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Windows 7 Starter Edition — 3 Apps Only
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Apr 21, 2009 09:55 AM
from the because-they-can dept.
from the because-they-can dept.
CrustyFace writes "Cybernit reports that the Starter Edition version of Windows 7 will only allow the user to run 3 applications at once. Targeted at notebooks, this doesn't seem like such a bad limitation, however it is a bold move from Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see how the operating system sells."
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Windows 7 To Come In Multiple Versions 821 comments
Crazy Taco writes "Tom's Hardware reports on newly discovered screenshots that reveal Microsoft is planning to release their newest version of Windows in multiple confusing versions ... again. The information comes from the latest version of the Windows 7 beta, build 7025 (the public beta is build 7000), and shows a screen during installation that asks the user which version of the OS he or she would like to install. Who's up for guessing what the difference is between Windows 7 'Starter' and Windows 7 'Home Basic?'"
[+]
Average User Only Runs 2 Apps, So Microsoft Will Charge For More 842 comments
Barence writes "Microsoft's decision to limit Windows 7 Starter Edition to running only three concurrent applications could force up the price of netbooks as many manufacturers opt for the more expensive Home Premium. The three-app rule includes applications running in the background but excludes antivirus, and the company claims most users wouldn't be affected by the limit. 'We ran a study which suggested that the average consumer has open just over two applications [at any time]. We would expect the limit of three applications wouldn't affect very many people.' However, Microsoft told journalists at last year's Professional Developers Conference that 70% of Windows users have between eight and 15 windows open at any one time."
Submission: Windows 7 Starter Edition - 3 Apps Only by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Mobile: Windows 7 Sets Direction of Low-Power CPU Market 369 comments
Vigile writes "News is circulating about Microsoft setting hardware limits for the Windows 7 Starter Edition rather than sticking to a 3-application limit. With just a few simple specifications, Microsoft has set the tech world spinning — not only is Microsoft deciding that a netbook is now defined as having a 10.2-in. or smaller screen, but by setting a 15-watt limit to CPU thermal dissipation they may have inadvertently set the direction of CPU technology for years to come. If Microsoft sticks to that licensing spec, then AMD, Intel, VIA, and maybe even NVIDIA (who might be building an x86 CPU) will no doubt put a new focus on power efficiency in order to cash in on the lucrative netbook market."
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In other news (Score:5, Funny)
In response to the announcement of Microsoft's innovative 3-application limit, Apple corporation has said it will release a version of OS X that will allow only one application to run at a time, but in a more friendly and artistically enhanced environment than Windows Reduced Vista(tm.) Apple announced the special version late Sunday evening, at a special event entitled "You're the One." Steve Jobs emerged from his semi-retirement to explain how Apple's invention of this one-to-one relationship between users and applications would "revolutionize computing." Jobs stated that the new OS would also herald a return to the one-button mouse, single monitors, and Apple's new "One-at-a-time" network stream technologies.
Overnight, the Linux community, leveraging its well known security advantages and high speed development based upon open source and developers active in all time zones at once, has released a beta of "Linux Zero", which they claim is the most secure operating system in the world, and the least confusing, by virtue of its enforcement of zero applications running. Linux authority Linus Torvalds said "if an application can't run, it can't bring worms or viruses into the system. In addition, user interaction is now limited to pressing the power button." Waxing optimistic, he went on to say that "We think even Windows users can learn to do this." He told this reporter "In fact, the price is zero, too!"
An unconfirmed rumor also developed this weekend of an OS that is so carefully and explicitly restricted that consumers interaction with it is limited to attempting to install it; as the rumor goes, completing the installation requires permissions that users simply do not have available to them. Such an operating system would provide the ultimate consumer safety net. When asked to comment, both Jobs and Torvalds derided the rumor as being propaganda. Both OS mavens insisted that technology wasn't up to such a challenge yet. The rumor, however, persists.
When contacted by the press for comments on these new developments, Intel explained that multi-core processors were designed specifically for reduced application counts. It is only now that the leading OS manufacturers are revealing their deep strategies for the decade of 2010 that Intel is able to comment on the real rationale for multiple cores. Technical Leader Sanji Ramahasmiran" laid out several reasons why systems with few- or single-application loads would benefit directly from multiple cores. He said "Our new 8-core dies will allow switching the same single task cyclically from one core to another, thus reducing the activity levels to 1/8th that of single-core designs and operating in a greener fashion, contributing less to global warming, and simplifying programmer APIs in any properly designed operating system."
