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.