On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 09:26:14PM +0100, Simon Edwards wrote:
> In all honesty, MS's decision to make a Professional and Home edition of NT 
> has very little to do with usability and everything to do with marketing. The 
> Professional and Server versions are full NT, while the Home Edition is NT 
> for the low end of the market, taking over from the 9x line of products but 
> at the same time being hobbled enough so as to give people incentive to cough 
> up the dough for the full price versions.
> 
> Also see this:
> 
> http://usability.kde.org/activity/recent/userlevels.php
I was right in the middle of writing a response to this when stuff started crashing on me!  Didn't even have a chance to save the message.  Oh, well, I remember most of it.

Anyway, I understand what you're saying about Pro. Vs. Home, and I agree with you, but to market it, they need to tweak the interface accordingly for the demographic they're trying to market to.  They wouldn't be so successful trying to sell Pro-Edition features to "Home Users."  Money as a motivator doesn't make them blind to usability issues.  It didn't do that for Apple, and they have some of the best UIs out there.  There are quite a number of significant differences in the UI between Home and Pro. Edition (see http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp for a good comparison of features.)  Pro. Edition can, and does, often overwhelm the computer-illiterate, but it definitely is a lot more configureable.

Rene
-- 
rhorn@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
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