People love to pick on Microsoft, and often rightly so. The software giant is directly responsible for numerous security holes, endless patching, Bob, Clippy, and Windows Vista. It is so easy and fun to pick on Microsoft that people often simply parrot whatever criticisms seem to be in vogue. But one criticism I'm just plain tired of hearing is how Microsoft should pare down Windows to just one edition.
Let’s review our choices:
Windows 7 Starter: Great for netbooks and older systems that will never act as a DVR and don't need to join an Active Directory domain. It's a bummer that it lacks Aero and Touch, but what do you expect for something that tacks on a paltry $15 to the price of the hardware. Your netbook probably won't have a touch-screen or decent graphics chip anyway.
Windows 7 Basic: For “emerging markets” which means you'll only see it on an internet café computer somewhere in Laos.
Windows 7 Home Premium: This edition of Windows has existed for years, but used to be called Media Center Edition (MCE) in the XP days. This is what to use if you want to be able to hook your computer up to your TV to use as a DVR and media hub. Virtually all home computers and non-business laptops will run this.
Windows 7 Professional: Basically the same as Home Premium, but adds Active Directory domain membership support. This is the edition that will come with most office computers.
Windows 7 Enterprise: It doesn't matter what this has because you'll never see it unless you're given a computer from a large corporation. (It adds booting from a virtual drive and BitLocker encryption to the Business edition.)
Windows 7 Ultimate: This is for the person who also bought an “Extreme Edition” CPU and cannot stand the thought that somehow, someone out there might have something better than him. Microsoft deserves the opportunity to milk all the money they can from this kind of user.
In reality, people will almost never make a decision on which version of Windows to buy. They'll just use what came on their machine, which makes all of this clamor about the number of options available little more than unhelpful noise.
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), such as small business users who are not of a size to benefit from enterprise licensing.
lacking shadow copying and a few other things that will likely be needed here sooner or later.
