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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 .)
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Yes, admittedly some people need to learn the most basic of skills, such as how to use a mouse. But the people at this basic level should not then be expected to know how to keep their computer completely up-to-date and patched, or even why that's important! Given how many problems have come out of MSIE recently and how most new users primarily want to use this magical 'internet' thing, this is a huge risk.
There's really nothing more reliable for support than having a friend who knows what he/she is doing anyway.
my grandfather is nearly 70 yrs old.
..and all i got to say is, he needed absloutely no instruction on how to use a mouse, computer ;)
..how to use a mouse, ..i've heard it all now.
i built him a computer to check his email with and run a small webserver with the "family dot com" as he says.
or anything else... sure, he fumbled with XP for a little bit. since then i've brought him to linux though.
but everybody takes time to adjust to the os for a little while.
also note, every community college, and adult-education center, and public library i can think of in every place i've lived,
offers FREE, yes.. FREE basic computer instruction for those who actually have lived a sheltered life
and have never seen/used a mouse before.
(and of course i have taken into consideration those who do live in extreemly rual or remote areas,
in which they may need a 'howto' on how to operate a pc.
but don't most investigate how to use one, BEFORE they buy one?)
"The product can run three programs at a time. For those families, this is exactly what they want. That's a great experience for them." Right... exactly what they want. They want to run Explorer.exe, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Wor-- wait, close an application first! "One of the big criticisms about XP Starter Edition is that it can run just three applications simultaneously, so I was curious to see what it would do if you attempted to launch more than three. In this case, the system displays a notification window telling you that you can only run three applications. The notification roughly reads as, "With Windows XP Starter Edition, you can run three programs at a time. To open a new program, please save your work, close one open application, and open the new application again." Nice work! And I guess the 800x600 max resolution is also "exactly what they want". Bah.
The problem is Microsoft [like many companies in the software biz] doesn't promote many technical merits behind their software. They're more about "mind-share" than "tech-share".
But afterall, that's what a good business does. Only look short-term how to make the most amount of money.
Personally I hate windows not because I'm a l33t linux user. Or that it's cool to hate Windows. I hate Windows because it's fucking annoying. No developement tools, one desktop, totally exploited every 8 seconds, the kernel isn't that stable, you can't restart the desktop without rebooting, etc....
Rarely if ever do I have to cold-reboot my linux box. Usually restarting X will fix any problems [which also happens rarely] with the desktop.
That and I can hack the kernel if I want [which I have had todo once when cpufreqd was a bit whiny about my buggy bios having 2 PST entries]. Can't do that in Windows...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If Linux is ever going to conquer the desktop, it will take the effort of many dedicated people who not only have the time & the patience, but also obsess about the user experience of the aforementioned unwashed.
Unlike the average /. reader, the majority of people view the computer as a tool, a means to an end, not as a hobby and not as the end itself.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
As pointed out here in this thread, how about concentrating on the hundreds of thousands of users in the First World who, despite the (forced?) ubiquity of PCs, *still* don't know how to use them. This sounds perfect for my mom.
How many will forgo Windows XP Crippled edition and go with Windows XP Pro Sp2 Bittorrent Edition?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Microsoft really has their priorities screwed up.
... like a modern, standards compliant browser that isn't full of security holes. Or an e-mail client that isn't the number one vector for speading viruses in the world.
There are so many things Microsoft needs to be concentrating on
Instead, they give us this crap.
How nice.
"If you're speaking to an IT professional who rolls out desktops in an organization of 20,000 people and ask him if he would roll out Windows XP Home Edition, he'd say no," Wickstrand continued. "He'd roll out XP Pro or Windows 2000. But he wouldn't describe XP Home as crippled or say that it sucks. ..."
Why yes, yes I would call Windows XP Home Edition crippled, and yes I am an IT professional. Why, yes, our envionment does oave over 20,000 seats.
Does crippled==sucks? Not really, but please...if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, call it a freaking duck!
Apple provided mouse training in an application that was included in the diskettes shipped with the very first Macintosh in early 1984.
