bill - 4:52 am on Jun 14, 2009 (gmt 0)

Let's not go down that road please. Vista works just fine for many people.

I'd probably agree that its major failing hasn't been the confusing number of versions available. (And let's keep discussions of Vista failings for another thread...) That trend started with XP and got worse with Vista.

With Vista MS did introduce their Windows Anytime Upgrade. That lets you upgrade within the different versions of Vista to any other. Your original Vista disk contained all versions of Vista so this was a fairly simple operation. I'm not sure this works with OEM versions of the product though.

I think they will continue the Windows Anytime Upgrade with Windows 7. So you could start with one of the lower versions and then move up to a higher version if you needed. Perhaps a "single Windows disk" would suffice for most?