Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Kills 3-App Limit For Windows 7 Starter Edition
Chabil Ha' writes "Heard the rumors that the much-maligned Windows 7 Starter Edition would be able to run more than three concurrent applications? Today, the Windows team made it official: 'Based on the feedback we've received from partners and customers asking us to enable a richer small notebook PC experience with Windows 7 Starter, we've decided to enable Windows 7 Starter customers the ability to run as many applications simultaneously as they would like, instead of being constricted to the 3 application limit that the previous Starter editions included. We believe these changes will make Windows 7 Starter an even more attractive option for customers who want a small notebook PC for very basic tasks, like browsing the web, checking email and personal productivity.' Small consolation, of course, if you want to watch a DVD natively, but I'm sure this won't stop the Slashdot crowd from enabling it."
Still not using it.
At least someone realized that it was an epicly bad idea before the thing was released into the real world.
* Disable the thing that shocks you with an electric shock every ten minutes (every thirty minutes if your OS validates as genuine)
* Remove the requirement to take, PCR, and compare a DNA sample at startup to allow WGA to know it's the same person
* Take that thing out of the EULA that allows MS to terminate your license or you at any time for any reason.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
That's like Apple saying the next iPhone will have 0-9 on the keypad like everyone else, instead of only 0-4 as previously planned.
I guess MS ran out of things to say for Windows 7 so they made things up
I don't get how it's "even more attractive"
MS: Ok so guys, you can only use 3 apps at a time on our new OS.
World: Well who would want to use that?
MS: Ok, we changed it back. Now it's even better than before!
Sigh.
After how badly Vista Basic failed I find it odd that MS would try again, and even more odd that they would make an even more basic version of it. (yes I know starter has been around sense xp, but they are trying to sell it worldwide now)
I predict that it will follow the same path as Vista Basic
A few companies will try selling it with cheep entry level systems for 400. No one will buy them, and those that do will complain about how much Win7 sucks. In the end the companies will be forced to put home premium in order to sell them.
If starter was free to download and basic was less then $30 (retail) I could see some value in them for home builders and people who want to upgrade and want a low cost and legit version of 7
Just when you thought Mr C Sense had been a casualty of the Redmond lay-off spree it turns out he was just hiding under a desk all along, not wanting to draw too much attention to himself.
Microsoft's line about netbooks being only suited for rudimentary computing tasks is full of shit.
I'm typing this on a eeepc: 1.6GHz Atom cpu, 2GB ram, blah blah blah. Microsoft (and others) may have this attitude that netbooks are only suitable for checking email, updating Facebook status, and the like ... and that you need a "real computer" for "real computing". That's absurd.
Yes, they're not the most powerful computers around. But they're about as powerful as desktops of five years ago. I run dozens of Firefox tabs, Skype, OpenOffice, GIMP, Picasa, Pidgin, my camera's timelapse software (Olympus Studio), and other stuff, often at the same time ... with no problems at all, and with plenty of CPU to spare. Of course I can do this -- people were loading old desktops this hard and nobody complained that they weren't "suitable for serious computing". If I wanted to run apache and serve webpages on this machine I certainly could -- I did it on my old crappy desktop when I was an undergrad, after all!
Saying that a netbook isn't a real computer is like saying a Toyota Yaris isn't a real car just because it only has a 100 hp engine. Sure, if you want to tow things you need something different -- just like if you want to play Crysis you need a desktop (replacement), and if you want to do lattice quantum chromodynamics you need a supercomputer.
A netbook is a small, full-featured computer that can make use of all of the flexibility of a full-featured operating system.
GENIUS
Announce that your are removing restrictions from your software to make it more attractive, but you purposely created these restrictions to start with.
Profit!
We believe these changes will make Windows 7 Starter an even more attractive option for customers who want a small notebook PC for very basic tasks, like browsing the web, checking email and personal productivity.' Small consolation, of course, if you want to watch a DVD natively
Wow. Microsoft basically took a market where Linux and Apple excel in (customers who just want to do basic tasks with minimal hassle) and crippled the features that make Windows even slightly attractive in that arena. Now they un-crippled one of those features. That's not "even more attractive"; That's "somewhat less ridiculous".
I have a new bullshit meter. It measures in units of "picosofts".
http://outcampaign.org/
Marketing has a very, very short memory. Not too long ago people where word-processing, spread-sheeting, data-basing, developing software and even Windows, heck, even using AutoCAD on a Pentium II. Or a 486 if you go farther back a bit more.
shill much?
Time to stop posting so many helpful tips.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I am becoming tired of paying $300 for Windows. They should reevaluate this too and come up with more reasonable price plan.
