well then again you have to say that technically there
vista
n, starter, home basic, home premium, and ultimate
xp
n, starter, home, professional, media center, and tablet pc edition
not counting enterprise or business because it was not be geared to the home user...
as you see there are 5 edition of xp and 5 (home user) editions of vista (x86 and x64 are another story since most just get the regular (read 32 bit) edition or it was already there (OEM)
while im not vouching for this i also believe there should be at most 3 edititions
home business and ultimate (pro or how ever you want to call it)
i know my POV might be flawed but thats what i think...lol

Speaking for myself,

The need for Vista Home and Business can be understood - Home users want the Media functions but don't really need the domain based networking policy control etc and Business users are the opposite (or at least the system admin's are ) , as someone who has administered many systems over the years you don't want the complications of built in games and media capabilities

Historically the Starter and Home basic editions were necessary at the time of Vista's launch and the then state of hardware, Three years on and with hardware requirements of Windows 7 being the same as for Vista (more or less) the need for these editions no longer exists.

Ultimate is there for those users who need a combination of home and business functionality either because they use their laptop at home and in the office or because they support both sets of users (I include the self confessed geeks in this group, as they probably provide more real support than a lot of professionals ).

Enterprise is less of a Windows 7 Version as a licensing strategy so will probably continue.

So that is everyone covered with three versions (plus enterprise for its licence system for large business customers), which I think would be understandable for even the most inexperienced users, (and even the large retail chains who continually sell Vista Business to home users ).

The ideal would be a 32/64 bit selection option in the installation routine but I don't expect it - after all there is only one Vista Disk with the entered licence number setting the version installed so it is a technical possibility.

thank you nigel
as i have seen more than once that there have been people that wanted to go back to the way microsoft branded xp not realizing that there more than 2 editions...
as for the 32 bit/64 bit i believe there should be an automatic scanning of hardware and if the computer passes the the compatility check then off with 64bit...
if not default to 32...

It would be nice to be able to interchange between if needed (but of course as you said nigel that's never gonna happen too much money to be made...)
at least for now....

But I'm still hoping that would be for windows 7 as that would as the way i think is the last os with 32 bit support...
but at the same time before installation let the user have a chance (if they are experienced enough...) to either press a string of keys or click for advanced options (kinda the way they did back in the windows 95/NT -Me/2000 days)
that to me would be the ideal way...

Hi darkassain,

The ideal would be a selection dialogue in the install for 32/64 combined with a hardware check for those who get it wrong.

The only thing I would see that would cause problems is the actual space available on a DVD,

The 32bit of the Beta Windows 7 is about 2.5 Gigabytes on Disk with the Windows 7 x64 about 3.5 Gigabytes.

This will I'm sure increase when we get to RTM and retail. It may be that the two versions of the OS would not fit on a regular DVD and would have to go to dual layer, with the potential problems that would cause.

There is also the case of OEM disks - if the OS takes up the whole of the DVD they won't have the space to add their wonderful selection of bundled apps

Barman58 said:

There is also the case of OEM disks - if the OS takes up the whole of the DVD they won't have the space to add their wonderful selection of bundled apps

That would be a good thing IMHO. Save me having to undo. Maybe they could have their own version of Live to download what you want.

Gary

...and miss out on finding that 90% of manufacturer installed bloat is trial and the rest is useless?

smarteyeball said:

...and miss out on finding that 90% of manufacturer installed bloat is trial and the rest is useless?

Exactly :)

Gary

So they'll just move to Blu-Ray....