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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."
It is of course, an arbitrary decision manufactured by the marketing department as to my knowledge, there is no real functionality that is enabled on the "Pro" version of Windows with the Pentium 4 or Athalon chips. So, it seems like a fairly simple hack to get around this issue, as there is likely no real difference in the codebase of the Starter Edition other than some features that marketing has decided to disable and of course the above mentioned check, yes? (likely to violate the license terms)
So, quick question: Windows has appeared to evolved into a seriously fragmented OS. How many different versions of Windows are there? There is a Mobile, Embedded, Server, Pro, Home, Starter, Handheld......What else?
Oh, and Microsoft......If you cant make Windows more stable, you might want to do something about those error messages that crop up on computers running things like displays at airports. Almost every time I fly these days, at the airport, I see a computer running an information display that has crashed. Either a bluescreen of death (soon to be redscreen AND bluescreen of death in Longhorn), or a fundamental error message. This never looks good to customers and is bad advertising in large traffic areas. One of these days, one of these systems is going to get hacked and something truly embarrassing is going to be displayed on all of those big displays.
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it is designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors
This is fine as long as MS provides a patch when P4 or AMD64 is considered low-cost and entry-level.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
That's nothing! My copy of WinXP fails to continue if any kind of CPU is detected!
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
But will it run on a 386?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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.
Windows XP Starter Edition ain't done, 'til... umm... Wintel and AMD won't run?
OK, boys, time to haul ass over to DEC^H^H^HCompaq^H^H^H^H^H^H^HHP and dig out those Alpha chips! Anyone got an P-II or a K6-III we can borrow until then?
On your second point, I think that Microsoft ought to have an option for screens to go black on errors.
Microsoft Operating Systems are used daily in environments where it really isn't useful to display large blue screens with technical error information. Printing that information to a file crit_error.dat and displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas", and probably wont add much tech time.
Just a thought I had upon reading your post. It doesn't really *solve* the problem, it just makes it more "friendly" to these sorts of microsoft displays.
Don't forget Microsoft CEMENT. (Alternate link)
thats stupid .. i mean atlhons started at, what, 500mhz? ...or what if someone ends up upgrading their machine from a duron/celeron?
This UID is 7651 digits too high to subjectively infer IQ from.
I think they would be wiser to give away this crippled version on the hope that as India's economy develops they will capture some market with the full price Windows XP at later stage.
It's the same as having MSDE being a crippled SQLServer that limits the nubmer of threads it can run. Surely the CPU could handle more threads; but they cripple it so that more people buy the bigger one.
This Pentium4/Athlon decision makes perfect sense - if someone can afford the higher-end processor, they can afford the higher priced OS.
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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)
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.
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.
Imagine being the engineers tasked with writing the feature that disables the OS on "advanced" CPUs. What pride they must have in their work.
back in the old days of DEC and VAX/VMS, there were 2 models of VAX (780 and something else; forget the exact numbers). they were sold as systems that were 'fast' and 'faster'. what was the diff? every few machine instructions, there were NO-OP's inserted to slow things down on purpose! no other technical diffs. none!
but - if you bought the slower box and paid to upgrade it, it was 2 things - new skins (color change, I think; at the least it was a model # change in the labelling). they'd change out some/all of the backplane just to make it look (to the customer) like 'real stuff' was upgraded. but it was really just firmware on the cpu boards. ha!
maybe it was the VAX 750, now that I think about it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
... sometimes, doesn't it help to design Hardware and Software as a single 'experience'?
----
Not to be confused with Col.
I'll give you another example of this kind of thinking. About twenty-five years or so ago, my father was systems manager working on HP3000 systems (MPE, and all that) for a State of Illinois database installation. They had a ton of Hewlett-Packard disk subsystems there, and they decided to upgrade them ... I believe they ordered double their existing capacity on several of the units. Out comes the HP technician, and he just went down the line of disk drives, opened their rear panels, reached in and flicked a switch. Voila! Twice the storage. He showed Dad where the switch was, and said that they were welcome to switch the rest of them on the same way, but that HP wouldn't service them if they did.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Joe public, whether in india or america or afghanistan hasn't a cluebie the difference between XP starter edition and XP pro.
Trust me, they do. I know it's wrong to generalize, but here's a fundamental difference between a PC buyer in the US and a PC buyer in India. In the US, PCs are pretty much commodity items - people buy it the way they buy television sets, which means that many people just buy whatever the salesperson at Best Buy recommends to them.
In India, from my experience, people do a lot of research before spending a large part of their savings on a PC. Which means that the model is recommended by some geek friend (and in India there are plenty of computer geeks to be found all over the place) and trust me - no one will ever recommend XP starter edition.
The above statement is NOT intended to show how well informed the Indian buyer is compared to the American buyer. All I am trying to say is that the demographic in India that spends money on a PC is different from the one in the US.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Is there anyway to reverse the polarity of that darlington transistor to direct a tachyon pulse through the optocoupler?
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Marketing person #1: You know, we have a real problem with piracy in developing nations.
Marketing person #2: Why is that?
Marketing person #1: I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that our OS costs more then most families make in a month.
Marketing person #2: If they're poor, why do we even want them as customers?
Marketing person #1: Because they're probably not going to be poor forever. Plus, there's like a billion people in India alone.
Marketing person #2: A billion? Please, we're professionals here. Stop making up numbers like "billion" or "gazillion".
Marketing person #1: Sorry about that. But there *are* lots and lots of people there. I think most of them do tech support for Dell computers for like a dollar a day.
Marketing person #2: Wow. That is a lot. Well, we have to figure out a way to make money off them.
Marketing person #1: I just got a great idea! Let's strip out some of the functions of our operating system and sell it really, really cheap over there.
Marketing person #2: Awesome idea, dude. We can call it "Windows Jr."
Marketing person #1: I don't know about that name... it sounds too much like IBM's PC Jr. and nobody liked that product. I mean, wireless keyboards? What kind of crazy person would want that?
Marketing person #2: The PC jr? That was released like a gazillion years ago. What are you, 30 or something?
Marketing person #1: Shhhh!!! I'm 31, but the boss thinks I'm 23.
Marketing person #2: I'll keep my mouth shut if you buy us drinks after work, old man. How about we call it "Windows XP: The Revenge of the Sith". Wait, no, even better, "Windows XP: The Starter Edition"
Marketing person #1: That's way better! I would have never thought of that on my own. I guess it's because I'm so old.
Marketing person #2: I see a problem though. How can we strip down a product when 95% of our users never use the extras we bundle with Windows to begin with?
Marketing person #1: We could pull out Internet Expolorer
Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
Marketing person #2: That's rich old man. But seriously, how can we do it?
Marketing person #1: We can make sure it only runs on obsolete computers.
Marketing person #2: Of course!! Celerons, Durons... poor people use those, right?
Marketing person #1: Heck if I know. I'm not poor.
Marketing person #2: Then it's settled. We'll make a version of Windows XP, remove the "calculator" and "MS paint" applications, and sell it to poor people. We can even market it as an upgrade to Windows ME.
Marketing person #1: Didn't you get the memo? We want people to use ME. That was one of the clauses with Gates' contract with the devil.
Marketing person #2: Whatever. Let's go to the bar.
The Internet is generally stupid
Not without re-routing the EPS couplings on decks 9 through 12... oh, and manually re-aligning the capacitor junction grids in the starboard plasma conduits.
I can have it done in twelve hours.
[which, in Scotty-time, as you know, means 'done in six hours and re-affirmation of status as Miracle Worker']
One man's constant is another man's variable.