Have just finished reading a Gizmodo article here that reports that Windows 7 will come in 6 different packages, however two of which Home Starter & Basic will only be sold to developing markets.
No matter how good a response people have had to the beta release which judging by it’s feature set is on a par with the Home Premium SKU, this smells of Vista with varying SKU’s being sold that will confuse potential customers.
As a result however, this could be a great opportunity for Apple to gain some more converts from PC land with it’s mid-year introduction OSX Snow Leopard which will not be feature crippled like the clowns up in Redmond are preparing to do. It should retail in one version (not 6) for $/€129.
As a futher note Gizmodo state that most people will end up choosing either the Home Premium or Professional version, but why should home consumers not get file-encryption, location-aware printing & advanced backup out of the box ? Should’nt a home consumer be able to secure their data like a professional on a Win7 installed machine.
Considering that these features are offered out of the box in Leopard currently for $/€ 129 can’t wait for the next wave of switchers to come over.
