Windows 7 - Official Windows 7 SKUs revealed: six editions

After a ton of guesswork and rumors flying around, Microsoft has finally confirmed what much of the evidence was pointing to: there will indeed be six editions of Windows 7, just like there were for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Customers will be able to choose from Windows 7 Starter Edition, Windows 7 Home Basic Edition, Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, and Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. The news comes hot on the heels of the Windows 7 Ecosystem Readiness Program announced yesterday.
All editions will be available in worldwide markets except for Home Basic, which will be offered in emerging markets. Starter will be also available worldwide but only via OEMs.

We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC. We’ll also continue to offer Windows Starter edition, which will only be offered pre-installed by an OEM. Windows Starter edition will now be available worldwide. This edition is available only in the OEM channel on new PCs limited to specific types of hardware.

Most users will only Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate, which is why Microsoft is expected to only offer upgrade paths for these three. Microsoft will have a press release on this news over at PressPass (not available at publishing time).

Full Story: Official Windows 7 SKUs revealed: six editions - Ars Technica

6 Editions in at least 3 different flavors - x86, x64 & n

So at least 18 version and thats before the idiots at the EU start on it

While i'm at it.

"Windows 7 Starter : up to three concurrent applications" - Would somebody care to explain this one?

Not to forget the very likely K/KN flavors for South Korea


/edit:
You can only run 3 programs at the same time? LOL
No idea how that should work... But if it's indeed like that, and netbook manufacturers chose to bundle this edition to cut costs,
then a lot of people will be pis**d
And it wouldn't be any good for 7's reputation either, I'd dare guess^^

About what I expected,

Starter - for the new Netbook market and probably not at all similar to Vista Starter
Home basic - older hardware in developing countries
Home premium - the OS for the home market with all the media functions but no Clint server network functions and such that are almost exclusively business requirements
Professional - for the business market with the client server Etc but with the media functions removed (most sys admins don't want users playing video and MP3's in the office)
Enterprise - Professional for the multinationals - more a licensing model than anything else
Ultimate - for the technicians who have to support both home and business customers or for users who use the same machine at home and at work, and geeks everywhere

so IMO it breaks down to three real versions home , professional, and ultimate

With the removal of the live essentials from the packag it could be that the "n" versions will not appear

If that was the case, just what would define and app?

Imagine the user buys a printer then installs the junk from the CD and ends up with 3 apps running in the sys tray, great you've installed your printer but now cant run your word pro

Or you install your antivirus, antispyware and firewall - great you now have a really secure system as you cant run IE/Firefox/Chrome to get on the net.

why microsoft why?!!??
why did you go and mess this up everything was going so well

Supposidly Ultimate is going to be "limited availability" too. I just don't M$ sometimes. They've listened to the complaints about Vista, got a load of hype going about 7 and then they go and ignore one of the biggest complaints people had about Vista.

It's like the whole Vista capable fiasco hasn't even registered with them.

To a certain degree I can understand having 3 versions:

• a trimmed down version for netbooks and like
• standard version for most users
• finally an Ultimate version for advanced users and businesses

Crazy

Well, I was hoping otherwise, but I can't say I'm surprised

I have to correct you on this mate, professional has all the feautures of home premium, Media Center included. The way 7 is divided is so that each "greater" SKU has all the features of the lesser one. So Basic has all the features of starter+more, Premium has all the features of Basic+More, Professional has all the features of Premium+More, etc.

According to engadget( Windows 7 SKUs announced: your worst nightmare has come to pass - Engadget ), only professional and above include the Mobility Center and presentation mode, which I think doesn't ake much sense, its a feature I can see most laptop users can make use of(students making presentations at school?). I guess I'll have to go with Professional, it doesn't seem I'll need the features of Ultimate.

Gah, this is a headache. I don't think it will negatively impact the sales of 7, but its still pretty dumb imo =/

Edit:

Out of curiousity, how exactly does separating Windows help microsoft in terms of money? I mean, I'm no business major(physics, :P), but its an honest question, not rhetorical. Wouldn't it simply be easier/cheaper to allow windows to tailor itself feature-wise depending on the system, or let manufacturers include certain features or not by default, but still sell only one version of the OS? I don't see why it would be so hard to take ultimate, and depending on your WEI or other factors, include certain features or not. Didn't the pre-XP versions of Windows work like this kinda? That you could add or remove certain windows features from the control panel depending on your needs?

hey z3
as you know (or might not...)
Vista starter also had that same limitation