How Many Versions of Vista?

Microsoft says the reason it's ending the "Anytime Upgrade" digital key downloads for Windows Vista upgrades is because of feedback from customers. I can believe customers were confused, but I can't believe that's the real reason for the change. I think it's a step Microsoft had to take to clear the decks for reducing the number of versions of Vista.

For sure, the "Anytime Upgrade" program hasn't been easy to understand. The pitch was that all the versions of Vista would install from a single DVD, so that you could easily upgrade from one to another just by putting your Vista disk in your PCs drive. Of course, it was a little more complicated than that: The upgrade wasn't (and still won't be) free, and you paid for it by going to the Microsoft Web site and buying a small piece of software, a digital "product key." Then you hunted up the Vista disk that came with your PC and fed it the key.

But what if you couldn't find your Vista disk? Would the key work with another one? Or what if you lost or screwed up the digital key? Could you get it replaced? Or what if the installation failed? Would the key allow you to rerun it? Many questions – enough, in fact, to make AnyTime Upgrading look like a risky business to the very people it was intended to attract – home users who aren't IT professionals. (The same home users, to be sure, who were being threatened by Microsoft that if their Vista installation was one bit less than perfect it might be disabled when it failed validation, or was rejected by Windows Genuine Advantage.)

The result could certainly have been that Anytime Upgrade had the opposite effect from what Microsoft intended – rather than bringing in a pot of upgrade money, it inhibited upgrades by scaring off potential upgraders.

But I don't think that's the real reason why Microsoft will stop selling digital keys on Feb. 20 and start selling boxed upgrades that contain a DVD and a standard product key. I think that when those boxes finally hit the shelves, we'll find that they don't line up with the current Vista versions.

Six versions of Vista have been too many. (Yes, six – Home Basic, which is basically Windows XP with new screensavers; Home Premium; Business; Enterprise, which is the volume-licensing version and doesn't come in a box; Ultimate; and were you forgetting Vista Starter, available only in countries redlined by Microsoft?)

When Vista was launched a year ago, the number of versions, combined with the "Wow" ad campaign that pushed benefits that might or might not be in particular versions, created some confusion in the marketplace -- which versions include Windows Media Player but not Windows Media Center? Which include BitLocker? Which don't install Aero?

The "Wow" campaign went away pretty quickly. Now it's past time for Microsoft to actively try to sell Vista again, and a realignment of the product line seems to be a prerequisite.

Microsoft has already started to simplify the story it has to tell. Vista Service Pack 1 will remove the kill switch in Microsoft Genuine Advantage to reduce it from a sales-prevention initiative to a nag screen. Recent license changes will decriminalize virtualization of the least expensive versions of Vista -- Home and Home Premium. But Anytime Upgrades locks in the versions of Vista on customers' DVDs. Solution: drop Anytime Upgrades and instead, sell people a new DVD that can have whatever version of Vista on it Microsoft wants to sell that week.

I disclaim any hard information on what changes will be made in the version lineup. (The only thing I know for sure is that we'll hear the phrase "user experience" repeated ad nauseum by Microsoft marketing types.) But I would like to make one suggestion. How about a "Windows Vista Compatibility Edition" that would work exactly like XP Pro, right down to the Teletubbies field-of-grass desktop background?