Windows 7 variants revealed

in brief According to Paul Thurrott, Microsoft is just about to tell all on how many different sorts of Windows 7 it'll ship.

There'll be five variants: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate — one fewer than Vista's array of options. Starter is for emerging markets, Enterprise is volume licences only, Home Premium is the default OEM version for new computers, and Ultimate is the no-holds-barred version for the real fan.

Perhaps most interestingly, you can upgrade from one version to another online - and easily, from Vista. You have to do a clean install from XP, which could put a lot of people off.

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oh god Anonymous -- 04/02/09

when will they learn.. just release 2 version MAX like the old days

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Not all of those will be seen by the end user Morgan Storey -- 04/02/09

I think from that in stores and on PC's you will only really see Home, Professional and Ultimate. Admittedly that is one more than they need, but it is better than Vista. Remember there has always been Volume Licence versions of 2000, XP and Vista. Now they have given it a better name.
I heard they were going to do a netbook version as well, maybe that is what starter is. If it is too cutdown Linux or XP are still going to be the better options, thus shooting themselves in the foot again.

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We're still calling it Home Premium? Patrick McCormack -- 10/02/09

Since I can't see Home Basic on that list, why don't we just bin the "Premium" part of Home Premium and just call it Home Edition or simply Home?

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Ridiculous Names Simon -- 08/04/09

I couldn't agree with you more Patrick, what's Premium about a standard product?
I used to work for an insurance company that said "ALL of our customers are special".

But it directly reminds me of the current Mitsubishi Lancer "Sportsback".
So you start with Hatch Back, make it Sporty so you have a Sporty Hatch Back and then when you name it, you remove the only word which actually describes the car (Hatch).
There we have the Sportsback.

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windows seven Anonymous -- 03/10/09

So xp was 5 vista was 6 and with this latest version we get some of the good vista stuff cut out/

i have no problem with Vista. You have to realize all the software out there is so crummy that it duds windows anyway.

There are large disk drives now plenty of memory, so dish the registry and go back to individual subdirectories.

Ever hear of one program dudding another in DOS.

Its just that people want a lazy way to run programs.

There was a superb overlay for DOS before Windows.

Roy

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