Expected to be offered in at least seven new flavors, Microsoft’s new Vista OS will be the highlight of this week’s Professional Developers Conference. Also on the agenda is how Google beat Microsoft in Vanity Fair’s new ‘tech leaders’ ranking…

It appears that Microsoft will launch not one, not two, not even three versions of Vista (formerly codenamed Longhorn) next year, but ‘more than seven,’ according to this article in The Inquirer.

• The ‘starter edition’ for third-world countries will run only three applications concurrently, and includes basic TCP/IP networking. Determining that those in third-world countries have no use for entertainment, Microsoft has made this version ‘fairly useless for games.’

• Home Basic Edition, the equivalent of XP Home, will ‘probably be as fairly useless for home users.’

• The Home Premium Edition includes a new Media Center with support for HDTC, DVD authoring, and DVD ripping.

• Targeted at businesses, Vista Professional will support non-Microsoft networking protocols.

• Not to confuse matters, next on the lineup will be the Small Business Edition which includes a network backup solution.

• The Enterprise Edition will include virtual PC integration and the ability to encrypt an entire volume.

• Ultimate Edition is ‘tuned to the individual’ and features a game performance tweaker, Podcast creation utility, and exclusive access to music, movies, services, preferred customer care and other offerings.

What, no pocket or 64-bit-specific editions? Maybe the latter will be built into Enterprise or Ultimate? How about a Manufacturing Edition with 32- and 64-bit support, all the networking on the planet, and none of the foofoo? Updates will follow here when available. (Why not just give us a laundry list of available features and components, and let us build our own?)

The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is taking place this week, starting tomorrow and running through Friday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The purpose of the conference, according to this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ‘is to have as many programs as possible taking advantage of the new features of the new OS when Vista is announced sometime next year. ‘”You need to be able to show people, ‘Ah, but you really need this,’ ” said Michael Cherry, a former Microsoft engineer now an analyst at Kirkland-based research firm Directions on Microsoft. “To do that, you need these third parties to have gotten excited about it and to have gone and built their applications.”‘

Is it all worth it? With Windows being responsible for $9.4B a year in profits, the answer would be Yes. With XP and it’s variants so entrenched in many markets, and holdouts still using Windows NT and 2000 in some businesses, it will be interesting to see what developers—especially those in engineering and manufacturing—jump on the Vista bandwagon.

Microsoft also plans to pop the hood not only on Vista (offering the latest build) at the conference, but also Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005—both of which scheduled to be released in November. While poking around under there, they’re also planning to offer a preview of Office 12.

While they’re at it, the Redmondians might formally address how Google execs, among others, outranked Bill Gates (6th) and Steve Ballmer (12th) on Vanity Fair’s new ranking of ‘The New Establishment 2005: The 50 Most Powerful Leaders of the Information Age.’ They might also consider that virus writers are already targeting Vista. Hey, those’ll make for some good talking points.