Simply as a personal observation, I always enjoy seeing how competition ensures that corporations compete for the marketplace by leveraging their core competencies and working to out-do one another. The end users always benefit. No matter who your favorite OS manufacturer is, the industry finds a way to work to bring you the latest developments. Isn't technology wonderful?
You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple corporation has said it will release a version of OS X that will allow only one application to run at a time
Apple already released such an operating system in 2007. I think it's called "iPhone OS".
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Funny)
wow, wish i had modpoints for that.
snark, wit, and insight.
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what, you mean it's stupid to be outraged over the development and sale of products which don't meet your needs to people with different needs than you? How can this be?
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps more importantly to most users:
Let's say you have 2 viruses and 1 piece of spyware running on your computer, does it prevent you from launching the applications you actually want to use... Like the malware removal tool?
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree wholeheartedly. I've switched to linux a million times now and I keep falling back to the ever stable, ever reliable windows xp. I never dreamed that I would make this statement 10 years ago, but I have had about 0 problems with XP. Ever since service pack 2, XP has been rock solid. Its been a long, long time since I've seen a blue screen. I can't even remember. Maybe over a year ago. I was all excited about Ubuntu 9.04, so I downloaded the release candidate and tried a wubi install inside my windows partition. Usually this option works great, but not this time. It seems my generic Athlon 64 motherboard won't boot 9.04. Amazing. (It seems USB related) I finally dicked around and got it to boot (exit busy box after everything times out) and now it doesn't see my virtual partition on the windows drive. Lovely. It wants to install to the first primary partition on the first drive in the chain by default. If I didn't know what I was doing I could have easily installed over my windows partition (or attempted to at least). I'll take it as a sign. No Photoshop CS3? No lightroom? No reason or live? I can run mozilla and the gimp in windows too. In fact, there is better quality free software on windows than linux and a great deal more of it too. I don't want to turn this into a troll (I know I'm on the edge here), but when my ATI card can't even get accelerated 3d at a basic level its kind of hard to see the appeal. (was looking foward to the new drivers too) A lot of this crap would have been perfectly acceptable in 1994, but its going on 2010 and when I plug something in, I really expect it to work without pissing around with it for 3 days and finding the magic keywords on google that will hunt down that one post on that one obscure bulletin board that will magically fix my problem. Sorry. To get back ontopic....
Its amazing that M$ would even consider selling such a neutered OS still. Look at what the OEMs are paying for a license (they won't tell you, people would be outraged) and look at what you pay when you walk into Best Buy and pick up a copy of ultimate. What the hell ever happened to the simple Home/Corporate ideology of XP? Like for instance vista ultimate is $319 versus Home premium at $239 with surprisingly Vista Business being the cheapest out of the 3 at $200. The cheapest dell right now is like $350 with vista home premium. So what is dell paying for the OEM license? $50? $70? I don't see how it could be more than $70. Why the hell do you have to pay $170 more at retail???? Talk about gouging. The best part of the OEM license is that it is totally not transferable. Want to install Vista on another machine, you need buy another license. This crap has to end. Consumers should at least have transferable rights to software.
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Re:These are OEM sales, millions more than Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
When they're done "rising" I hope they sell some cars. So far, not so much.
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
They also had a "single window" mode in the OS X public beta way back when. It was quickly removed after user comments.
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You must mean the iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:In other news (Score:5, Funny)
An unconfirmed rumor also developed this weekend of an OS that is so carefully and explicitly restricted that consumers interaction with it is limited to attempting to install it; as the rumor goes, completing the installation requires permissions that users simply do not have available to them. Such an operating system would provide the ultimate consumer safety net. When asked to comment, both Jobs and Torvalds derided the rumor as being propaganda. Both OS mavens insisted that technology wasn't up to such a challenge yet. The rumor, however, persists.
Until a few months ago, I thought this was how Gentoo was designed.
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Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Artificial limitations like this seem to me to be an invitation for problems and end user frustration.
What is an application?
Are tool tray apps possible, or allowed?
What about apps that launch other apps as part of their functionality?
Would Chrome be limited to two tabs? (One for the host window, two and three for the first two tabs.)
I would say this is an invitation for piracy, but if it really is intended for netbooks, most consumers would find it very hard to install a new OS on a computer with no cd drive. It will make users angry, although potentially limit things on machines with small amounts of RAM.
If it's intended for developing countries, I suspect piracy (or Linux) will win out.
Re:Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win o (Score:5, Funny)
Would Chrome be limited to two tabs? (One for the host window, two and three for the first two tabs.)
