Why Would Microsoft Not Offer Windows 7 Ultimate?

      by Wyatt Walter

I just got done reading a post by Don Reisinger who makes a very good point that Windows 7 Ultimate (and really, Windows Vista Ultimate) offers very little in the way of features over Windows 7 Professional. Personally, I hate the idea of having several versions of the operating system, but Ultimate does add some probably useful features for consumers. The problem here is one of categorization. One really can’t compare the Professional and Ultimate editions as they are designed with different audiences in mind. True, one does have to buy Ultimate if they don’t have enough licensing to justify the volume licensing offered for Windows Enterprise and need features not available in Professional, but Ultimate really isn’t aimed to be an upgrade from Professional. It’s aimed to be an upgrade to Home Premium.

This change of perspectives gives some decent value adds to the Ultimate edition if one decides that they have to use Windows. Of course, along with these features comes a heftier price jump. Home Premium retails at $200 while Ultimate retails at $320. That’s a pretty good jump. It does, however, offer some additional features that Home Premium doesn’t, like network backups via their new “Backup and Restore Center” as well as the encryption on the filesystem, location-aware printing, and Windows XP mode. Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to be buying Windows 7 Ultimate this summer/fall, but if Microsoft can get users to pay more to add those few features, why not?

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 7th, 2009

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