Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Does anybody else remember MS advertising campaigns of old that suggested that the diversity in the Unix and Linux operating systems from different vendors caused interoperability woes and increased the chances of you deploying the wrong solution.
I've been googling away but I can't find any linkage.
Anyway if this report is to believed http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050910-5298.html
It looks like there is going to be no less than 7 different flavours of Windows Vista (longhorn to those that haven't been keeping up) with not only different versions for home and business but different levels within those versions.
As someone who provides support to both business and private customers I can see this being a nightmare. To be honest it is hard enough remembering and explaining the differences between XP Pro and XP Home.
But in the future I'll have to remember the differences between Professional Edition, Small Business Edition and Enterprise edition for my business customers and Starter, Home basic and Home Premium Edition for my private clients. God forbid that anybody try to use the Business versions in the home or vice versa because it looks like unless they fork out for the Ultimate edition not one of the above has a full feature set.
Why can't it be the Apple way where there is a Server version and a Workstation version. Or better still Linux where any version can potentially be Server,Workstation Home or Business depending on what packages you have installed. There must be a way of MS getting their licensing model to work without resorting to so many versions of what essentially is the same product.
Hmm, I can't even persuade people upgrade to XP unless they are forced to. They frequently decide to hold off upgrading when they find out they can't take their OEM license onto the new hardware (assuming they don't look at you like some con merchant leaving you trying very hard to explain that you would be quite happy to install their Win98, but that it is the MS licensing that prevents it, not to mention that selling another copy of WinXP only increases your turnover and not your profit!).
So for large businesses selling Vista this will be easy. Dell will sell home targeted machines with Home Premium (maybe a few budget ones with Home Basic, but doubtful with their volume purchasing), and businesss targeted machines with Professional (and presumably the option to upgrade which will be aimed at volume purchasing from corporates and large SMEs mainly).
I'm going to assume that the business targeted versions won't be crippling the multimedia capabilities too much otherwise you won't be able to view streaming web content for business presentations and online seminar things.
So sales will be easy. Support will be a nightmare though. As someone who supports Windows (I wish I could afford not to) I currently still have to have access to Win95, Win98SE, WinNT4, Win2000 and WinXP Pro to investigate problems on (with occasionally requirements for WinME and WinXP Home). Now it seems I'll have to double that to account for odd differences between them!
Now on the basis that I do still use Windows as a desktop OS sometimes (mainly so as not to get too rusty with it, but increasingly less used - in fact my Windows box has been in pieces for the past month!) what version should I choose?
Starter - too crippled Home Basic and Home Premium - networking crippled Professional - multimedia/gaming crippled Small Business and Enterprise - I'm not going to have the Windows server infrastructure to use the extra facilities - not to mention the multimedia/gaming still being crippled
OK, so Ultimate then - well no, not if it is going to cost more than XP Pro OEM (that I currently use).
So the home based power user is going to use which version? I suspect this is going to either lead to increased interest in MacOS and Linux, increased instances of piracy or a complete lack of interest in upgrading. In fact I have customers who specifically requested not to have WinXP installed on their systems - they went for Win2000 instead because they didn't like XP.
Is the tide changing or is it wishful thinking?