This seems more like they were marketing it as going to be limited and people were turned off by that but it kept the product in the public eye. Waited for a bit. Now they're marketing it as without the limit as to improve the perception of the product, leading to more people wanting it.
From what I heard the early RC was light, stable etc but has recently taken on a rather hefty meal or ten making it as bloated as Vista was. It seems that the initial "light and snappy" version was only designed to get people to have a favorable impression, a bit like bribing the bloggers for favorable reviews. If this is true then Windows 7 is just Vista with a make over as many predicted all along.
From what I hear Windows 7 has as much chance of running on a netbook as Vista does, it'll be interesting how they take the knife to it to make it work as they are desperate to deny customers the choice of XP anywhere, while also denying Linux any of the market. All the while convince people to cough up a significant percentage of the netbook price for Windows. It's a fine balance and one that's gonna be hilarious to watch.
what are they gonna do about the 3-app limit on this Vista machine I'm using at work?
Microsoft took out the limitation of Windows 2009 server of running more than 10 simultaneous tasks, if your computer is a 486.
I swear I read this like a month ago on /. but I guess it's just slashdot being slashdot. Anyway... I love Windows 7... It's my fav OS yet! There are a few kinks in it still but you won't notice them unless you are trying to massacre your machine and see what it can really do. What is crazier is that it operates so much better than XP and has a higher compatibility level than XP (also has XP mode for the adventurers)
It works so well (and the benchmarks show it) that we replaced XP Corporate 64bit at work with Windows 7. After many updates (including Adobe's updates) it never crashed once. I want to applaud Microsoft for finally doing something right. Aside with practically copying OSX with almost everything, they did a good job.
Now if only they could make only 3 Windows7 SKU's >: (
"It's not as good as Linux, but it may be as good as their own product from eight years ago."
Yeah, that's a real effective shill.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
It does not include:
Personalization features for changing desktop backgrounds, window colors, or sound schemes.
There, saved 512MB of RAM usage!
You can sit by the pool and play Crysis or use Photoshop or Autocad on your netbook with wireless, even on Linux. You just RDP to the machine that's doing the heavy lifting. I would recommend external video and I/O for the fine work, but for getting some quality WoW time while you're making sure the kids don't drown the basic kit should be OK.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
.
But what about the technical aspect of this? Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in its attempt to create a "marketing buzz" for Windows 7. Was Vista really that bad that Microsoft has to attempt to manipulate the press and websites to this extent in order to give the illusion that Windows 7 is better?
If Windows Vista was so bad, do you really expect Windows 7 (a.k.a. Windows Vista 1.2) to be that much better? Or is the marketing effort the actual improvement here?
Does the Emperor really have clothes this time?
How can you really believe that? Do you really think that Microsoft released a great version that everyone liked, just to trick people before giving them a shittier version?? What possible motivation could they have to do that?
I swear, the die-hard MS haters make that company out to be some sort of cartoon villain.
For the record, my 6 year old laptop runs the latest version of W7 just fine. I doubt I'll put it on my desktop any time soon, but if/when my employer rolls it out, I won't mind.
Geez, this Eee PC 701 with 600 MHz processor is my main machine. I use it for everything.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"How can you really believe that? Do you really think that Microsoft released a great version that everyone liked, just to trick people before giving them a shittier version?? What possible motivation could they have to do that?"
I don't know, but it's not unprecedented. They did EXACTLY this with Windows 95 -- as much as the Windows lovers reminisce, Windows 95 was buggy, bloated (for the time) and slow. The "Windows 4.0" prereleases? They had basically the same requirements as WIndows 3.1... it mysteriously bloated up in the final months before release.
Note, I'm not going to claim anything of the sort for Win7, but I am confused -- earlier reviews made it out like WIn7 was far faster than Vista, while the more recent ones peg it at like a 5-10% speedup. Something's up...
In an unrelated note,
"Small consolation, of course, if you want to watch a DVD natively, but I'm sure this won't stop the Slashdot crowd from enabling it."
The Slashdot crowd doesn't use Windows, so they have no reason to enable DVD playback on a crippled version of it.
It is not a large speedup because Vista isn't all that slow compared to XP. Everyone is benchmarking it against a Vista that has been worked on to address its early problems.
It is not a large speedup because Vista isn't all that slow compared to XP.
