How much would you pay for a wonderful Vista?

A few days ago Microsoft released Australian pricing for it's latest version of Windows which will apparently be released to businesses over the next month and we should start seeing Windows Vista on the shelves at Hardly Normal around January. What blows me away is how many different versions are being released and how much they are going to charge for them. Of course there is the long names that we can poke fun at too. It's a wonder they haven't added the word "Edition" at the end of every one.

Check it out.

• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic - $385.00
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - $455.00
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business - $565.00
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate- $751.00

At those prices, you gotta be wondering if they are actually promoting software piracy.

Other parts of the world get other versions.

• Microsoft Windows Starter 2007 - hehe, this one lost its "Vista" moniker. This is a cut down version to be sold in third world countries. It will be severly restricted so that poor people can't enjoy their computers as much as rich people. Note to poor countires, use Linux.
  
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic N - and
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business N - have had Media Player ripped out of them and are for sale in the European Union because Microsoft got their arse kicked in anti-trust rulings over there.
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise - not specially designed for Star Trek fans. Business server version of windows. Supposed to do what Linux does. Prolly doesn't.

Apparently both 32bit and 64bit versions come in the box for all flavours of Vista except the one for poor people which isn't called Vista.

According to Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows all drivers must be signed to be installed. Some of my readers will know about the "Unsigned Driver" dialogue with the "Continue anyway" button. This will not be available anymore. This means that hardware companies have to pay Microsoft to review their drivers before they can release them. This means that many companies will not update their drivers as quickly (or at all) because of the time and cost of getting them signed. Once again, innovation is cramped by the big guns in Redmond.

/edit
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows mentions that the Starter edition will actually be called Microsoft Windows Vista Starter and will only come in a 32bit version. It will only be able to run 3 applications at a time.