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MS Plans Low-Cost Windows for Brazil

Posted by timothy on from the cut-rate-low-budget dept.

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?"

2 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. +1 funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    batshit fucking insane

  2. My own dream version of Windows by petrus4 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Rather than "Starter Edition," here's some suggestions, if anyone from Redmond just happens to read this. (I know they won't do it - it's more a mental exercise while I eat)

    1. Go download this, and make it natively multi-user if it isn't already. Give it a strong native security model, too...you can get some ideas here, and the best part is, they won't mind you doing that if you don't try and patent said ideas. Also, modularise your GUI, and don't prevent users from accessing the CLI when they want to.

    2. Have the CLI composed of this and this for us CLI types.

    3. Make the Add/Remove Programs panel essentially a net-aware frontend for either this or this.

    4. Use this for hardware detection. Also re drivers, get rid of the suicidal policy of seeing third-party hardware vendors as the enemy, and actually support them...via tools, docs, etc. These people are your friends...they'll help you stay relevant.

    5. Download this and use it as your default FS, and then get this and this, (although you already seem to know about this last one) and incorporate both of those into your stock UI. You've essentially got WinFS right there, without all the added complexity you'd no doubt throw into it if you tried to code it from scratch.

    6. For the Agent angle, incorporate the last point, as well as putting help/docs in a non-binary format, making them searchable with this, converting said search results for use with this, and then use the AIML output as input for something like this. Also, instead of making the agent a tightly anthropomorphic personality, make it more generic, and more as though it's simply "the operating system" communicating with a user, rather than that dog or Clippit instead.

    7. Give Outlook a major overhaul. This and this are examples of directions it IMHO should go in.

    Just some random ideas, anywayz. Dreaming's fun. ;) I'll probably get modded Offtopic, but it was worth it.