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Microsoft To Sell Win XP Starter Edition In Russia
Garabito writes "Cnet reports that Microsoft plans to distribute in Russia the low-cost, stripped-down version of Windows XP, called 'Starter Edition.' This release of Windows is aimed at markets in developing nations, and is known for not allowing more than three applications to run at the same time and not being networking capable. This product will not be available on retail, but will be distributed by OEM vendors in new PCs, at an approximate price of US$36. On a side note, the article also states that the MS tax paid by vendors to Microsoft for Windows XP licenses is $70 or more."
Drug dealers may also loose money when they try to get new customers. That doesn't mean that it is helping the war against drugs to buy from them, does it?
Why impose sh*t on people just because they don't have enough cash to pay for a retail Windows XP?
Please... someone give them a proper OS for free.
What is the point of selling this? If you spend money on this thing, and then want the whole package, won't you have to pay for another WinXP disc at full price? thus paying MORE than if you only bought the standard version?
Blog -
Ok #1:
Software piracy of full versions runs rampant.
#2:
only aviable to OEMS
#3:
only 3 programs can run at once.
#4:
resolution restricted to 800x600
Why the hell is MS doing this? Obviously this OS is a complete peice of shit, why would anybody even think about desiring this crippled thing?
You have free linux that can do 10000x as much, and is cheaper. And you have wholesale pirating of software so that you can get a full version of WinXP for probably only a little bit more then the cost of the media itself.
The only conclusion I can get is that Win XP SE is designed to keep OEM's buying MS products so that then the market matures and people can afford to pay MS's prices that the infrastructure, thru legal pressure, will be their for MS to shove the software down the throats of the "host" countries.
It doesn't make sense any other way, places like HP and Gateway only already pay 48 bucks for a full home edition, why else would the extra 12 bucks savings for a crippled version of XP make any difference, or even be intellegent market-wise.
Maybe it's just a PR crapfest?
If so then, aside from location my hard drives there, I really don't think that M$ has a chance. I mean, Win XP is dire enough, SE even more, and, as the above poster rightly said, who's going to want to use XP SE when they can get the full version from suprnova in a matter of....hours?
That is, of course, presuming that they even WANT to use windows.....*insert picture of a penguin here*
My UID is prime. Is yours?
I know this might sound rather crazy but the beauty of linux is that it would be trivial to create a linux "Starter Edition" equally crippled ? Well, maybe slightly less crippled (so its better). Someone good enough to roll their own distro should do this just to piss Microsoft off...
....
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
And this doesn't even take distribution of wealth into account. According to the above mentioned source 25% of Russia's population are below the poverty line. In reality, it's much more (they are notorious for not keeping track of economical data or even just plain making stuff up).
So you have a small upper class, a small middle class, a huge blue collar working class (with many people out of work) and a lot of people unaccounted for.
If you're living on $741 a month, do you really spend $36 on a license you essentially don't need (since there's no enforcement in Russia). Also, consider that those $36 are 20% of your monthly income (not of your monthly disposable income).
I don't really get who the folks at Microsoft think their target audience is. The upper class can afford XP Pro/Home licenses. They've either already purchased those (probably OEM licenses) or simply don't care. Anyone outside that demographic just won't be able to afford a Starter license, even if they wanted to.
This is never going to work in Russia. In Moscow, a full version of Windows XP is going to cost you about five dollars. You even get a copy of the license sticker. Also note that "vendor" in Russia often means a guy in a shop on the corner who slaps some components together and sells them, never bothering about OEM licenses for the XP he installs on the boxes.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Actually doesn't all windows software designers other than microsoft lose money on this deal?
At the same time, piracy is also fairly extensive in Russia. A study released by the Business Software Alliance and IDC in July said 97 percent of the software in Russia is pirated, a figure bested only by China, Vietnam, Ukraine and Indonesia. Critics, however, often assert that BSA figures tend to be on the high side.
If you are supplying a cheap OS to a large market who are known pirates... Will programmers for that OS not expect more pirating of their software?
The sad thing about this is Microsoft's goals. If it were to make money from their support services (the red hat model), I could tolerate it. However, this is just to get people "used" to their software. Flood the market with cheap goods and run the rest of the competition out of town.
Sad.
it's really not worth it.
Then don't use it. If you do use it without properly licensing it, then don't complain if someone else does the same to something you produce, or to some piece of GPLed software.
