Home Basic: Home Basic is intended for budget users not requiring advanced media support for home use. The Windows Aero theme with translucent effects will not be included with this edition. Home Basic will support up to 8 GB of physical memory. Price: 200$, upgrade: 100$

Home Premium: Containing all features from Home Basic, this edition will additionally support more advanced features aimed for the home market segment, such as HDTV support and DVD authoring. Extra games, mobile and tablet computer support, file system encryption, and a photo management application are also included. This edition is comparable to Windows XP Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition. Home Premium will support up to 16 GB of physical memory. Price: 240$, upgrade: 160$

Business: Comparable to Windows XP Professional, and aimed at the business market. Does not include the Media Center features of Home Premium, but does include the IIS web server, fax support, offline files, dual (physical) processor support, Remote Desktop, ad-hoc P2P collaboration capabilities, Previous Versions, and support for 128 GB of memory. Price: 300$, upgrade: 200$

Ultimate: This edition combines all the features of the Home Premium and Enterprise editions, and additionally comes with podcast creation support, a game performance tweaker (WinSAT), DVD ripping capabilities, and special online services for downloadable media, as well as additional customer service options. The Ultimate edition is aimed at high-end PC users, gamers, multimedia professionals, and PC enthusiasts. Price: 400$, upgrade: 260$

Also note the other releases will be:

Starter: Much like Windows XP Starter Edition, this edition will be limited to emerging markets such as India,Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia, mainly to offer a legal alternative to using unauthorized copies. It will not be available in the United States or Europe.

Enterprise: This edition is aimed at the enterprise segment of the market, and is a superset of the Business edition. Additional features include multilingual user interface support, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application support. This edition will not be available through retail or OEM channels, but through Microsoft Software Assurance.

I have the luck of my University offering the Ultimate edition free to certain majors, one of which, I am. So i don't need to drop the hefty 400$ pricetag for it.

I'll be getting ultimate as well with my new computer.

Buut, I'll give it a couple of months before I upgrade to Vista.

I'm getting Ultimate. My reason for getting Vista would primarily be to learn about it, and as Ultimate is the only edition with everything in it, it is the only way to meet that goal. I'd also be getting it as soon as possible, as though I'm not expecting anything spectacular with regards to stability, I can't envision it actually damaging my hardware, and I'll have XP available on another machine. Waiting around for Service Pack 1 would bother me since I wouldn't know anything about the newest version of Windows during that time, and once the SP came out, I'd have no idea what new features it added, and probably could never know.

Isn't Vista coming out on Jan 30th? I thought the November 30th deadline was for OEMs.

Already have my order for Windows Vista Ultimate. I have 4 copies on the way for mid-december (yes, they are through OEM)

And didn't you say you were gifting me a copy of Vista? Time to own up to your promise

Yeaaa.....we all know about that large bonus you got. :mrgreen:

Large bonus? I didn't know about that! Blud...you owe us a party for this...

>.> I wish

But in all seriousness, those 4 copies are for machines that I own, sorry no spares here

Is this what you're getting me for the holidays? I'm determined to figure it out even if it kills me