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Windows XP Starter Edition Review
Digitalommm writes "Paul Thurrott has a story on the latest developments on Windows XP Starter Edition. There are some very good points that the Linux community could adopt. An example is end-user training videos such as how to use a mouse." This is an optimistic, even glowing look at the Starter Edition, which even for Thurrot was not available for unsupervised use, only demonstrated by Microsoft for him. (For using-a-mouse videos, I would suggest also Roblimo's book Point and Click Linux .)
"For viewing videos, you recommend a book." The book includes a DVD with training videos on.
I know you were dead serious about this post, but it really made me laugh. I work with older people and you basically describe what I see every day. The whole thing about looking down at the mouse to press a button, oh man.
Why aren't touchscreens commonplace? Google for "gorilla arm syndrome" sometime.
With most monitor (even in Thailand) capable of running in 1024x768 or higher resolution, the 800x600 limit simply is insufficient for most user needs, especially when web page designers have been optimizing pages to run in 1024x768 screens for some time. Giant icons eats up even more screen estates.
As for the friendier localized intro, this should have been done a long time ago, not just the moment of making crippled Windoze XP.
3 application limit is an extremely dangerous feature. For we know, it can be easily reached just by running web browser plug-in, and 'application' can include a control panel, a taskbar, or even a running process. Last time I checked, Windoze need at least a lot more than 3 processes just to function. Furthermore, it can enforce double standrads on counting applications. For example, it doesn't count multiple IE windoze as separate apps, but will count each opened Mozilla/Firefox window as one (or 2 if a plug-in is activated) application. You can bet M$ is using this trick to knock out competitions.
I usually say "Windows XP EMBIGGENS you and your cromulent collegues."
Anyway - Thurrott is a Bill Gates-pillow-biter.
Um there are times when you can't kill a process from taskmgr. Other times they totally pwned the cpu time and you can't even open the task manager.
As for being exploited I wasn't talking personally. I was talking about the vast # of other users and the risk in general.
Just because you haven't been exploited doesn't mean you're safe. I mean the CHM exploits will go right through firewall and anti-virus tools if you download what you think is a valid CHM file., etc...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
First of all, while Paul Thurrott has from time to time said some nice things about free/open source projects (Firefox, most recently), the guy practically works for Microsoft and everything that comes from him should be filtered accordingly.
Second, this 'starter edition' of Windows reeks of artificial market segmentation, a la DVD region encoding. Users overseas that presumably can't/won't pay Microsoft prices for Windows turn to piracy, so they are offered a scaled-down (both in price and functionality) version of Windows in the hopes that they will choose to pay something instead of just pirating it. But consumers here in the US (including those for whom this starter edition would be totally acceptable, capability-wise) are deemed to be able to afford the full versions of Windows and are therefore not allowed to so much as REVIEW (including Thurrott, long-time MS puppet), let alone purchase this edition.
Something stinks...
Ummm... I'll quote myself here:
We appear not to disagree, but it would seem that you somehow skipped over reading the second step.
Though I suppose it might have read a bit better if I reversed the order in which I mentioned TaskMan's tabs, I only intended to demonstrate the difference between "processes" and "programs" from the point of view of Windows XP.
You morons and your white text on black backgrounds.
Fuck your ugly website
Click here you stupid dink