When it comes to catering to the home user, Microsoft is definitely catching up to Apple. Watch out, Apple--they're only twenty years behind you now!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Based on the comments so far, I don't think anyone has RTFA. I have read all of the "crippled" comments previously. If you RTFA, you see that Microsoft was headed for a particular audience with particular needs. They are aiming for people with absolutely zero computer experience. They are also aiming at "cheap" hardware so that their target audience might have a chance of actually affording it. I think that we should give Microsoft some credit on this one. They are trying to hit a new market (yes, corporations are ultimately about money); and they are doing it with their users needs in mind.
1) mostly because I forget where I left the cursor,
2) because it's comfortable (I hold it between thumb and little finger),
4) see (1).
My mother has a terrible time with a mouse, and does 3 and 5. I've found that a trackball deals nicely with 5, and 3 responds to nothing but more practice time than she's willing to give.
She's a touch typist, though getting rusty, and it's still quite painless for her to type mozilla &. Remembering that you finish up commands with an apersand so you can do this AND something else seems pretty painless, too. Finding the little icon with the lizard head, and clicking on it, is difficult, even with a trackball. A big part of that is that the name of the program is mozilla, not lizardheadicon.
The cli needs just as much training as the gui, but the basic skills for the cli are more likely to be present in seniors. The fast-twitch-to-double-click requirement of the typical gui is a real problem for old farts, too.
If you're going to have to train folks to use a mouse, consider training them to get by without, using their keyboard and tab, alt-tab, et cetera.
See what I've been reading.
I know this is a joke, but it's a serious point. From reading slashdot it seems people don't understand why Microsoft have done this. Security, Piracy, etc, none of these things have anything to do with it.
It's all about getting new users into the Microsoft habit. They're like drug dealers, who offer the first hit free. In the west, the market is already sewn up, and your schools are educating your children that Microsoft is the only way. But out in India, Thailand, China, and so on, there are many millions of people who will get their first computer in the next 5 years. XPSE means these people will be getting their first hit free.
Microsoft don't want to sell Windows on shelves, they want to bundle Windows. Bundled Windows, taken for granted Windows, gives them Power. Power they can use to sell the things that really matter: big bucks corperate licenses, OEM deals, and so on.
With XPSE they will extend their awesome power over the 'long tail' of non-'power' users.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Linux suffers from a serious "last mile" problem. There are tons of coders willing to write more code for fame and glory, but noone is willing to sit and do all the usability testing, all the polishing, etc. Because that's tiring, boring, thankless work.
Apple or MSFT can simply instruct their employees to do it. They have an incentive to do all the boring gruntwork that turns a bunch of lines of code into a good user experience: a paycheck.
For example, I installed KDE a few weeks ago, and there's a lot of good stuff there. But the way it set all the menus up out of the box was, frankly, moronic. There didn't seem to be any sense to it, it was completely unintuitive. Some items were repeated in just about every sub menu, others were impossible to find. The various dialogs and configurators and menus were anywhere from ugly to confusing to downright useless.
Some person, or group of people, need to sit and decide where to place menu items, how to lay out the forms, basically polish the GUI until it's on the level of OSX or Windows, out of the box.
Who's going to do that for free? Whoever does will get absolutely no credit, and will probably just get a lot of static and disrespect from geeks and coders who wouldn't appreciate any effort that doesn't result in new lines of code. Noone's exactly lining up to spend all of their spare time getting cussed out by a bunch of coders.
Linux just isn't a consumer-grade desktop OS, and I doubt it ever will be.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And I can tell you that what MS is doing is similar to how they handle the education markets. Their goal is to get people hooked on Windows - to switch to anything else later would be a lot more painful.
Consider why MS couldn't just take a regular version of XP Home and add some handholding features without sacrificing others. Besides possible limitations of the hardware, what's the big deal? The big deal is that this software will probably be sold or bundled for $10, not $99. If MS started selling Home for less, other countries/institutions/companies would demand to know why they can't get it for that price as well.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I don't see your anology at all. The problem the drug dealer tells the person it's crack, but it's actually rock candy... Which they go off and smoke and get sick and never do again.
