Too many Vista versions

When I first heard of there would be five different versions of Vista I thought it would be a support nightmare. Well I was right on that but now I'm finding it messes me up in other ways.

I'm midway through adapting Dan Gookin's latest "PCs for Dummies" for the Australian market. One of the things that's really, really irritating me is the version differences.

Take for instance the chapter on video making, Dan spends two pages on Windows Movie Maker. The final line reads "this isn't available in all versions of Windows Vista".

This proviso is having to go at least once into every chapter. It's a joke.

I've blogged on this being way too confusing for customers before. To make it harder, most of the entry level PCs, the CHUMPS as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes calls them, come with Vista Home Basic. This means they don't get much of the features Microsoft tout and that we spend much of the book discussing.

There was plenty of confusion between XP Home and Professional. Users were caught out because they bought the wrong type, usually office users buying Home and finding they couldn't connect to the office domain. With Vista it's far, far worse.

Apple are exactly right on this, this is needlessly confusing the market. It also screws up the channel as it increases inventory costs and returns.

To say Vista is not Microsoft's finest hour is an understatement.