Yes, yes it is. Lets see, I had a Intel Cellron M at 1.5 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM laptop with XP pre installed on it. I also had a Pentium Dual Core 1.6 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM with Vista basic pre installed on that laptop. Which one had the higher specs? The Vista laptop had faster RAM, a faster CPU, better integrated graphics, and should have ran Vista perfectly. However it failed miserably, lockups every few seconds, even checking e-mail or browsing the internet seemed to take forever, on the other hand the XP laptop ran quickly with no slowdowns with more programs running in the background (such as IMs, etc.) while the Vista laptop had only the base Windows system with all OEM bloatware stripped out running only IE and Windows Mail. Yes, theres a huge difference between XP and Vista speedwise.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I especially like the part about not supporting XP mode... so it can't run XP apps... which are the only apps spec'd to run on it. Granted, XP mode is a VM hack that really can't run on it, but if you're not sticking with Windows for compatability on your netbook, wtf are you sticking with Windows for? Honestly, the only remaining compatibility issues on Linux are precisely the things Microsoft has banned from starter.
Maybe M$ realized that the three program count would be reached to easily without (!) the user intervention: "Sorry, three viruses are already running, application limit reached. We are sorry for the inconvenience this cased." ;-)
You don't have enough RAM, plain and simple. Instead of $5 worth, you should go for $20 worth.
Can you really see Windows 7 running more than 1 app in 1 GB anyway?
No, I can't see it either.
...laura
The Starter Edition will be as visible in North American retail as CP/M.
There is no intelligible reason to offer the product when XP has driven the Linux netbook off the shelves.
You say you want to play a DVD on your Win 7 netbook?
You will be shopping for an external USB drive. It will ship with a Windows player. Iomega Super DVD Writer [Technical Specifications] $30
Life goes on.
Pentium Dual Core? 512MB RAM? Let me guess, this is an early 2007 laptop we're talking about?
Let me remind you of what the post you replied to said:
The bolded part is referring to Vista Service Pack 1 or newer, not the original release.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Troll come on, nothing about that post makes a troll post. I'm not the biggest MS fan, in fact I generally hate MS in favor of Linux so when I can say that Windows 7 made some good choices then I must have a reason.
If you disable all graphical enhancements, turn off user access control and disable driver signing, it's a good OS and being a Linux user I'm not afraid to say it.
Windows 7 is a good OS, grow up don't give me a Troll rating for a post that has nothing Trollful about it!
NO an OS should run no matter how much Ram is in the computer, if I have 16 MB of Ram there are Unix and Linux distro's I can still run! If the OS can't handle the limitation then it's not our fault it's the developers who don't know how to work with such a limitation.
Are you retarded, trolling, or just clueless?
Try putting XP and Vista both on modern, mid-range hardware. Say a C2D or C2Q with 2-4GB RAM. I guarantee you that Vista will run circles around XP.
What most people on Slashdot apparently don't realise is that XP and Vista are two different animals. XP will run fine on a machine with a small amount of memory, but guess what? It doesn't scale. Put a ton of memory into an XP box and you'll still see generally the same performance from the OS (though you may see performance improvements in programs that will use that memory). Vista won't do well with a small amount of memory, but give it 2 or 4GB and you'll see an overall performance increase that far surpasses anything that XP could do with the same amount.
This isn't even getting into Vista's DWM which offloads the UI from the CPU to the GPU, providing yet better performance. A simple test. Open up a CPU monitor in XP and open up a few explorer windows. Grab one of those windows and move it around the screen. Watch as your CPU spikes to 100% just by moving a simple window and watch how that window leaves ugly trails and blank areas in the underlying windows before it is able to redraw. Now do the same with Vista and watch how your CPU is barely touched and how all UI elements remain clean and fully drawn.
I have an XP x64 and Vista x64 dual boot setup on my PC (C2D 2.26GHz, 4GB RAM, Geforce 9600 GT). Vista is certainly faster than XP in every aspect of the OS. Running applications or games that are CPU dependant the two offer almost exactly equal performance.
Not too long ago people where word-processing, spread-sheeting, data-basing, developing software and even Windows, heck, even using AutoCAD on a Pentium II. Or a 486 if you go farther back a bit more.
Not too long ago, I remember having to wait 15-20 minutes to TeX up my research papers, only to find out that I missed a curly brace somewhere.
Not too long ago, my spreadsheet couldn't import data from a MySQL database halfway around the world through the internet.
Not too long ago, the database that I run on that other computer would need a refrigerator-sized mainframe.
Not too long ago, developing software meant that it was faster to manually read for syntax errors than to just compile and have the IDE flag the errors. On a project 1/20th the size, at least half of which was implementing things that are now in libraries. Actually, as I recall, I didn't have an IDE, just a dumb terminal. The debugger was crap to -- it pales in comparison to what I have today.
Never used CAD software, but I bet dollars to donuts that in the 12 years since the Pentium II, it's also come a damned long way. And that's the problem with these comparisons -- people may have been doing the same tasks but they were still doing much much less than we casually do today. In many ways, we the usefulness of the tasks themselves expands to fill the available power -- our programs and environments get better and better.
