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.
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.
Linux wins another round. First, Linux in developing countries forced MS to break their "one price around the world" policy, creating the Starter Edition, then Linux on netbooks made MS extend XP and lower the price (further damaging Vista's sales), and now Linux on netbooks has forced MS to abandon its attempted segmentation of the market. Even without a large install base, Linux continues to be a force in the market.
Put identity in the browser.
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.