Windows Versions to be Split for Consumers and Business

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There will be two different versions of Windows, the consumer edition and the business edition, and they will have separate launch dates now and this piece of information has come from a reliable source from within the company. Credit Suisse, the financial services giant, had recently held the technology symposium and Tony Myerson took this platform to acknowledge the two different roads the OS is taking; one of the mainstream customers and the other from the high end conservative corporations. He was once the leader of the Windows Phone team but was later promoted to head the client-based OS development which included the smartphones, tablets, PCs, and the Xbox game console.

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The acknowledgment of the OS taking two different roads is hinting towards a policy which was adopted almost a decade earlier by Microsoft when it different releasing plans for commercial OS and the one for the mainstream customers. In 2000, Microsoft delivered the Windows ME which was the Millennium Edition and this one catered to the consumers while the Windows 2000 was launched to businesses. Before this release, the Windows 95 was completely the consumer-oriented edition but it was still widely used in businesses. The one targeting the business PCs solely was the NT 4.0 which was launched in 1996. This gap between consumers and businesses has appeared once again but enterprises have become nervous about the cadence and unlike the consumers, businesses have to spend a lot of money to upgrade their OS and this pretty much explains why Windows XP remained the working tool for all businesses for almost more than a decade. They were only replaced by Windows 7 after a long time but not Windows 8 or 8.1. And it will not be unwise to say that making both the segments of the market happy is extremely difficult. The accelerated delivery cycle, as taken by enterprises, has become much of a concern for CEO Ballmer.

Source: PC World | News Archive