Suuuuurrreee.

Microsoft states that their new operating system, "Vista" will be in 6 different varieties:

"We're really trying to make sure we have the right set of offerings for different customers," said Barry Goffe, a director in Microsoft's Windows client unit. I read that as, "We want to maximize our profit and earlier business models did not do that."

Linkage here, courtesy of C|Net.

Sigh. People will want the new OS, even Linux geeks, just for the eye candy, however it will most likely only run on the newer (within the last year or so) hardware. I am sure my video card (Nvidia GeForce 5600 FX) will not allow me to have all the bells and whistles in Vista and it is a middle of the road gaming card.

From the article:

With Windows XP, Goffe said, people "really have to compromise."

"Either I get all the great media experience or I get all of the mobility features," he said. "What if I want a great home experience and a great business experience?

How about make the operating system MODULAR, like Linux? Add what you want, remove what you don't. That is what I did at my house. My little box (the 400 mhz Celeron) has been stripped of all the multimedia stuff and runs only a minimal GUI and server operations (FTP, file, print, SSH, etc). The big machine (3 ghz Pentium) has no servers running and all the multimedia modules loaded. Two different machines, same OS, two different uses.

Oh well, it looks like I am Microsoft bashing again. Sorry.