It's Friday somewhere in the universe, and you all know what that means: it's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day! Sure, we know that this installment is even later than usual, but hey, spite has no expiration date, so let's jump right into it before our grandkids file for Social Security, shall we? This time we thought we'd skip over all the evil and/or stupid crap that Microsoft actually did in the past week, and instead focus on something absurd that it might do in the future. That's right, folks, WO-TM-BD was gone all speculative this week, using its own lateness as a springboard into the Void of Maybe, where we'll surf down the timestream to one of infinite alternate eventualities. (Don't worry; Microsoft still sucks in all of them.)

So without further ado, faithful viewer Ken Drake dished us a TechWeb News article which cites newly-RDFed Windows apologist Paul Thurrott as saying that Microsoft currently plans to ship Longhorn (you know, that next-generation version of Windows that was originally supposed to ship in 2003, and now won't ship until 2006-- and only that early because Microsoft keeps lopping giant limbs off its feature set) in no fewer than seven separate and sort-of-distinct versions. If you thought the release of Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional was an unnecessary and confusing arbitrary product split (why didn't they just ship a single unified version called "Windows Crap™"?), just imagine the sheer ridiculousness that'll unfold if Longhorn ships in Home, Professional, Starter Edition, Premium/Media, Small Business, Mobility/Tablet PC, and "Über," a version that allegedly "bridges the consumer and business versions and includes all of the features from the Home, Premium, Pro, Small Business, and Tablet PC Editions (but not Starter Edition)."

Yeah. How could this possibly be a problem?

Like we said, this isn't a done deal just yet-- or at least if it is, Microsoft hasn't publicly said so. But somehow it just rings true as precisely the sort of bonehead move Microsoft is likely to make in the alleged interest of "consumer choice." Apple, always quick to anticipate changes in the market, has already formed an ad hoc committee to research the pros and cons of releasing up to nine different versions of this year's Mac OS X 10.4, code-named Tiger, instead of the single client version that it has always shipped in the past. What the committee found through extensive market research and sophisticated computer modeling was that, on the plus side, releasing seven or more versions of a single operating system slightly increases the chances of multiple sales to a single customer-- especially if each version comes in a different limited edition box with cool holograms on the front and they're labeled "Collect Them All!"

However, the committee determined that among the many, many down sides to such a move is that it's colossally imbecilic; as such, we don't expect to see "Mac OS X 10.4 Dentist's Edition" or "Tiger for Spelunkers" when the operating system ships mid-year. As for Longhorn, well, we suppose we'll just have to wait (and wait, and wait, and wait...) to see. Maybe this distasteful "seven versions" goofiness is just Microsoft's way of making the extensive wait for Longhorn go a little bit faster for its customers, hmm? Perhaps next week they'll announce that Longhorn will be a required upgrade, all other versions of Windows will cease to function when it's released, and installing any of the seven versions will require a series of painful injections into the spine and a forehead tattoo of the COA registration number. That'll make the months just fly by.