Hasn’t Microsoft Learned Anything?

Sometimes, it is pretty difficult to figure out what versions of Vista there are. At it’s release, there was no less than 5 versions.

• Home Basic
• Home Premium
• Professional
• Enterprise
• Ultimate

Now, you couldn’t buy the Enterprise, unless you were a high end “enterprise customer,” in which the only version you could buy was Enterprise.

As time went by, this plethora of versions just weren’t confusing enough. I have tracked down 4 retail versions from
Microsoft’s comparison page for editions, the Enterprise edition s tucked away at their Enterprise Edition page, then there is the Starter version (which I like to call Vista Celeron), and then two “N” editions which lack media software. Add that up, and you get 8 versions.

Now, you would think that after all of the hell Microsoft has gone through in the release of Vista, and the overall rejection it has received, that they would have learned some lessons.

You would be wrong. It seems that Windows 7 is going to be coming out in 6 different versions.

Windows 7 boots faster

Well, another Windows 7 beta build is out [really alpha], and ZDNet had the great idea of benchmarking it.
Do they pull out the time-demos for games? No.
Do they try iterations of common tasks in programs like Excel, Photoshop, or even MP3 encoders? No.
Do they even try the basic “copy a bunch of files and see how long it takes” test? No.
They decided to go with some benchmark tests, and the ever popular, and helpful, boot time test.

Originally, the tests pitted Vista 7 beta against Vista 32-bit, however, they did update the test to compare against XP SP3 also.

The conclusion…

Is Windows 7 just VistaSE?

Back in the day, OK, back in 1998… there was Windows 98. Windows 98 was a step up from Windows 95, but it did have significant problems. First off, it did not support DVD drives properly, and while it was supposed to help usher in the USB era for PC’s, USB support was buggy at best. Finally, it included IE 4, which many considered to be barely an improvement over IE 3.

Just under a year later, Win 98SE (Second Edition) was released. This included improved USB support, DVD support, and IE 5, a major upgrade for IE. However, this was not released as a free upgrade to those who already had Win 98, they had to pay extra to upgrade to SE.

Fast forward to 2007, when Vista finally came out. Problems and complaints abounded. Now, Windows 7 is being touted as the ‘next big thing,’ but is it really something new, or just VistaSE?

The eternal “Configuring updates…”

Well, I have been setting up the Vista box from a clean install so that I can get it ready for testing and/or development work. All seemed well, Vista installed fine, updated like it was supposed to from our WSUS server. After a couple of days, I decided it was time to go ahead and install Office 2007 on it. Did that. Some updates installed, that was fine.

Then, it needed ONE MORE UPDATE. Wouldn’t you know it, that is the one that killed it.