News: Windows 7 For Sale Today

Although we cover Apple-related news and products regularly, we couldn’t let this go by without at least a mention. Today, Windows 7 became available for the public to purchase. There is a lot riding on Windows 7, since it is trying to make up for Vista’s shortcomings and get people to upgrade from XP.

Launched today, Windows 7 takes the user interface updates of Vista, promises to use less resources, runs faster, and generally gets out of your way.

Unfortunately, Microsoft keeps the same pricing structure as before:

Microsoft doesn’t think XP holdouts will bother; it hopes that they’ll just get Windows 7 preinstalled on a new PC. (It’s no accident that new operating systems come out right before holiday shopping.) The second bit of nastiness is the insane matrix of versions. Again, there are five versions of Windows 7 — Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate — each with its own set of features, each in 32-bit or 64-bit flavors (except Starter), at prices from $120 to $320. Good luck figuring out why some cool Windows 7 feature, like the much-improved, TiVo-like Windows Media Center, isn’t on your PC.

Still, it is good to see that Windows has been improved and is something that many are equating to Mac OS X, rather than being a joke. Obviously, the Snow Leopard update, with a few bumps in the road for some, was pretty painless and offered quite a bit in terms of efficiency improvements. Hopefully Windows 7 will be the same way for our PC-using counterparts.

Also, if you feel like reading about Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard, CNET’s Prizefight compares the two.