Windows Vista is finally complete, already available to some businesses and MSDN subscribers?the rest of us can wait until January. So it might be time to think about which one you might want to snag. You may have heard stories about the many different versions of Windows Vista that will soon be foisted upon the world (the official mass-market release date is January 30, 2007). In truth, there aren't that many different models of Vista. You basically have a couple of versions for both home and business users, and an "Ultimate" version that combines features of both. The rest are just specialty versions that most people can safely ignore?"Starter Edition" is the equivalent of the Windows XP version by the same name. It's a reduced-feature, reduced-cost version of Vista aimed at developing nations. There are "Home N" and "Business N" versions of Vista that don't include Windows Media Player 11, in order to comply with European antitrust legislation.

At the end of the day, there are six versions of Vista, with only four that are going to be of any concern to the vast majority of potential customers. These versions can have substantial price differences, yet it's not entirely clear which one has the feature set that is right for you. Microsoft has a Vista Editions Page that attempts to lay it all out for you, but it's more of a marketing exercise than an independent look at the worth of these various flavors. Today, we're going to try to break it all down for you: What each version of Vista contains, and which one is right for you. We're going to sum it all up using as much plain language as we can, with no hardcore computer enthusiast jargon if we can help it.

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