If 10 years ago you would have told me that I'd be running a miniature search engine on my computer, crawling and indexing my filesystems to save me the trouble of finding files, I'd say you were nuts. Today, I can't remember how I lived without Google Desktop: ctrl ctrl + filename and the results are there. To say that somehow this is comparable to my computer 10 years ago because they both perform the same basic function -- allowing access to saved files -- is disingenuous. They are the same in the way that a steak knife and a chainsaw are the same. That all goes for the modern web, AJAX and all, versus the web that I browsed back in the dark old days. Same for programming, same for just about everything I can think of.
Computers do more than they did. This is a GOOD THING. Stop convincing yourself that somehow what they do now is good enough for the future. I hope it's not, and I'm working to make sure that it's not by pursuing more ways that my computer can do more for me.
And Vista 7 isn't out yet. The next generation of Atoms are in the pipe and they'll be equivalent or better and they'll hit that price when V7 is released.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A 1.6Ghz Atom is not fast enough for my Grandmother.
Seriously, not kidding.
She loves to play games on Pogo.com. As Adobe keeps updating Flash she has to keep getting new computers...
Not to mention just sites like /. bog down my Core2 Duo, (whatever version of Slashcode is live right now isn't too horrible, but some weeks performance is obscene. Nevermind that in IE(6/7/8) there is not much hope of using /. at all.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
if Microsoft really *was* the Evil Empire?
Instead of being concerned that your downloading habits might result in loss of service or civil action - people you know just disappear.
"Microsoft-style execution" becomes a household word.
Wouldn't it just be more exciting!
instead of just a slightly more corrupt, slightly more successful version of the mutual ass-kissers of the Old Boys Club.
Still - at least MS accomplished something significant.
Morality aside - the event of a group of bean counters and a group of old school geeks joining forces to utterly dominate an industry is impressive.
Microsoft is an excellent marketing organization.
1999 called, and they don't want their opinion back because it didn't work out well for them.
Seriously, have you seen their marketing in the last decade?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Do you really think that Microsoft released a great version that everyone liked, just to trick people before giving them a shittier version??"
Not at all, I believe they put out a hollowed out RC version without all the bloatware to try and convince people that it was a different beast than Vista and they should hold out for it rather than acting on an impulse to switch away from Windows. I believe they knew it'd never be released as it was but wanted people to think it would be and not notice the added bloat.
Microsoft are no cartoon villan, they are incompetent in design but very professional in PR / lobbying / bullying. Cartoon villans always get stopped by the hero, there is no hero in this story and Microsoft seem to be getting away with most of their crimes, so no they are not a cartoon villan.
From everything I hear about it I hope Microsoft stay on track with Windows 7, dropping the 3 app limit on the Starter Edition shows that the occasional outbreak of common sense does happen at Redmond although not very often. I have my doubts on how much more common sense will bleed into the project before it's unleashed on the public. Vista's failure has made them nervous about ensuring Windows 7 isn't seen as DOA. If it really is Vista with a make over, how many former Windows customers will feel conned? If I was waiting loyally with XP for the new Windows because I didn't want Vista, only to shell out a lot of cash and find I'd bought Vista with a make over I would.
I do wonder just how many of their partners told them it was doomed before they relented. More to the point, I wonder how many didn't complain and were happy to go along with it.
Get the hell out of Starbucks already!
You know, for posters on a technology site, there are a lot of people here who have no idea what the hell they are talking about when it comes to technology. I'll type this slowly so people can keep up:
WINDOWS 7 DOES NOT NEED XP MODE TO RUN XP APPS!
Windows 7, just like Vista, has native compatibility for XP apps. Win32 binaries execute just fine. It does not use a new API, etc. You can take just about any program and install it on Windows 7 and it'll work out of box. That even includes 64-bit Windows 7. It has the same thing that 64-bit Vista and XP do, called Windows on Windows 32. It allows for 32-bit apps to run in a 64-bit OS with basically no speed difference.
Here's a brief list of apps I've personally tested and found to work in Windows 7 64-bit RC1. This is by no means complete, just ones I've tested myself that I remember:
Firefox 3, Thunderbird 2, Office 2003, Office 2007, SSH Secure Shell 3.2.9, FreeSSHd, Textpad 5.2.0, Winamp 5.55, Acrobat 9.0, Cadence SPB 16.02, WMWare 6.5, Visual Studio 2008, WinMIPS64, Labview 8, Steam, Impulse, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Sony Vegas 8, Sony Sound Forge 9, Adobe Audition 3.
There's plenty more, this is just what I remember off the top of my head in a small sampling of different areas (consumer, programming engineering, audio production, video production, networking, etc).
