Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

(Column) - One of the great things about Amazon and other online shopping services is that they usually list items for pre-order months before they're actually released. This allows your anticipation for the product to build more and more until your wait is justified with the release of the item that you've been in expectation of. I don't know if you've been anxious for Vista, but Amazon has given us a sneak peek at when we can expect to get our OS-lovin' hands on it.

Microsoft has been hinting at a January release date for quite some time, and according to Amazon, they're going to meet that goal since the date is scheduled for January 30th. Now, if something came up and Microsoft felt like it would be best to further delay the release of the software, then you can count on the fact that the release date would be pushed back, but for right now, it looks like we can get ourselves into the January 30th frame of mind.

These product listings from Amazon are significant in a couple of other ways, too. Not only do they reveal the supposed release date, but they also shed some light on the pricing and the number of versions that we can expect, and all I can say is I've got a headache from reading through all of it.

You'd probably think that there would be a Home and Professional version of Vista like there is for XP, but that would be too easy for us to understand. Instead, we're faced with Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. The cheapest version of the software is the Home Basic Upgrade which will cost $99.95 (not bad, Microsoft) while the most costly version will be the full version of Ultimate which can deplete you of $399. Yikes. On top of that, additional license packs are present in Amazon's listings, and you'll have to rub your eyes in disbelief once you see what they'll financially require of you. As you can imagine, more versions lead to more complications.

We've known that Microsoft would be unleashing The Fab Five on us for some time now, and it just amazes me that they've found it necessary to release five different versions of their OS. You can't just tell a computer retailer that you want to buy Windows Vista; instead, you'll have to specify which version you want. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's going to lead to user confusion just like Home and Professional did for XP. There are just two versions of Windows right now - imagine what it's going to be like when there will be five. People won't know what they're getting.

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