Inherently addictions are to things that are enjoyable... I don't see how using a terribly stripped down version of windows is going to foster their "microsoft habit". If anything, I think it's going to drive them away from MS into the arms of something else. (most probably pirated copies of windows).
Who knows.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Inherently addictions are to things that are enjoyable... I don't see how using a terribly stripped down version of windows is going to foster their "microsoft habit". If anything, I think it's going to drive them away from MS into the arms of something else. (most probably pirated copies of windows).
That is precisely the reason why XP Starter Edition would be helpful for MS. It will be bundled legally with computers instead the full version of XP, so competing operating systems (i.e. Linux) are more likely to left out. The users of the crippled windows will be more likely to stick with it, or switch to the full version (either legit or copied), increasing Microsoft's market share. Then, they get the lucrative corporate/government contracts, and linux is left out of the picture.
Unfortunately, it comes down to this. Linux is essentially developed by geeks for geeks, and, as a generality, geeks have little time/patience with the "clueless newbie unwashed" who need their hands held.
And somehow closed source developers who have little time/patience for even their PEERS are better? What crap, the thing that support people are sick of is M$ problems, not the users Microsoft likes to blame for them. Users themselves are sick of junk that breaks so easily and being blamed for the problems. If you want real attitude problems, look to Redmond.
M$ computer "support" comes from two places, people who help their friends and $50/hr phone calls to M$. The second group is famous for being as helpful as psychic friends network, but less friendly. The first group is dumping Microsoft and all of it's problems and insults.
If Linux is ever going to conquer the desktop, it will take the effort of many dedicated people who not only have the time & the patience, but also obsess about the user experience of the aforementioned unwashed.
Where have you been? Desktop Linux is here and it's easier to use than Winblows. Distributions like Mepis install in less than 20 minutes and run great. The kernel does the hardware detection, so the user does not have to read arcane manuals, feed the computer floppies and CDs and reboot six or seven times. Printer configuration through CUPS and KDE is likewise a walk in the park. The KDE UI is both more powerful and easier to use than Winblows' pathetic, single screen ugly. 99% of what normal users want is there by default, where M$ users have to visit a store and spend hundreds of dollars and get the extra pleasures of DRM, DLL hell and other nasties. Getting specialized software is as easy as a no cost click with programs like Synaptic or Kpackage. Most importantly, free software keeps working. It stays up longer, for those who care, and it does not get eaten by automated worms, spyware, malware and other M$ born infection.
Unlike the average /. reader, the majority of people view the computer as a tool, a means to an end, not as a hobby and not as the end itself.
The average slashdot reader is well aware of that. Those that want to keep their reputation for recommending the best now recommend free software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't think it will work, I doubt that SE will work ANYTHING like crack. People like power, if Joe User bought it, then found out it was crippled I think it would actually turn him off of MS products. Also, people don't like little windows popping up telling them what they can't do.
/. crowd were forced to use either a windows box, or a Mac box in school (k-12, now)? And how many of them still use what they were stuck on? And for those that do, are they using it solely because they were indoctrinated into it?
Also I can't think of any use for it besides rising nations, it would be useless in schools, buisness, libraries, anywhere (including the home IMO). Unless their gonna get a contract from the US gov't to airdrop them on war-torn villages in Iraq, or something. Giving a people a choice though would be a bad idea, since people wouldn't choose it. There are enough tech savvy individuals in China and India to know that this is crippled, and it will be more than five years before the yokels in outer China and India have the means to afford something as superflous as a crippled computer. Then there is the problem that a lot of rural areas in the places you describe lack the infrastucture to make these computers feasable, mainly phone and stable power.
It is sad that our schools do this, indoctrinate us into MS. I remember when our school moved away from their cute little AT&T DOS terminals, to a full blown win 95 network, it was a sad day, they spent a couple million on two 95 labs, and one measily Mac lab. And then forced his students to tech the new machines. But Apple was guilty of this too. With young people though I don't think that this type of exposure actually matters. How many of the younger
I think they need to hit the older market, older people are more fixed in their ways. Force older computer novices to use one type of computer, and that is all they'll get.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Just install Linux dammit - don't buy this crap! Why should they be fed crippled software because they don't have the money to buy the full OS. I think it's insulting.