Almost all apps will run fine in Windows 7 as is. Thus, most copies of Windows 7 do not have XP mode available, and even those that do don't ship with it, you have to download it.
So, what's it for then? Well three major classes of things you might encounter:
1) Apps with a 16-bit component, or entirely 16-bit. While 32-bit Windows 7 can run 16-bit apps with WOW16, 64-bit Windows can't. So, if you need to run a 16-bit app, XP mode will do that for you since it is a 32-bit XP VM.
2) Apps that interface with hardware that doesn't have Windows 7 drivers. An app that uses a dongle might be an example. If the manufacturer won't release a driver that works with 7, then you are out of luck. However, with XP mode, you install the driver in XP (is passes through USB devices) and you can use it.
3) Apps that install a kernel mode driver that is incompatible with 7. Again a lot of this will be 64-bit stuff since while 32-bit apps run fine in 64-bit Windows, all kernel mode code must be 64-bit. Again you might encounter this with old copy protection since that kind of stuff often like to use kernel drivers.
Now as should be pretty evident, that is really rare shit. This isn't something most people will have a problem with. However, some businesses do, and thus MS is offering them a solution. They are saying "If you have an old app that just won't work in 7 and you can't get it updated, just download a free XP VM from us, and run it in that."
That's all. Most Windows apps run JUST FINE with no update at all. Even those that do need to be updated, it is an update, not a complete rewrite. The fundamental APIs are still the same. You aren't redoing the whole thing from scratch for new architecture.
So please, stop with the FUD. Get your information correct.
P.S. Not including DVD playback is highly unsurprising because it isn't free. MPEG-2 and CSS both require licenses to include in software. It is not surprising MS isn't going to pay for those licenses on low cost software.
I was just going to suggest that Linux offer gelded operating systems for off the shelf netbooks, but allow the users to "upgrade" to the Stallion edition. Lots of money there, right?
Oh shit. The Stallion editions are free too........
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There are several things going on here. The first and worst is that of course they think they can put over their proposition by sheer force. As one of them once told me, "Vendors are coin operated". You can only get so far with that before you're being investigated.
Then there's advertising companies. Advertising companies recruit and train the most creative, intelligent and resourceful people they can find to fulfill their mission: to sell advertising. They have incredible surveys and statistics and magical advertising quadrants that tell you that the right thing to do is pay them more money, and they've got the numbers to prove it. That's right: they spend 90% of their time, intelligence and effort not to sell their customer's products, but to sell theirs. I have a story that goes with this. It's stolen, but I've filed the serial numbers off:
One day in northern Arizona I stopped at a one-pump gas station for a soda. As I walked to the lonely single cooler in the back, I passed by row upon row of salt. There was the picnic shaker, the kitchen cylinder we all know. There was rock salt, road salt, salt lick and salt brick. There was sea salt from 9 of the seven seas. There was powdered salt, granular salt, bacon salt and several kinds of cheese salt. I was amazed. I dragged my soda up to the counter, and said to the wizened old man sitting there, "man, you've got a lot of salt.".
"That's nothin'" he says. Look up here. He pulls down the hatch to the attic an it's full of bags and bushels and bins of salt. "And look down here" he says, pulling up a hatch to the basement, where it's chock full of barrels and bags and piles of salt.
"You must sell a lot of salt" I said.
"That's the funny thing" he tells me, "I don't hardly sell no salt at all. But that salt salesman that comes through here once a month, he sure does sell a good bit of the stuff."
Historically Microsoft's market dominance hasn't come from advertising. They got it by other means I'll leave you to investigate. You can start by checking out the Halloween Documents.
The answer to the third piece of this puzzle has to do with a discussion I was having yesterday with a friend of mine. He was frustrated with the constant reorganization of the company (not Microsoft) that he works for. After discussing it for a while, I came out with the idea that the permanent reorganization process was by design. With constant shuffling you might get the perfect mix of creative individuals unsupervised by a policy wonk long enough to have that perfect summer - the year where everything heterodynes into the magical project that delivers unexpected miraculous results. But most of the time you get a bunch of creative people frustrated by people who've risen to influence through the mastery of process. At the end we agreed (I think - I don't want to speak for my friend) that the churning was a necessary evil because left static the process geeks would build their empires and drive out the creative folk and the magic could not happen. Which would of course make the churning a brilliant piece of social engineering. Because Microsoft doesn't employ this bit of social engineering, once the founders took off the process geeks took over - with predictable results. Conservative and uncreative, these process geeks are the very target market for the advertising sharks I led with. Unfortunately for them, this disease is inevitably fatal.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not at all, I believe they put out a hollowed out RC version without all the bloatware to try and convince people that it was a different beast than Vista and they should hold out for it rather than acting on an impulse to switch away from Windows. I believe they knew it'd never be released as it was but wanted people to think it would be and not notice the added bloat.
