It'll probably come as no surprise that while Vista Business will be perfectly fine in enterprise settings, home and small business users who possess the latest and greatest hardware with media features will gravitate to the most expensive version of Vista.

2. Price.

If Windows Vista Ultimate is the version of Vista many of us are going to want, how much are we going to have to pay for it? Microsoft hasn't announced pricing yet, but the fact that home users who want digital media features and Remote Desktop hosting in Ultimate means that, for this reviewer anyway, Vista Ultimate will be the requisite version for his fleet of home PCs. You have to figure that it's likely to be more expensive than any previous version of Windows XP. Windows Ultimate is the superset of Home Premium and Enterprise.

So how much is that? Although no one pays this much for Windows XP Professional, the full version of the product lists for US$299 (the upgrade version's suggested list price is $199). So would it be surprising for Windows Vista Ultimate to have a suggested retail price of $329, $339 or $349? Don't bet against it. I don't see Microsoft effectively lowering the price of Vista Home Premium (akin to XP Home) or Vista Business/Enterprise (akin to XP Pro) -- especially when it's merging Tablet PC and Media Center features in many of these lesser versions.

By the same token, Windows Vista Home Basic is a lesser version than XP Home. Might it sell for a bit less money? Full XP Home's suggested list price is $199, with the upgrade edition costing $99. Might it sell for $69, $79 or $89? I'm guessing that $89 is the lowest it would go as a list price. But one thing you can be sure of, if it does sell for less than XP Home, low-end consumer OEM PC makers are going to get serious about equipping new PCs with it, especially given the fact that Microsoft's Windows Anytime Upgrade will let consumers upgrade to Home Premium or Ultimate via an online purchase and download.