At sixes and Windows 7s
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in operating systems, Windows, Microsoft on
There are going to be six -well, really five, actually three, but you’ll only see two - editions of Windows 7 (not counting any special bits-left-out-please-the-lawyers N or K versions for the EU and Korea). While there’d been something of a campaign for just one SKU, like OS X, Microsoft’s multi-version release isn’t going to make much of a difference to you.
Here’s our quick guide to choosing a Windows 7 version.
Buying a home PC? You’ll get a choice between Home Premium and Ultimate. Home Premium will have most of what you’ll need, as Ultimate is the high-end wrapper of every Windows 7 feature (both business and consumer). It’s going to be a toss up as to what you’ll get, but we expect most OEM copies to be Home Premium - after all, not everyone needs to connect a home PC to an Active Directory. You’ll always be able to upgrade to Ulitmate, as the features will be on the DVD and can be be unlocked.
Buying a business PC? If you don’t have a Select licensing agreement with Microsoft you’ll get the Professional edition, which will happily join an Active Directory, and will even give you consumer features like Media Center. You’ll still be able to connect to a Homegroup though, so sharing files at work and home will be easy enough. If you’ve got Select, then you’ll be able to install the Enteprise edition which adds BitLocker whole disk encryption.You’ll also get access to DirectAccess VPN-less connectivity and the bandwidth-saving BranchCache.
Ultimate is, well, everything - all the home features and all the business features in one huge bundle. It’s also the same as Enterprise, just with a different name for the home user. So we really have five versions, not six!
There is one oddity out there, in the shape of the new Starter edition which is being described as suitable for netbooks (there’s also a Basic release, but that’s for emerging markets only). There are plenty of limitations with the Starter edition, starting with support for only 3 concurrent applications. We suspect it’s only going to be on the lowest-powered and lowest-specified netbooks, as we’ve had no problems running Ultimate on most of the Atom-powered netbooks we’ve tested recently - and new approaches like Nvidia’s Ion should make running Home Premium or Professional as easy on a netbook as on a multicore desktop.
So what does it all mean? In practice there will only be two versions of Windows 7 on the shelf, with Home Premium and Professional editions available through retail. Ultimate is going to be mainly an in-place anytime upgrade feature (with the possibility of a retail limited edition). You won’t see Enterprise unless you’ve got a subscription-based license for hundreds - if not thousands - of PCs.
Let’s just hope Microsoft makes the upgrade from Starter to Home Premium as easy as possible…
–Simon
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Loading ...Comment by - February 4, 2009 on 5:35 pm
What about tablet PCs? And how badly is it crippled by DRM?
Comment by - February 4, 2009 on 5:41 pm
All versions will have tablet support, just like Vista. So far it’s another big improvement, as the tablet features tie nicely with the new touch elements.
No sign of any “DRM crippling” - I’m happily playing MP3s and the like through Microsoft and other players, including the Boxee alpha.
–Simon
Comment by - February 4, 2009 on 6:28 pm
I’m confused. You start with 6 - but I can only find mention of 5 in total:
Home Premium
Home Ultimate
Professional
Enterprise
Starter
What was the sixth one?
Comment by - February 4, 2009 on 6:28 pm
Oh - hang on, is it the Basic one?
I should really learn to read…
Comment by - February 4, 2009 on 6:30 pm
It is - Basic is the emerging markets edition.
Comment by - February 5, 2009 on 1:23 pm
Ah, but the main question - will it be better than Vista?
Pingback by - February 5, 2009 on 10:23 pm
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