Windows 7- lineup revealed. Microsoft up to their old tricks again.

Starter = shareware version of the OS. To get a fully functionally OS may as well stick with WinXP professional, unless Microsoft pricing it at similar price with win7 Home Premium or professional.

The problem is that games will soon be using more Direct X 10 effects soon. Eventually you will have to get Vista or Win 7 if you want to get all the bells and whistles.

Or you just lower your expectations. Means living without Directx10.

For casual or less savy users, the complication in choosing which version could become even serious if you taking account of various Windows generations. It was said that 70% business users still hanging on WinXP, i'm not sure about home user's exact number but i remember seeing big percentage as well somewhere. All ini all not much Vista user's out there when total up both business and home users together.

Since last year Mircrosoft is pushing people to migrate to Vista ASAP and don't wait for Windows 7:

“There is no need to wait for Windows 7. It is a goal of the Windows 7 release to minimize application compatibility for customers who have deployed Windows Vista since there was considerable kernel and device level innovation in Windows Vista. The Windows 7 release is expected to have only minor changes in these areas. Customers who are still using Windows XP when Windows 7 releases will have a similar application compatibility experience moving to Windows 7 as exists moving to Windows Vista from Windows XP.”

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One poster on zdnet Mary Jo-Folley's blog quipped:

(the other way of saying above quote) "Stop using our old product and buy one of our new products. We need the money. Our stockholders are mad at us."

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On why Microsoft unable to sale the new OS in simpler form, Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of the Windows business said:

... Microsoft can’t have a one- (or two-) size fits all SKU plan because it has more than a billion customers worldwide running Windows. There are too many diverse needs to shoe-horn them all into two SKUs.

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http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1979
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1427

Most of the corporate PR from Microsoft is worthless. Bill Veghte speaks the truth though.

In my old job we deployed Vista on release, since it seemed like a major shift in technology. It resulted in tons of problems, unstable drivers, fraudulent hardware-requirements from Microsoft (the infamous Vista Ready) for laptop users, data corruption etc. One guy spent a large portion of the next 8 months searching and correcting for Vista related faults. Of the large firms, HP got a bulkload of problems from Vista, Dell waited with Vista almost a year (even getting time-extensions for selling XP).

Even though Windows 7 is a small iteration from Vista, I would wait some months and google driver support of all the hardware before upgrading.