Microsoft has written a lot about Starter Edition but has never said directly where it will be released. Many have made the assumption that it's a global product, though, and you'll find hundreds of blog posts and news stories online with that very impression. So I double-checked with Microsoft, and the company confirmed that yes, Windows 7 Starter Edition is a global product that will be released everywhere, including here.
Why are people sure that Starter isn't a US product? Because there's another version of Windows 7 -- Windows 7 Home Basic -- that will be sold only in emerging markets. (That's the plan, anyway.) Both versions of Windows are stripped-down (though Starter is more so), and obviously this is creating some confusion in the market already, months before the OS is even released.
All of this pretty well illustrates the point I was making back in February when the Windows 7 lineup was first unveiled. Appearing in six different versions, I knew having all of these versions available was going to confuse consumers whether they were boxed at retail or even sold in their home country at all...
