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Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon
Apu writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition operating system specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction on bootup and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected."
what "low cost" means anyway?
You think Microsoft would have learned after the games they played with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and DR. DOS. This will not make the anti-trust crowd any happier, and just serves to tick off the opponents of Microsoft more.
Microsoft is essentially creating a market for Linux by doing this. It's all about standardization and if companies have to purchase two different versions of Linux to use their hardware, they are going to look hard at the decision before doing so.
Microsoft claims they're using this software as a way to get pirates to start paying for the software. But tell me, what is the average person going to use: the "starter edition" that doesn't even work on their PC, or the pirated edition that does? The value of legal software indeed.
Stupid like a fox!
It seems there doing this to prevent PC Manufacturers from bundling it with the cheaper end of the higher-end PCs - probably because buisnesses and others who need a lot but don't need all the full features, would want it, as it is about half as expensive as Home edition, and a lot cheaper than Professional.
If they let it run, then, it would effectively compete with their full versions, hurting their profits!
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
When a company has monopoly power in a market. Imagine Ford coming out with a car that will not start in certain supermarket parking lots, or a TV that will not show you a specific channel. Why is it Microsoft can get away with shit like this but other companies in other industries can't?
Unless of course the blatently obvious applies. I would have to say that close to half of the Windows machines I see on a daily basis (including my own!) use a blank screen as their screensaver. Also don't forget that all Energy Star-compliant monitors will turn the display off after a certain period of time. I would much rather see a user get a blue screen than arbitrarily giving their computer the one-finger salute every time their screen saver kicks in or their monitor goes into energy saver mode. I can just imagine the helpdesk tickets and support calls now: "My computer locks up every day while I'm at lunch!" or "Every morning when I come in my computer has locked up."
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it doesnt run on athlon/p4 ant cant run/runs like shit on lower. gee. thanks MS
My question is, if someone finally gets the money to upgrade their low-end CPU to something faster, why should the OS stop working?
The point is to help poor countries develop, not to just "help poor people in poor countries do basic stuff".
What if those poor countries were given high-end computers as DONATIONS? Like for schools, universities, etc?
IMO Microsoft is asking for BIG trouble here. Key term: Discrimination.
...is the part that says "Microsoft ... wants to use perks such as bug patches and alerts to demonstrate the value of legal software."
Interesting, that bug patches are cast as "perks." - Of course leaving unaddressed the value of software that doesn't need bug patches in the first place.
So maybe that's why there are so many bugs in Windows -- So we'll all be so dang grateful when we receive the bug patches!
This finally explains why I like Microsoft products so much...
Think about it. You live in India. You consider yourself lucky for being able to afford a computer, but still, you have a very limited budget compared to Americans / Europeans / whatever. What would you do? Buy a better system and get a pirated version of the OS or do The Right Thing (TM) and buy a worse system but with a legally acquired OS? Sure, you won't help your friend whose family is starving, but you're willing to give money away to the richest foreigner in the world.
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Having lived in India, I can tell you why this won't work. The users who pirate Windows are not people who need computers only for basic word processing - they are proper users who use computers as part of their lifestyle, much like people elsewhere in the world do. They do not like their OS to be crippled in any way.
Why then, you ask, do they have to pirate Windows? The reason is cost: A user can afford to spend $100-$200 for a legal copy of Windows in the US, but in India due to the exchange rate it becomes a huge amount! It's comparable to the actual price of the desktop, and note that people spend a large fraction of their income to buy a desktop in the first place. Microsoft does not price their software according to purchasing power, instead it does a straight conversion of $$ to Rupees.
If Microsoft offers a cheaper Windows for a lesser price, people will just keep pirating the 'proper' OS for free. And sometime later, they will migrate to Linux when they find that Linux can offer them pretty much the same functionality. If MS wants people to use Windows and PAY for it, all they need to do is offer an uncrippled OS for a price that is affordable in India.
Note to Microsoft: People don't want to buy your crippled software, even if it cheap.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
"...just load a free, non-crippled OS (mentioning no names!).
I hope you meant a pirate copy of XP Home or Pro. Although you did say non-crippled.
I imagine that most people who would use a cracked version of the Starter Edition would just choose to use a cracked Pro Edition anyway.
I don't see how they are better... if you got a "Core dumped" error, then an application died, but the OS was able to handle the dead application and continue running. If you have a blue screen of death, the OS has also died, and your computer is now completely useless until you reboot it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So, quick question: Windows has appeared to evolved into a seriously fragmented OS. How many different versions of Windows are there?
Another quick question: so what? Last time I checked, there are quite a few distros of Linux running around out there. Everyone and their dog has a distro out -- mine is due to be released in about a week or so.
But there's only one Kernel! Well, except that there isn't. There's the unstable series. The stable series. Older stable series that are actively maintained. Other branches like -ac.