If you don't respect other people's copyrights, you have no reason to expect others to respect yours, or anyone else's.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I'm more than willing to buy a laptop with no OS or just Linux but have quite a hard time to find any vendor willing to sell.
> With a 92 KB keygen (From China, no less) I can
> get keys that are so legit they fool Microsoft's
> extra special little "Anti-Piracy" website and
> that new "No Piracy" verification you need to go
> through before downloading that codec pack.
That's what you get when you outsource code-development to 3rd-world countries.
Unless you keep your employees imprisoned (<cough>China...</cough>...), the knowledge about your software/product is just going to walk out of the facility....no matter how secure it is.
But it's long way before execs will learn that, I'm afraid.
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
No, Microsoft new what they were doing - Starter Edition should be named Demo Edition.
It's not a tax because it's not illegal to avoid it.
It's a tax in that it's a fee that microsoft wants every computer buyer to pay regardless of whether or not they use their software.
Government taxes can be avoided too, but the government uses strong armed tactics to stop you from doing so.
In the same way, microsoft "tax" can be avoided but they use strong arm tactics to try and make you pay.
A tax does not have to be tied to a government body. Look it up in a dictionary sometime. I think you'll find some definitions similar to (from www.dictionary.com);
3. A disagreeable or burdensome duty or charge; as, a heavy tax on time or health.
So maybe you should look up words before you tell people's use of them makes them look stupid.
This is not a problem with offshoring, no matter how much you want to make yourself believe that. This is a problem of getting governments to fight piracy. The Average Russian cannot afford WinXP. So he buys a pirated version. MS Finds out that this is all too common, and asks the Russian Government to step in. They refuse saying that the product is overpriced, and they'll only cooperate if the price is dropped.
In Typical MS style arm-twisting, they unload some junk at a cheaper price. Now, they've met their part of the deal and dropped the price. It's up to the Russian Govt to keep up their end of it, and try to curb piracy.
It's a very simple and obvious move. They don't care if it takes off or not, they'll have official govt backing. It's more important to them to ensure their future business and get a legal toehold. But then again, MS has always been really good at marketing, hasn't it.
StrayByte.Net
It's going to be added to the purchase price of every new computer sold in Russia.
I doubt they care after that what the customer does as they will have recieved something instead of nothing.
Everyone including Microsoft knows the first thing the purchaser will do is install a pirate copy of Windows XP Pro or some other OS.
Better get your installation validated now, because after the current validation testing is completed and validation becomes mandatory I imagine only one computer with any particular key is going to be able to get updates and that will be the first to validate that key.
i remember being horrified a few years ago when my father (now a retired secondary teacher) told me that the county had signed a deal to use windows and office exclusively. he has always been a mac user building stuff for pupils using filmaker pro, claris etc. but had to move to m$office as a result of the deal.
apart from the rather worrying idea of database theory being taught by getting students to create access databases it shows how indoctrination is and has always been the key to market dominance.
this is the same argument put forward in the recent film 'supersize me' and has been used by chocolate manufacturers for years.
and those candy cigarettes we used to get as kids?
Won't work for a very simple reason. In Russia, many people don't even realise that CDs they buy at the local market are not legit, simply because they haven't seen a legal software box. This especially applies to non-computer-savvy people. Then again, even if they understand the difference, the price alone would be enough for everyone to tell Microsoft to fsck off. I mean, in the town I lived, all computers at schools and the university had pirated software installed. Windows, Office, Visual Studio, AutoCAD... you name it. Not a single legal copy. Even funnier, the local tax department office had pirated Windows 98 installed on all their desktops. Considering a copy of XP Pro would cost you $2.50, why would anyone bother buying a crippled version for twelve times that price? Especially if your salary is $200/month...
This is a good opportunity for $desktoplinuxdistribution to make inroads.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
These plans have nothing to do with end users. People will still go and buy a $3 CD with the full version on the street, and uninstall the crap that came with the PC.
The real target here is the beige box guys. there may be enough incentive for them to pay the MS tax now, rather than take the risk of preinstalling pirated copies on the PCs they sell.
Actually to use it without proper liscensing you would need to violate the GPL.
So rolling it into a closed source app.
The same laws that apply to protecting XP from pirating apply to protecting Linux from closed source hijacking.
The attitude of "Well I can pirate Windows because it is not worth it." is damaging to open source (GPL anyway) as much as closed.
