Hey Microsoft!

[Sir Timbit]

I read some posts elsewhere in this newsgroup that broke down the features
provided in the various packages of Windows Vista, and thanks for that! But
Microsoft ought to consider the following:

How about a Windows Vista for Schools, that would be available only to
schools? It would be Windows Business edition, plus Movie Maker and DVD
Maker.

Our schools all use XP Professional (all the schools have domains), which at
the very least comes with Windows Movie Maker. Marketing-wise it would
appear that the appropriate upgrade to XP Pro would be Vista Business.
However, Microsoft actually removed Windows Movie Maker from that package.
So for schools that want access to WMM (and DVD Maker), it seems the only
option is the most expensive one--Vista Ultimate.

Again, I realize that Movie Maker and DVD Maker are nothing special, but
Movie Maker was free (and with SP2 actually wasn't that bad) and certainly
cheaper for students who want to play with video editing than buying x
copies of Pinnacle Studio or Premiere Elements. They don't necessarily
require the bells and whistles. No matter what XP box they went to, Movie
Maker was there. Now that's been removed.

Vista Home Premium won't work because, again, our schools all have domain
setups and the home versions don't support that.

We just had a couple of schools purchase new Macs just so they don't have to
deal with this marketing mess, nor deal with extra apps that needed to be
installed. This would have been (I think) a great opportunity to have movie
editing and DVD authoring presented as something that could be done *easily*
on a Windows-based PC, not just Macs. But Microsoft blew it, in my opinion.

So Microsoft, please consider a Windows Vista for Schools edition.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Move over to Intel Macs or upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate since that
edition has all the features of Home Premium, Business and Enterprise.

 

[Richard Urban]

XP Professional has all the bells and whistles.

Vista Ultimate has all the bells and whistles - including extra privileges
(using same install key in virtual machines instead of having to buy another
copy of Vista) and capabilities (think bitlocker whole drive encryption
here) that the other versions (and XP Professional) do not possess. You need
Ultimate.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

No horns? :-s

 

[Robert Moir]

XP Professional has all the bells and whistles.

Vista Ultimate has all the bells and whistles - including extra
privileges (using same install key in virtual machines instead of
having to buy another copy of Vista) and capabilities (think
bitlocker whole drive encryption here) that the other versions (and
XP Professional) do not possess. You need Ultimate.

Which would be nice except that the version aimed at schools is Vista
Enterprise, as already mentioned.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Nope, you can also get Vista Ultimate under MSDN and Software Assurance
(Volume License).