Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)
f0dder:
As far as I can tell, the three app limit is Netbook only and I surmise it's to keep users from overloading the hardware - non?-Darwin (February 04, 2009, 05:48 PM)
--- End quote ---
Just an arbitrary limit to segment the market and sell more versions and confuse users, *SIGH*.
Lashiec:
It does not make sense at all. Starter is replaced by Home Basic in emerging markets (and no, it's not available in the rest of the world), and instead of killing Starter once and for all, they decide to bundle it with netbooks with such artificial limitations. People will flock to Linux in mass, or even worse for Microsoft, they'll keep XP, forcing them to continue support services for God knows how many time.
Meanwhile the nVidia ION chipset for Atom CPUs is capable of playing HD video without problems. And you say a netbook can't run more than three apps at a time? What a joke.
Now, despite this, no one is saying netbook makers will bundle the Starter edition with their systems, but Microsoft is supposedly targeting the market with this edition.
Carol Haynes:
The way I understand it is that for general usage they have Home Premium and Professional (as in XP).
They still have an Ultimate edition for anyone gullible/stupid enough to pay extra for not real gain and Enterprise licenses which businesses will be suspicious of until two weeks before the new version of Windows is released and then decide to pass on it (they will all still be limping on with Windows XP).
With Win 7 Starter and Home Basic they basically have two packages that show little or no commitment to solving real issues. If they really want to help emerging economies they could do so very simply by having very low prices on Home Premium and Professional versions in those markets. OK some copies would spill out into other markets but so what - giving Home Basic to poor countries is just a slap in the face and shows that MS really don't care about those markets - they are purely interested in maintaining hiked pricing structures in the rest of the world whilst trying to give the appearance of caring.
As for Win 7 Starter MS knows that they can't cram a quart into a pint pot and they have backed themselves into a corner. First, they can't keep extending XP licensing on netbooks without losing face even more than they have done already. Second, they only extended XP licensing to maintain some market in the netbook class because they knew Vista would kill any potential future market if they tried to get vendors to install it. Win 7 Starter is really a simple admission that Windows from version 7 onwards is going to replace XP but that it doesn't actually work properly.
I would guess two things will happen in the next year or two - Linux will be the OS of choice for manufacturers of Netbooks because they won't want to piss off customers by selling them a more expensive but crappier product and MS will come up with its own Netbook (either in house or under license) that runs a tweaked version of Windows 7. It will be about as successful as Zune (i.e. a total catastophe) and MS will spend 2 to 3 years telling everyone how successful it was before binning it and they reinstate a Windows XP type OS for OEM netbooks.
justice:
i hope you can install other versions of windows 7 yourself on netbooks. that arbritrary limitation just sucks tho, microsoft still doesn't get it. Windows 8 will be able to run 5 applications then, wow definately got to upgrade to that - best wait :P
40hz:
I would guess two things will happen in the next year or two - Linux will be the OS of choice for manufacturers of Netbooks because they won't want to piss off customers by selling them a more expensive but crappier product and MS will come up with its own Netbook (either in house or under license) that runs a tweaked version of Windows 7. It will be about as successful as Zune (i.e. a total catastophe) and MS will spend 2 to 3 years telling everyone how successful it was before binning it and they reinstate a Windows XP type OS for OEM netbooks.
-Carol Haynes (February 04, 2009, 08:13 PM)
--- End quote ---
I think you've hit it spot on.
And once they do, their biggest challenge will be to come up with yet another insipid name for it. That, and how to break it into six or seven inconsistently overlapping versions with at at least 12 different price tags.
Then there's the ad campaign:
Try Microsoft Windows MS-VistaXP-7-i686-Me for Workgroups
Yesterday's Technology at Tomorrow's Prices!
Hmmm...that probably wouldn't be the best ad slogan even if it were the most accurate.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version