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MS Plans Low-Cost Windows for Brazil
Atryn writes "According to this C|NET article, Microsoft is planning to release its XP Starter Edition in Brazil. Could the pressure of Brazil's overtures toward Linux be forcing Microsoft Brasil to compete?"
It is far too limited to be useful to anyone. Users who need to use the computer will pirate. Government will not be stuck with a stripped down almost unusable copy of Windows, when they could build their own hack of linux and use that on their boxen. The only people I would expect this could be useful for are Computer Manufactures.. who will just throw a copy of Starter on the computer for a bit less money.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
Except that this is a stupid deal.
Who would want to buy a crippled operating system? The capabilities of an operating system should be dependant on two things only: software producing capabilities (you need to write the software after all and it's not an easy job to do) and hardware. Marketing reasons aren't on the list, so that MS could sell it's "normal" operating system on an artificially inflated high price.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Here in South America (I'm from Argentina) Linux is getting more and more attractive, specially after sucesive devaluations(1 U$s = 3 Pesos) Most of the budget PCs here come with diffrent flavors o'linux preloaded, but unfortunately ppl get a friend or pay a tech to install copies of Windows, due to the fact that it is the system the know how to use, either because they work in it or they are just plain used to it. I think Microsoft will eventually release these "crippled" versions everywhere, bundled or otherwise and finally, after ppls complaints will release a "less-crippled" version or reduced priced versions of the originals. It would be nice to introduce Linux in the corporate scene.It would make a lot of things easier.
MS is trying to introduce this "starter edition" in Brasil because the goverment is planing in creating a cheap computer to connect the lower classes to the internet. This sheap computer is planed to be shipped with linux, but MS is trying to convince the goverment that this "crippled edition" is better.
The best quote I heard from a goverment official is that the Brasilian goverment will not help to stablish the MS monopoly.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
"I would consider that barely useful!"
I'd say, so does Microsoft. The plan is to no doubt give people a taste and entice users to 'upgrade' to a full version. I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't laced with various pop-up dialogue boxes; "To activate this great feature, purchase XP full..etc.." but I'm not sure that would happen at all.
These people aren't forking out a few hundred bucks for a 'full' OS, they'll just see what they're missing out on and pirate it.
If I bought a new car and only three of the gears worked, I wouldn't upgrade to a newer model, I'd go to their competition. The competition in this case just happens to be a pirated model, or (shock, horror) doing without a computer at all.
I hope this plan fails miserably. It deserves to.
This is all funny to me because I've been using free and open source softare for a few years and I have a powerful GUI, tons of utilities, and can launch dozens of applications at the same time. Ubuntu with Kubuntu took a great deal less time to install than Windows does, and is a lot more fun. So in this case something free (in my opinion, anyway) is better than something merely cheap.
But the even more funny irony of this starter edition is that it actually required extra work to cripple it. It's not a product that required less work, it required the opposite (more). Think about that for a moment. No other industry could possibly work this way. To create this "cheaper" version Microsoft had to devote extra time and money to crippling it, packaging it and marketing it. To use the obligatory car-industry-versus-computer-industry analogy, it's a bit like building a complete Humvee, chopping off bits of it and selling it for the price of a used Yugo. It required all of the work of building the Humvee, plus extra time and money for a Yugo-equivalent crippling, and now sells for the Yugo price. I'll stick with my Sherman tank, and recommend Brazil does the same.