Microsoft has officially verified the editions for Windows Vista a week after the information leaked when it prematurely appeared on the company's Web site.

Vista will have six core editions, four aimed at consumers and two aimed at the enterprise, says Neil Charney, Microsoft's director of Windows product management. The consumer editions are Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Ultimate; the business editions are Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise.

The editions confirmed by Charney are the same ones listed on a Microsoft Web site last week, one the company said was being used for testing and offered "incomplete" information. The only difference between editions reported last week and the ones confirmed by Microsoft is that the starter edition--a stripped-down, low-priced version of the OS aimed at emerging markets--is branded with the "Vista" label. The Web site, which Microsoft shut down after its information appeared in published reports, said Starter would not have the Vista brand.

As expected, Microsoft plans to do away with the Windows Media Center Edition OS when it ships Vista. Instead, functionality that now is in Media Center--such as DVD playback, authoring, and burning and other multimedia features--will be included in the consumer editions Home Premium and Ultimate, Charney says. Those versions also will include TabletPC functionality, he says.

In addition, the next-generation Aero user interface will not appear in Windows Vista Starter and Home Basic. Home Premium and Ultimate are the only consumer editions with the interface, which allows users to view and flip windows three dimensionally.

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