What it ain't...

Having just listened to Steve Balmer's speech (it wasn't an interview) on the Gartner podcast, I offer this in response: you should notice that no one is saying that 7 is rewritten from the ground up. That's right kiddies: when you line up to buy 7, what you'll be getting is Vista with various stuff scraped off (but not the DRM).

Could this be why MS is still going with the six different versions?

Don't get me wrong, 7 Beta runs wonderfully. However, you should be paying attention to what's not being talked about by the marketing department (i.e., there's stuff there they'd rather not discuss).

I imagine that the Home Basic version will still suck royally and that MS will expect a few hundred (if not more) bucks for the upgrade. It'd be nice if we could get out of the Vista morass for $99 (flat). I'm not holding my breath though.