Five Forms of Vista

Five Forms of Vista
Is it really needed to have five?

      I am begining to not like how Microsoft is offering something for everyone. They started this with Windows XP with the whole Home and Pro editions. This confused people. No one knew what the difference was (though there wasn't a whole lot different) or what version they should buy. Then with the XBox 360 they offered the Core and Premium editions. First off, who wanted the Core? Honestly. The only reason why I bought it is because when I want something, I have a very hard time waiting for anything that I want. So I bought the Core system and upgraded it to the Premium by buying all the other junk. Now that Vista is coming out, they have finally announced which version will be released. Will it be two? No, that would be to easy. Instead they are releasing five, count them, five editions. The editions are Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

      Home Basic is just as it sounds, basic. This will be great for a person who all they want to do is browse the Internet and perhaps play Solitaire. The biggest place I see Home Basic being is Dell because now they can make some of their computers that much cheaper.

      Vista Home Premium is for people who enjoy doing stuff on their computers. Whether that be view pictures, play music or movies, or play games. In general, it comparable to Home edition now, but they have added all the features of Media Center Edition. If you are not familiar with Media Center Edition, it has some cool features. For starters, you can plug watch and record live television on your computer. Screw TiVo, not only can you record the television shows, you can edit them, and then burn them to DVD. You can also listen to radio and stream movies to an XBox 360. This will most likely be the most commonly bought edition when people buy it in stores, not packaged with a computer.

Business edition is to help productivity and security of a business. With a new user interface, windows can now be rotated. A great feature here is a hardware awareness, this will let you know of say a hard drive going bad before it actually does so that you do not loose important files. The largest thing here is the advanced security features here, the goal is to lower the cost of the IT department.

      Windows Vista Enterprise edition will have all the same features as Business but with some cool features for IT and server support. For protection, Enterprise has a new encryption method called BitLocker. One thing that surprised me about Enterprise edition is the application support that Microsoft is adding. I am not surprised they are trying to make compatability with older versions of Windows, but they are even adding better support for Unix programs. What they are calling Subsytem for Unix-based Applications (SUA) and it allows for Unix programs to run unchanged.

      Finally there is the Ultimate. Ultimate has pretty much all of the features of the other editions all rolled into one including features of Media Center Edition.

      Conclusion: I think it is cool some of the features that they are adding into the to business releated edition for IT people, I just don't think they need two different ones. I don't see much reason for Home Basic, but then again, I want all the extra features that the Home Premium has to offer. I want the Ultimate edition, but I have heard rumors of the price being around $1,000 so we will see. My biggest hope is that the 64-bit and 32-bit edition are on one disc and that it automatically detects the processor type, otherwise that will be a total of ten different types of Windows and one big headache for businesses who are upgrading and for home users who do not understand computers.