Windows 7 thins its product lineup

Well maybe, it depends how you look at it.

• Windows 7 Starter
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Starter will be available with new PCs but is very crippled (no glass, can only run 3 applications at a time, etc.).  Home Premium and Professional will be the major push for retail and the average user while Enterprise will provide features for businesses and Ultimate will include everything but won’t be marketed as extensively as Home Premium and Professional according to Microsoft.

So what we have here for the average consumer is really a choice between Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate (for those who really need to have it all).  Which really is the same number of versions that you had with Vista when you think about it (Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate).  From the way Microsoft is talking though I suppose their marketing campaign will differ though to simplify the apparent choices.

It’s important to remember than unlike Vista, each version of 7 supersedes the previous, lower version meaning that as you move up from Starter you will always be gaining features never losing what you had from the lower tiers, which is a very smart move.  I just hope Microsoft is as smart with their pricing as they haven’t yet released that information.