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MS Confirms Six Different Versions of Windows 7
darien writes "Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 will be offered in six different editions. In a seeming admission that the numerous versions of Vista were confusing to consumers, the company says that this time its marketing will focus on just two editions — 'Home Premium' and 'Professional.' But the reality is more complex, with different packages offering different subsets of the total range of Windows 7 features."
Starter Edition: A lightweight version for netbook computers, that will only be capable of running three applications concurrently.
Maybe someone can educate me here: are EeePCs and subnotebooks so underpowered that they can only run three programs at a time? It seems like a purely artificial limit repackaged as a "performance" feature.
Being a computer scientist means you tell people how computers should work, not that you know how they actually work.
What's wrong with this though? It's standard practice that when companies release a new version, they tell you how much better it is than the previous version. Just as how with Apple, for years PPC was great, but as soon as they switched to Intel, it was "Buy me, I'm Intel".
The only thing that's a problem is if a company ends up urging people to buy a previous version of their product, not a newer one.
I'm already considering this. I just got a new laptop with Vista Home Premium. In numerous places, Microsoft has touted the security of Vista, yet Home Premium doesn't even include the Local Security Policy MMC snap-in.
Without the basic tools to manage my own local security, it is impossible to set up my laptop securely. This wasn't removed because Home Premium is incompatible, it was done as an up-sell opportunity. I've searched Microsoft's website extensively and there is little mention of the LSP snap-in being missing from Home Premium.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
except that wonderful macos you tout comes with an additional expense of needing to buy the hardware along with it, which apple is the only source for, and thus also has revenue from.
so in reality, did it only cost $100?
or did you also pay them more because you purchased the hardware along with it, and they simply "hid" some of the cost of the OS in the cost of the hardware?
the only way you have a clue what apple OSX costs is the $129.99 version you can buy standalone, but again, you've already purchased their hardware, and thus potentially already paid more for the OS in reality.
if M$ used the Linux kernel for Windows [...] What sort of effect would that have on the OS?
It would have the effect of all existing Windows software not working anymore.
So basically indistinguishable from a regular new Windows release? ;)
Simple joking aside, I wonder how good a 'Mojave Experiment' using Linux+Wine would be in terms of fooling average Vista users... Based on reactions I've seen from simply showing people Ubuntu, I imagine pretty good.
The Apple transition to Intel was about logistics more than it was about performance. PPC chips can be more powerful than Intel chips. The problem for Apple was that they had to custom design their PPC chip as the generic ones were not made for general consumer uses like playing media but were specialized for computational applications like modeling. Apple like any manufacturing company would only order enough chips to meet their forecasts. The chip maker (Motorola, IBM) would only make enough to meet Apple's forecasts. Neither company wants to be stuck with excess inventory.
Unfortunately, if Apple's sales required more chips, their chip maker could not keep up. Being a custom chip for one customer, the chip maker could not dedicate many resources for changes in schedule because Apple, even with millions of chips a year, would never be one of their high volume customers. So Apple went with Intel because Intel could keep up with changes because Apple would not be a small customer ordering more of a custom chip. It would be a small customer ordering more of a stock chip. If they couldn't sell to Apple, they would sell the chip to Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.