Don't you realize how nonsensical this is? Let's break it down in traditional Slashdot style:
1) MS knows people don't want bloat
2) MS makes a version without bloat, so that people will think the OS is good
3) People think the OS is good without the bloat, and want to buy it
4) MS adds back in the bloat at the last moment!
5) ???
6) Profit!
Seriously... why, upon reaching step 3, would they not just release it as is? They are not villains or sociopaths. They're just greedy. And in this case their greed would drive them to release the product that people want to pay money for.
Not as though this is something up for debate. I have W7 on my laptop in the other room. It runs fine. It's only using ~8 gigs of harddrive space, and that's including all the programs I've installed. For comparison, the "Windows" directory of my rarely used Vista install is about double that at 15 gigs. Seems like they must have cut some serious cruft.
And, lest I come across as advocating for this (or any) OS, let me state that the best I can say about W7 is that, if required to do so, I'd be okay with using it. I'm just tired of this childish notion that Microsoft is some sort of den of evil, when it's really just another business.
There, I said it.
Yes, but can Windows Starter Edition remain interactive while formatting a floppy?
Its not the processing power, but the size. Nobody is going to want to do serious photo editing/viewing, serious development, or serious porn viewing on a 10" screen. There's a reason large monitors were invented.
One of my friends recently bought a Samsung NC-10 with XP on it. We upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM instead of 1 GB. She is very happy that she can do more with it than with her old computer. Finally we can video chat using Skype without constant crashes and troubles. She runs OpenOffice on it, and all the Mozilla stuff with no problems. She even plays adventure games on it, thanks to the fact that it runs XP instead of Linux. For its small size it's a powerful computer.
-- Cheers!
There's also a VGA port on the netbook.
Honestly, I know very little of computer hardware design even though I study for a bachelor's degree in CS (specializing in software engineering). I think we can safely assume that 95% or more of the population doesn't know anything about the things you mentioned.
I'm writing this on a 4 year old Pentium M, 1.5 GHz, 1.5 GB, 80 GB disk.
No reason to upgrade.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Windows 7 betas have been greeted with remarkable positive press. "Of course," says Ballmer, "the betas preview the 'champagne and hookers' edition, which would be way too much for netbooks and explode users' brains. Imagine thinking those little things are computers! So we're releasing what we call Windows 7 Dumbass Edition(tm). It lets you log in and look at the shiny. Even Spider Solitaire has the ribbon toolbar! And you can buy an upgrade to the version that runs programs! It lets you do that!"
Dumbass Edition(tm) comes with pre-installed viruses to make the computer part of the Storm, Conficker and FBI botnets. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
word-processing, spread-sheeting, data-basing, developing software and even Windows, heck, even using AutoCAD on a Pentium II
But you definitely couldn't do with those even remotely to what you can do with the latest versions today. You could play Doom but you couldn't even consider run something like The Sims 3. You could edit documents, but you couldn't share them, organize them, etc. You could transfer pictures from your 640KB digital camera to your 200 MB hard disk, but you couldn't transfer pictures from your 16GB camera to your 1TB hard disk. There's a huge difference in the quality of the features you had available on a 486 and the features you have now on a P4 at 3GHz.
I believe you're missing some obvious things and the sad thing is, you're modded Insightful!
Typing this on an Advent 4211 (rebranded MSI Wind) running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix. I can type with ten fingers on it and the screen is just large enough. Love this thing.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
That's one more app than XP cand handle on this crapbox PC!
I guess that is an important point. Not the OS naked is the problem but the OS + x, and I mean the drivers, the toolbars, the malware and the extra syncro tools for your handheld, your scanner, your camera, your backup disc and of course the Virus scanner, all of them essential applicaitions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
PC World in the UK have recently been running some ads for some Dell laptops (IIRC) with Core Duo processors - the strapline goes something like "run multiple programs with the Intel Core Duo"... blah blah. My non-techie wife couldn't get over this - saying she's never seen a computer where you cannot run multiple programs.
I have W7 on my laptop in the other room. It runs fine. It's only using ~8 gigs of harddrive space [incl. Program Files]
I wonder how well that would work on my ASUS laptop sold in 2008 that has only 4 GB of SSD space. Would I have to buy a 16 GB SDHC card, install Windows 7 to that, and leave it in the SD slot all the time?
Not too long ago, I remember having to wait 15-20 minutes to TeX up my research papers, only to find out that I missed a curly brace somewhere.
If you are doing research papers for living you will appreciate the break sometimes..
Not too long ago, my spreadsheet couldn't import data from a MySQL database halfway around the world through the internet.
That would be a software problem.