I am building a new computer and am actuqally buying a WinXP liscence by the way. I have been using Linux exclusivly for over a year (crappy hardware reboots windows in 10 minutes, Linux is fairly stable), but I am buying a soanking new machine and all of the sudden I have a chance to game again. Also the lack of being able to play classic games on Linux is a problem for me (WineX is all about new games, it's 2 d is not very good).
In conclusion, don't pirate Windows, doing so undermines the GPL.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
...or what? Besides someone getting a kickback in vendor HQ (I bet this is the number one reason MS became dominant over the years), of what possible reason is this being done? Who the heck would even want a crippled "training bra" version of any OS? Is it just so they have SOMETHING on the screen running on the demo unit at the store, and they know that the full priced version is so expensive that very few people in these other countries will actually purchase it? Is it because it's becomg increasingly obvious that their US price structure is so far out to lunch nowadays that they have to do something to stem the tide of revolt against them? (I think so)
MS has a few options in the new century, but shipping mega-cripple ware by design is not one of them. They fail it bigtime on this one.
Any vendors installing and shipping this are tards, IMO. This is having inertia determine your market into the ludicrous range. It's laughable.
Here's a thought for MS if they want to maintain, instead of purposelly lowering quality in selected markets, drop your prices everywhere to reflect a top price that is acceptable in the least wealthy country. If they sold XPpro for a *very* reasonable fee, most people would rather just get the official disks, so as to avoid possible trojans whatever that might be on a warez copy. MS is absolutely so freaking greedy they can't even contemplate that. I mean, it's a freeking plastic disk. They can pump them out by the millions for cheap. They have resorted to corporate insanity in the fear they might actually have to compete based on merit. I mean, have they no shame, aren't they even the tiniest bit embarassed over this?
I know they are a multibillion buck comcpany, yada yada, capitalism, yada yada, that's not the point. the point is they got there by questionable tactics and ALSO being there for the explosion of the personal computer, timing is more important than anything else. Well, it's commodity-ware now, home appliance action, toaster, TV, computer. Yard sales have computers, flea markets, discount stores. This ISN'T the 1980s. Personal computers, OS and apps sellers are going to have to recognize that, it's no longer "exotic" or only very rich people or companies who own and use computers, yesterdays pricing modality is going to have to reflect this, and soon. This training bra edition is a big fat JOKE.
...it's meant for PC vendors. Currently, you'd buy just the hardware from the PC vendor, since no one can afford the OS, and buy the OS (Linux or pirated Windows XP) from a street vendor. If an inexpensive version of Windows exists, the PC vendor could buy it, put it on the PC, and you're stuck paying for it when you buy the PC. It's the Windows tax, updated for the rest of the world. That's the only explanation for this venture I can think of that makes sense.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
That keygen was not built using "inside" info that was leaked.
It was fully reverse-engineered, and there is a document that accompanies it which details the EXACT procedure, and all the steps that were taken. It even has source code and the algorithm is explained.
So, no, piracy has nothing to do with outsourcing, at least in this case. In any case, MS doesnt outsource development to China.
The Russians aren't stupid! Some OEMs may put this crippled XP on new boxes, but as soon as they get home, a fully enabled pirated version is going to go on in its place. Crippleware will not sell, and surely MS must know this. So one can only wonder if this is a gesture by MS to get at least a few bucks from OEMs and a few people who just don't know any better. Not only that, you can bet that this budget XP will be cracked within a week of hitting the streets.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
It only undermines the GPL if you're being hypocritical. The GPL acts as a defensive measure to prevent code which is currently open from becoming restricted (i.e. company takes it, makes a product using it, sues the original programmers for illegal distribution). If there were no copyrights, the GPL would be unnecessary as a company wouldn't be able to restrict the code in the first place. At worst they could release a binary (which you'd be free to redistribute) without the changes they made to the source.
So calling for the defense of copyrights to maintain the strength of the GPL is somewhat silly, since you're arguing to strengthen the offense which the GPL defends against at the same time as strengthening the defense the GPL provides, which gives you a net change of zero.
Since it is basically impossible to purchase a complete system without paying for Windows, I'd say it IS a tax. Even if you find a dealer that will sell you a blank machine, you'll still be paying for a copy of Windows if that dealer sells any systems bundled with Windows. The ONLY way to avoid paying the Microsoft Tax is to buy all your components separately and assemble them yourself.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?