Stephan said:
Oh come on, there was *one* Windows95.
*one* Windows 98.
*one* Windows 2000.
Then with XP they started this crap with Home / Professional and later
that Media center version which I never figured out what it's difference
was.
Home just was a castrated version of Professional that I'd refuse to even
go near.
Now with Vista?
I mean seriously, does it REALLY need TWO versions for home!?!?
Home Basic and Home Premium?? Just having one "Home" isn't good enough?
What's the next version going to have?
Home Very Basic, Home A little Basic, Home Sort of Premium, Home Really
Premium?
And no, if they only did one version the price wouldn't have to be where
you said. They essentially doubled the price with this release going to
$399 for Vista Ultimate (non-upgrade, retail version).
If they would stick to the same pricing range as XP was, and reduce it to
only *one* version that can simply do everything...$150-$175 would probably
be a reasonable price.
And don't come to me with "Limited Budgets". Anyone on a limited budget
isn't likely to build a custom system. They are more likely to go to dell
or equivalent and buy a low budget system that barely has enough power
to even boot Vista and get it included in the low budget price.
Seeing I don't use castrated versions of any OS, the only version of Vista
I *would* use would be Ultimate. But I honestly find the pricing to be
ridiculous.
I mean these days I can build a 2.4GHz Dual Core system for under $1,000
bucks if I don't exactly need a nVidia 8800 GTX in it. At that point in
time, I need to add 40% or more to my cost just for the OS? Sorry but
when the OS almost starts to begin more expensive than over half of my
actual hardware...it's gone too far.
And you are exactly correct.
The business version has things missing a lot of businesses could use
and the home "Basic" isn't that much "Lighter" on resource and hardware
demands so it would make more sense to drop the top and bottom versions
and stay with the "Home" and "Pro" model they had with XP.
Or they could offer the Vista General Newsgroup version that costs $1000
and does nothing but display a BSOD knowing that no only would many of
the regulars here buy it they'd actually praise it as the best version
of any OS ever
Besides which it would be perfectly suited to the
functionality they require, utterly worthless and devoid of any demands
on their staggering talents as helpers. Simple one click operation, on
or off.
To make an analogy, car makers used to put things like the light bulbs
but not connect them so they could offer that model as a "DL" and the
ones with the bulbs connected as the "GL" or whatever. The damned
vehicle cost the same to make.
There's been a lot of comparison with the launch of XP. I remember
running the pre SP version of XP and thinking it was quite a bit faster
than W2000 but SP1 seemed to slow it down a bit. SP2 seemed to replace
just about everything and slowed it down to the same speed as W2000. If
that is the model then Vista's performance may get worse (purely in
terms of speed) as MS add patches and put in bits they left out, so for
all the statements about it's performance improving as hardware gets
faster (well duh!) that may get reversed by service packs so by the time
we get to SP2 you may have to replace all that hardware you just bought
with the latest (and hence expensive) hardware again...
Actually from running both XP Pro and W2003 server it surprised me a bit
to find that W2003 felt "Lighter" than XP, it just didn't have movie
maker or the fancy window stuff. Hmm...
Seriously though I don't see anything wrong at all with your
observations and I don't think this is the same situation as with the
release of XP.
