The Tyrany of Choice and Windows Vista

I read a great piece a number of years ago in the Globe and Mail about the tyrany of choice. It was referring to Starbucks, but I think it now also applies to Windows Vista.

Why do I say this? Well, Windows Vista will have not 2 but 7 (!!!!) different desktop versions. Paul Thurott (of the Window Super Site) has a great rundown. Now when you read the descriptions, they make a lot of sense, but without them...

I pity being an OEM or user of Vista. OEM's get hurt because they must choose which of the 7 versions to ship on their various offerings and woe be them if the fickle market chooses something else. Users get done because they get yet another confusing option to choose between when purchasing a new computer, already a daunting task for a non-techy person.

Anyway, work on the QuickTour is going well. Please note that the version you see there is not the completely current version, due to some screwy-ness in the doc build scripts.