So yeah, once could argue that there are a lot of versions of Linux out there as well. I'm far from what you'd call an MS fan, but this is one of the weaker points to be attacking them on.
At the risk of sounding new here, I am amazed at the mindset. Whatever happened to making the best product you can and trying to sell as much of it as you can? The idea at Microsoft appears to be to sell your product as much as you can by making it perform poorly compared to itself. Or something like that.
Imagine being the engineers tasked with writing the feature that disables the OS on "advanced" CPUs. What pride they must have in their work.
They are effectively competing against themselves with the cheaper product and have to make sure it isn't too good. I'm not sure it is a matter of shame, just trying to capture an additional market segment.
For example, with my software I have a number of different editions, effectively free, budget, and full (I call them the Free, Silver and Gold Edition). It took a decent amount of extra work to develop the Free and Silver Editions, and this was done by disabling features that would have been simpler to just leave in. Some people are simply not going to want to fork out for the Gold Edition, so if I can give most of what they want through one of the Silver Editions, at least I made a sale when otherwise I wouldn't have. But the danger is that the Silver Editions and the Gold Edition do compete with each other. If I leave too much in the Silver, everyone will buy that, and the Gold sales will suffer.
I think the general gist in both cases is to make a product that is good enough for people who don't want the full version, but not so good that it affects the sales of the full version.
...it is designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors...
Uhm.... isn't it just MS-Windows XP with stuff ripped out? If so, then it is NOT "designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors." It is designed for the exact same computers for which XP is designed.
It's marketed for cheap-assed computers. But it was designed for x86 computers.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Having a screen go black merely covers up the problem. Yes, it makes Microsoft/Windows look better than it really is, but it leaves people with a false impression. What you call "obtrusive" I call "informative".
I can see why the designed it to only run on low-end CPUs. It locks the OS to the hardware it shipped with. Most of the low-end gear this version of Windows will be going on is non-upgradeable (some of these cheap boards even have the CPUs soldered on!) and who would want to pirate a very limited Windows? No one!
On the other hand, if this starter edition is installed on a PC that is upgradeable, you'll also have to upgrade the OS if you want it to work with higher-end CPUs. How nice, but that's true for most "starter editions" of software.
Crippleware is what I call it.
;)
;) But I can't just give away the uncrippled version and rely on kindness. One shining example of this related to one of the beta testers for the software. He loves the games, plays them all the time apparently. Submitted no feedback, and has no intention of pitching in for the final release because the beta was uncrippled. Whoops. And he's not the only one. People are very good at taking if there is no benefit to giving. Now if I could count on the generosity of enough people, who cares if most people benefit for nothing? But the problem is that I can't.
Happens to be one of the reasons I don't use much commerical software, and kind of avoid it like the plague.
Indeed, that is an appropriate name for it too. But sometimes relying on human nature isn't enough. Humans can be such terribly selfish things.
For example, I developed my software full-time over eighteen months. This wiped out my savings and left me in a fair amount of debt. It is a bit unreasonable to expect a single person to shoulder the entire burden of the development when a number of people reap the benefits. Hence I sell the software. Maybe one day I will make enough back to try this whole crazy experiment again.
As for avoiding crippleware, I'd have to disagree. What I can't stand is when people sell something without giving you a chance to try it out beforehand. That really sucks. Time limitations are a pain too, I hate the presumption that I can dedicate 30 days to trying something out; my free time is limited and sporadic. But trial versions are a good thing. Certainly something to be encouraged. Much better than nothing at all.
Note to you: apparently you don't get it. Microsoft sells this directly to PC makers, it doesn't matter if the end-user wants it or not. It doesn't matter if the end user pirates windows. Someone in india who pirates windows was going to do it if it was 200$ or 70$, it really doesn't matter, let's be realistic.
M$ found a way to still make money, while giving manufacturers what they want: a PC they can advertise running windows. The PC makers really don't give a crap if it's a full version or not either. Joe public, whether in india or america or afghanistan hasn't a cluebie the difference between XP starter edition and XP pro.
What did Microsoft learn?
DR DOS was a threat to MS-DOS. Using windows 3.11 they put doubt into the minds of users that DR-DOS wasn't truly stable and compatible. Follwing this was a fierce second blow with windows 95 which finished off DR DOS. Eventually, after Microsoft killed DR DOS they settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. However this sum could never amount to a pittance compared to the billions that Microsoft made as a monopoly.
Microsoft learned that playing games entrenches their monopoly and earns them billions in the long run.
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as long as this feature is prominantly displayed on the packagfing and all adverts.
Wow, Linux applications must make perfect use of pointers. Linux applications programmers must be so good that they never overstep an array bounds.
I wouldn't think it's the software specifically. From what I've seen, most of that stuff doesn't look like it's doing anything tricky with the display. I'd think it would be a driver or hardware issue.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."