[citation][nom]chripuck[/nom]They're trying to hard to create 4 tiers... there really should only be 3. Starter, Home and Ultimate/Business.Starter should stay as it is, Home should stay as it is plus backup and Ultimate/Business should be combined to give you access to domains, add bitlocker support and whatever else it has. That would make a LOT more sense.[/citation]
Ultimate is kind of a lame name... besides, there is no-longer a "business" version as in Vista, which was also lame... That was fixed and its now called PRO.
Starter is only in 3rd world countries... we won't see it in the USA/Europe.
Basic = Fine for netbooks and other under-powered computer. Not for notebooks or desktops... its an OEM version.
Home = Whats will be the most used version of Windows7. IT should include basic backup features. This is like a hold-over from XP-Home... but if you ran the tool from the XP-HOME CD (a 250k file), it would ADD Backup function to XP-Home.
Pro = Fine how it is...
Ultimate = Its generally $20 more than Pro... its feature list is minimal. But DOES include the language paks, which would REALLY be handy on ALL versions of Windows7, since it not really a tech feature.
Ultimate SHOULD include more useful functions, more art, more toys... and it should still cost $200~250 retail.
* I boycott the "Home basic / Home Premo" names. I only use BASIC and HOME to describe these versions.