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.
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.
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.
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.
Time to stop posting so many helpful tips.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Who says it failed? Offering a cheaper version of Windows probably staves off defections to Free operating systems, even if no one actually buys it.
Microsoft is an excellent marketing organization. Most people probably believe that a cheaper OS costs less because less effort was put into producing it. It doesn't matter that, in fact, *more* effort must put into producing crippled versions of Windows. The average consumer equates cheap Windows with being less functional, and so by extension free software must be completely unusable.
It's all a very well-designed marketing scheme, and not a failure at all.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
"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
.
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.
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.
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.