (That, and the remarkable paucity of “Windows Vista Ultimate Extras”.) I would really have liked to see only three Windows 7 editions: Netbook, Home, and Professional. Home and Professional worked out just fine for XP, didn’t it?
But there is cause for hope. Apparently Microsoft plans on heavily marketing only two of the editions: Home Premium and Professional. Professional has all the digital media features of Home Premium, which was another annoyance point with Vista, since neither Business or Enterprise had Media Center. Home Basic is restricted to emerging markets (read: third-world nations where everyone is using pirated XP, so what the heck). Enterprise is what you get if you have a volume agreement with Microsoft. So, consumer level users will basically have two choices; Home Premium, or Professional.
So it’s still too complicated, but at least it’s less complicated than Vista. I wish Microsoft would have added BitLocker functionality to Professional, though.
-JM