dechezette

This past Tuesday Microsoft confirmed that it has no intention of making the purchase of the highly anticipated Windows 7 any less confusing that purchasing Vista.

The product SKU’s are as follows:
• Windows 7 Starter
• Windows 7 Home Basic
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

The only thing you can intuit from this list is that the Enterprise edition is clearly for enterprises. But, what’s the difference between Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium? And what’s the difference between Professional and Ultimate?

While retailers will mostly be carrying Home Premium and Professional, online retailers carry more. And a lot of us are purchasing software online where the abundance of product selection and bundles can be quite daunting.

Why does Microsoft seem determined to require consumers to spend hours of research to understand feature sets? This move firmly keeps Microsoft’s brand in the “we don’t get it” camp.

The Internet is afire with negativity at this announcement, which is an unfortunate backlash to all the much needed positive buzz Microsoft had around the beta release of Windows 7 these past few months.

Engadget has a breakout of the feature sets.

As someone who might work at a company that might be in a strong market position somewhat like Microsoft, I can imagine how these marketing meetings would transpire.

Think echo-chamber, deeply-rooted conservatism-based-on-fear-of-being-blamed-for-slower-sales, combined with pre-determined interpretations of market research reports.

Presto!  Inwardly-directed, self-serving decisions that please management and finance departments more than customers.  Decisions that will certainly not sink the company, but certainly won’t advance it.

Or, maybe they just drew straws.

Perfectly put. Microsoft has always seemed to be more about deriving value from features rather than ease-of-use. Office is a perfect example of that.

It only follows suit that they would create a product architecture around features.