{"id":34233,"date":"2005-09-13T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2005-09-13T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2005\/09\/13\/why-is-there-no-all-encompassing-superset-version-of-windows\/"},"modified":"2005-09-13T10:00:21","modified_gmt":"2005-09-13T10:00:21","slug":"why-is-there-no-all-encompassing-superset-version-of-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20050913-21\/?p=34233","title":{"rendered":"Why is there no all-encompassing superset version of Windows?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes, I am asked why there is no single version of Windows that contains <strong>everything<\/strong>. Instead, as you move up the ladder, say, from Windows&nbsp;XP Professional to Windows Server&nbsp;2003, you gain server features and lose workstation features. Why lose features when you add others?<\/p>\n<p> Because it turns out no actual customer wants to keep the workstation features on their servers. Only developers want to have this &#8220;all-encompassing&#8221; version of Windows, and making it available to them would result in developers testing their programs on a version of Windows <strong>no actual customer owns<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p> I think one of my colleagues who works in security support explained it best: <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p> When customers ask why their server has Internet Explorer, NetMeeting, Media Player, Games, Instant Messenger, <i>etc.<\/i>, installed by default, it&#8217;s hard for the support folks to come up with a good answer. Many customers view each additional installed component as additional risk, and want their servers to have the least possible amount of stuff installed. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> If you&#8217;re the CIO of a bank, the thought that your servers are capable of playing Quake must give you the heebie-jeebies. <\/p>\n<p> [Raymond is currently away; this message was pre-recorded.] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes, I am asked why there is no single version of Windows that contains everything. Instead, as you move up the ladder, say, from Windows&nbsp;XP Professional to Windows Server&nbsp;2003, you gain server features and lose workstation features. Why lose features when you add others? Because it turns out no actual customer wants to keep the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-34233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Sometimes, I am asked why there is no single version of Windows that contains everything. Instead, as you move up the ladder, say, from Windows&nbsp;XP Professional to Windows Server&nbsp;2003, you gain server features and lose workstation features. Why lose features when you add others? Because it turns out no actual customer wants to keep the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}