What's Inside the Six Windows Vista Releases?

The six Windows Vista variants are: Windows Starter 2007; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows Vista Business.
Also on the list are two additional releases, Windows Vista Home Basic N and Windows Vista Business N. The "N" releases are those which do not include Media Player. (Microsoft currently offers six core Windows XP SKUs: The line up includes XP Home, Professional, Media Center, Tablet PC, and Professional x64, and Windows XP Starter. (Microsoft also offers "N" versions of its XP Home and XP Professional releases, as stipulated by the European antitrust regulators.)

All Vista versions, except Windows Vista Starter, will be available in both 32- and 64-bit flavors. All SKUs integrate Internet Explorer 7.0, the new Vista desktop search, parental controls and Windows Defender antispyware technology. And all of the Windows Vista business SKUs will embed features designed to appeal to small/mid-size businesses (SMBs), obviating the need for a separate Vista small-business variant.

Vista is more focused on how people will use their PCs, rather than around hardware types.

Flavours

Windows Vista Starter :  is available in developing nations only. Like the current Windows XP Starter products, Vista Starter will be customized for users in particular countries and will include fewer features and functionality. Starter will not be sold at retail; instead it will be available preloaded on cut-rate PCs.

Windows Vista Home Basic (£55.00 apx) : is aimed as casual PC users who do little more than surf the Web, check e-mail and create/store/share basic documents, The Home Basic version doesn't include support for the Aero Glass user-interface effects that is part of other Vista SKUs.

Windows Vista Home Premium (£70.00 apx) :  includes the same type of functionality currently delivered by Windows XP Media Center and Windows XP Tablet PC Editions. The Home Premium variant also will include technology support digital photography, movie-making and TV, as well as mobility-focused technologies.

Windows Vista Business (£155.00 apx)  :  includes the full-fledged Aero user interface, as well as Tablet PC functionality built-in.
 
Vista Ultimate (£185.00 apx) : is for people who have a single PC that they use both at work and at home, It is also good for small-business owners and managers who have PCs with customer data stored on them and who need to insure it stays secure.

Windows Vista Enterprise: includes all of the features of Windows Vista Business, plus BitLocker drive encryption; Virtual PC Express virtual-machine support; the Subsystem for Unix-based Applications (SUA), which is designed to allow Unix applications to run on Vista machines; and access to all worldwide languages supported by Vista via a single deployment image.

The catch? Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise is available to Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Software Assurance (SA) volume-licensing customers only. Microsoft officials have been seeking ways to entice more users to sign up for Microsoft's volume licenses, and increasingly has been using new product and service incentives as carrots to attract and keep EA and SA customers.

But there's a loophole for Vista customers who are not interested in signing up for volume licenses. That loophole is Windows Vista Ultimate, the SKU which will include all of the features in Vista Home Premium and Vista Enterprise in a single offering.