Microsoft Confirms Six Vista Editions

By Geoff Duncan Published June 19, 2018

Although the news originally leaked last week, Microsoft Corporation has confirmed that it plans to offer six core editions of its forthcoming Windows Vista operating systems, plus two editions for the European Union stripped of the Windows Media Player software. The number of editions matches the total count of version of Windows XP the company currently offers, but instead of targeting different sorts of hardware with different editions (64 bit computing, tablet PCs, etc.), the different editions of Windows Vista will focus on what users want to do with their computer.

According to Microsoft, the six core Windows Vista Editions will be:

Vista Home Basic: Aimed at users who mostly want to use their computers as an information and communications appliance: e.g. surf the Web, use email, plus create and edit basic documents.
Vista Home Premium: Everything in the Vista Home Basic edition, plus the new Aero graphical interface.
Vista Business: A basic version of Windows for all sizes of business with bundled PC management tools.
Vista Enterprise: All the features of Vista Business plus BitBlocker, an encryption system to help prevent data being accessed if a computer is lost or stolen.
Vista Ultimate: Combined all the features of business and home editions.
Vista Starter: A stripped-down version of Windows with lower hardware requirements aimed at developing markets.

Recommended Videos

Business and Home editions of Windows Vista without Windows Media Player software will also be developed for the European Union to comply with an EU antirust mandate. With these editions, the total number of Windows Vista releases will total eight.

Microsoft hasn’t announced an official ship date for Windows Vista, but the operating system is expected to be released in the second half of 2006.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Google Earth’s AI misadventure lasted only a day. It was a tale of dangerous ignorance.

Nuclear reactors, tanks, and historical destruction on a life-like satellite map? Yeah, that's bad.

Nano Banana AI image generator representation.

Technology behemoths are clearly not reading the room, or they are just moving faster than they should when it comes to AI deployment. Google has already stuffed its Gemini AI in every corner of its software stack, from Android to daily productivity tools like Gmail that are used by hundreds of millions of users every day. AI is everywhere. Not all of it is bad, mind you. But in a few places, it just feels forced.

In its latest AI-fication experiment, the company targeted Google Earth. The idea was to let the audience use its Nano Banana 2 AI image generator and make images that can be placed on the map view. On paper, it's a cool idea. What would the Colosseum of Rome look like in your urban neighborhood? Yeah, fun stuff like that.

Computing

AMD is apparently gearing up to raise GPU prices right after Nvidia’s steep hike

AMD has reportedly told AIB partners about a price hike that goes into effect in. August.

AMD RX 7800

AMD is next in line to raise the asking price of its Radeon GPUs, merely days after the news of a similar hike coming for Nvidia graphics cards started making waves. As per ChannelGate on Weibo (h/t VideoCardz), AMD has informed its board partners that the price of GPU and memory bundles will go up by at least 10% in August.

Is a similar price hike coming for standalone graphics cards? I won't be surprised if that happens. The situation is so bad that AMD is planning to bring back graphics cards with 4GB of onboard memory. AMD just introduced the RX 9050 GPU, which costs $279. Notably, it's just $20 less than the RX 9060 XT that offers double the graphics memory.

Computing

Microsoft will make Windows work well with just 8GB RAM. We desperately need it

The dream of a reliable and affordable Windows laptop hinges on the next milestone at Microsoft.

Surface laptop on wooden table

The year 2026 has marked a huge course correction for Microsoft after years of frustrating users with plenty of confusing processes, unoptimized UI elements, and just the generous bloatware that can bring any Windows system to a crawl. Microsoft has finally shifted into a new phase. From fixing the right-click behavior to speeding up the Search system, the company has fixed plenty of papercuts.

The next major milestone is making Windows 11 run smoothly on Windows PCs with just 8GB of RAM. That directly means entry-level and budget laptops will at least get the basics right, even if that means sacrificing the on-device AI bells and whistles. Let's face it. The increasingly AI-first approach to computing on a Windows 11 machine is a little too taxing on the hardware at hand.