Not too long ago, the database that I run on that other computer would need a refrigerator-sized mainframe.
This is a fair point. However, thanks to the increasing amount of data the machine stays about the same size.
CAD software, but I bet dollars to donuts that in the 12 years since the Pentium II, it's also come a damned long way
Some 'old school' desingners still use their cad packages as drawing boards. This mode of usage not changed much since the beginning of the 80's workgroup serving vector based cad workstations. What modern cad packages bring to the table are analysis functions and the modular desing. I'd bet these packages are using most of their processor time running the UI, nevertheless.
What are you saying? Vista and Win7 aren't good OS because they can't run on netbook? Heretic! Clearly it's the netbook fault.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/index.html
http://www.tinysofa.org/
http://www.slackware.org
http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.freebsd.org
http://www.openbsd.org
So this shows that maybe Windows isn't such a great OS as it's made out to be, well I'll agree Windows 7 isn't bad, Windows still needs a lot of work to come out a play in the real OS arena with the big boys of the *Nix community.
If 10 years ago you would have told me that I'd be running a miniature search engine on my computer, crawling and indexing my filesystems to save me the trouble of finding files, I'd say you were nuts.
LOL. Ten years ago I was running a search engine on my desktop. Microsoft's content indexing server was introduced in the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack in 1998 and it's a standard part of Windows now. Bizarrely, it didn't come with a search UI but it only took a couple of hours to knock up a web page to interface with it. And I've been using it to index my machines ever since. Google didn't invent search.
It's mighty big of MS to allow their customers to do what every other OS ever invented lets them do.
I've been hearing that the normal version of Win7 works absolutely fine on a netbook. Better than XP does as far as GUI-responsiveness goes, even with 1GB of RAM.
I haven't bothered trying it for myself yet though.
Nothing is faster then XP. But if you have any benchmark proving otherwise please link it.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Anecdotal, I have no evidence at all. Note that I said responsiveness though, it could 'feel' faster while actually being slower.
Can you spot the difference between Skeletor and Ballmer?
Give up? The difference lies in the control over minions. Skeletor uses telepathy and Ballmer throws chairs (or does a fruity dance with chanting).
Anybody want a peanut?
Though it matters how properly written is the software that you're using. Heck, I'm writing this on Athlon XP 1700+, just with a little more RAM than you would expect from a machine with such CPU.
In comparison with C2D/etc. of typical user that's riddled with bloatware - it flies. And does more too.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Wow being able to run more than 3 apps at once on windows! Who would have ever thought windows would be able to accomplish this.
too.
The dynamic I see is the more people need something and the more general utility is is, the more likely it's worth doing open development on it.
Essentially, there are enough people itching so as to make scratching worth it.
Everybody needs an OS. More and more people are realizing the value of an open one that does not come with artificial barriers to just computing or exercising their rights. Ubuntu + Open Office + various other open applications is a kick ass combination that will empower people to do lots of stuff on their terms. Having another binary only OS is actually a net loss right now.
Move up the food chain and the dynamics change.
Not everybody needs MAYA, Video Editing applications, CAD, CAE, PLM, etc...
Those things are very complex and the scratch motivation doesn't exist to the same degree. There are also real barriers to entry that equate to real value, not easily captured open code style. CAD applications, for example, use a geometry kernel that has tens of thousands of man hours invested in them. (Parasolid, for example) All of those geometry cases have been debugged over 20 years. That's a very valuable piece of software that's not going to see an open code release, if it ever sees one.
There are places for expensive closed software and I welcome them to the market place. In fact, I sell some of them, support, train and consult. Good money to be had. All worth it too. The same is not true on the lower levels and that's the problem with limited Windows editions.
The only reason Microsoft continues to command a high margin is due to their destructive business practices that have maintained a high degree of lock in for their stack. That's why Win 7 will include the mother of all kludges to keep that ball rolling. There are legit reasons to pay for a high end version of their OS and applications. There really isn't as much of a reason to pay for the lower end offerings.
For most people, an open code system will work just fine and they know it. If open code gets some critical mass, application developers will target it, and it's game over. That's why they bagged on the limitations.
BTW: When I sell that expensive software, and where it's possible to sell it on an open computer, it's like having a nice 20 percent discount on the price. Always a nice deal, and these days more and more people are seeing that and going open. CAD on Linux is now possible. It wasn't a few years ago, for example.
They are better off with the artificial hardware limitation than they are with software coded ones that just make more hassle for people. Hassle is one of those things that empowers open systems to get market share. They don't want that.
The lower end of Windows is essentally low value these days. Sure, it costs more to add the higher end features. But, it also costs more to deal with fragmented feature sets and such. Charge too much for a basic OS capability set, and people will just go Linux or Mac. Limit it too much and they will do the same.
For Microsoft it's all about not playing that game, thus the hardware deal.
Blogging because I can...
Stores don't even sell memory modules with capacity that low any more. The smallest I see is 128MB for $15, but you can buy 1GB for $10. Buying more memory costs less than buying less. This makes your entire argument invalid and stupid.
Thats not the point - Vista could run even faster, but it's a resource hog.
I do use AutoCAD software, and the "improvements" (since 2000) are split about 50/50 between things that enhance my productivity and things that hinder it. Yet the recent versions are a pain to run on equipment that is even 2 years old. Older versions fly on even 4-year old computers, and are therefore actually more productive; unfortunately, you lose compatibility with new file versions. Since AutoCAD has a habit of not letting you save more than a couple of versions back, that incompatibility is a deal breaker.
Let stupid people buy their crippled Windows 7 OS in peace.
If they lack the inclination to try an open source alternative that is easier to use, more reliable, and free, then that's their loss.
As for Windows...
There are just too many versions of Windows to comprehend, for the average person.
Why can there be a single version that you can just install the relevant desktop/server packages for, like you can with most Linux distributions?
Windows 7 must be reduced to a single uncrippled version, if it is to compete with other alternatives.
Why does it cost so much for a version of Windows that hasn't, from a user perspective, actually improved user productivity since NT4? The price of Vista was from cloud cuckoo land, and demonstrated a fierce contempt from Microsoft towards its customers.
I have the greatest respect for Microsoft's kernel engineers (Cutler was probably one of the best OS architects around), but NT has been polluted with a toxic layer of crap, that floats on top, like a gigantic, rancid, rotting faecal mass, in a filthy public toilet.
Why would anyone choose to use Windows? (or, for that matter, any OS that locks you in to expensive & proprietary technology)
Vendor lock-in is the most expensive mistake for any IT purchaser. Again, and again, throughout my career, I have watched various incompetent halfwits being milked like cattle in the morning. Anything that I am responsible for purchasing, requires that the vendor be able to demonstrate a total absence of any vendor lock-in (ie. a migration path to an alternate vendor). This makes negotiating discounts far easier, come contract renewal time.
If you are in charge of an IT department, and are not asking the question, 'Why should I pay for Windows, in this particular instance', then you are incompetent. Yes, there are places where it does make sense to use Windows, but you SHOULD be asking that question for every purchase.
Benchmarks don't always represent the real world feel of a computer's speed.
even using AutoCAD on a Pentium II
Actually, I used AutoCAD on a 386 in the early 1990s. It ran snappily enough on SCO unix with a few MB of RAM (that was in the before time, before the hideous emergence of tSCOg).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
For the record, my 6 year old laptop runs the latest version of W7 just fine. I doubt I'll put it on my desktop any time soon
For the record, my 6-year-old laptop runs Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) just fine. It has been running Ubuntu since 4.10 (Warty Warthog). Oh, we unhesitatingly updated both of our desktops also to the latest Ubuntu release. One of the desktops is a 6-year-old Dell, the other was obtained from the local shop a few months ago - we traded the Vista preload for an extra 1TB disk when buying.
Microsoft tax = 7200rpm 1TB disk (Western Digital)
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Since more or less you have to break the law to get DVD playback on Linux. It is stupid, but that's how it goes. There aren't any players with legit MPEG-2 and CSS licenses for Linux that I'm aware of. Thus when you get one it is unlicensed. Now MPEG-LA doesn't really give a shit about this over all, but if something like an OS distro started including it by default, they might fire up the lawyers.
Autocad has been falling behind the competition for a while.
SolidWorks and such is the way to go (at least for machine and optical part designers).
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
I feel privileged to be allowed to run more than three applications.
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
How did you manage that? I downloaded win7 RC1, and it won't install unless it has 15 gigs of disk space. I had to break my 10 gig limit for an OS partition with it :(
Just another marketing trick from Microsoft. Let's announce something shocking, then publish another news telling it was scrapped. Result: press and websites talks two times about the next Microsoft product to announce nothing.
"Users will be able to unlock upgraded editions of Windows 7 without original media or additional software as everything they need in order to upgrade will be on their PC already." - so if it is all there why lock it in the first place? creating different versions is always confusing. The people in the shop want us to spend our money and recommend the most expensive to my gran so the option of a restricted OS is stupid - why bother?
Wow, way to totally ignore the GP's argument.
The hardware maximums for Win 7 Starter Edition are categorically insane. They make the 3 app limit moot because such a computer would have trouble running more than two apps at the same time anyway. They're just shooting themselves in the foot here. The more restrictive they make Win7SE, the more motivation they give manufacturers to switch to LINUX.