Chrome and Firefox count as 4 applications each, and thus can't run.
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Re:Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win o (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. What advantage would Windows 7 starter offer over Ubuntu Netbook Remix?
Also, about installing an OS from a flash drive, remember the advances we have seen in OS install programs in the last 10 years.
I am pretty sure there could be a program to sell cheap 1GB drives with different flavors of Linux preinstalled...
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Familiar apps (Score:5, Insightful)
What advantage would Windows 7 starter offer over Ubuntu Netbook Remix?
Familiarity. More applications designed for Windows with which users are already familiar run under Windows 7 than under Wine, albeit not at the same time. In a lot of vertical markets, there often just isn't an equivalent Linux app.
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Re:Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win o (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win o (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 twitter edition?
All documents limited to 140 characters.
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Re:Bad user experience, piracy or Linux will win o (Score:5, Informative)
Artificial limitations like this seem to me to be an invitation for problems and end user frustration.
Given that this is designed for especially low-cost (and hence low-power) small notebook PCs, it may not really be an artificial limitation, but rather a valid means of managing extremely limited resources.
What is an application?
Ed Bott took it for a test drive [zdnet.com] and answered that question...
Are tool tray apps possible, or allowed?
Yes and yes. They don't count toward the 3 app limit.
What about apps that launch other apps as part of their functionality?
If they open multiple tabs (ex. Firefox, Internet Explorer) or windows (ex. Messenger), that's fine. If they launch completely separate applications, well, those would be completely separate applications.
Would Chrome be limited to two tabs? (One for the host window, two and three for the first two tabs.)
Nope.
Some other interesting details:
All in all, according to the ZDNet writer, "when I used this system as a netbook, it worked just fine".
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3 applications.. (Score:5, Funny)
Severe foot trauma (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose (Score:5, Funny)
one of them will be the System Idle process. Naturally. That's the one that hogs 98% almost all the time.
Re:I suppose (Score:5, Funny)
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3 apps is more than enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Starter Edition could do this since XP. Old News (Score:5, Informative)
Why are we wasting time on this again?
Re:Starter Edition could do this since XP. Old New (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Starter Edition could do this since XP. Old New (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Starter Edition could do this since XP. Old New (Score:5, Informative)
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I will just run (Score:5, Insightful)
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that's easy... (Score:5, Funny)
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
There, you've used up your allotment of three apps.
Re:Well, that's easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lulz!
Get out.
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Short, insipid, arrogant (Score:4, Insightful)
This article is basically a two paragraph summary of something I would expect to hear from a hysterical spitting nerd who hadn't showered for three days standing outside of a Gamestop. (Or in a Digg summary)
"Windows Home Basic OMG! Such shite! Install linux!"
I'm actually kind of offended it got posted. Plus also, it's already been discussed ad nauseam.
Send me to troll hell, but you know it's true.
Biased Article (Score:5, Informative)
How long until the 3 app limit is cracked? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing that a new 3rd party shell will be released within a month of Windows 7 that defeats this. Anyone want to take a wager on when or how this will be cracked?
Original story link (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=844 [zdnet.com]
Here are some selected quotes:
"you can open as many windows as you want from a single program. So if you want to open 15 tabs in your browser, six images in your photo-editing program, and a couple of instant messenger windows, you can do it."
"Windows Explorer windows don't count."
"Basic Windows tools don't trigger the limit. You can run a Command Prompt window or open Task Manager"
"Antivirus programs that run as a system service don't count."
"In short, when I used this system as a netbook, it worked just fine. On a netbook, most of the tasks you're likely to tackle are going to take place in a browser window anyway."
"If I tried to use this system as a conventional notebook, running multiple Microsoft Office or OpenOffice aps, playing music in iTunes or Windows Media Player, and using third-party IM programs, I would probably be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of Starter Edition."
Here's a better article (Score:5, Informative)
If the price is right... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the price is bargain low I could see myself grabing a licence. I only use windows for gaming anyway. A game + web browser would be enough for me.
How long can it last (Score:5, Insightful)
The best part is... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what the best part about this is? I DON'T CARE ONE BIT.
When I first read the title my instinct was to get angry. Then suddenly I felt a wave of calm come over me as I realized that I haven't relied on windows for 5 years now.
I simply just don't care any more.
Artificially introducing competition (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an absolute farce.
MS is now in such a dominant position that it is now artificially limiting features to introduce competition and introduce artificial price points. It's aimed at the hardware vendors, and at the price of other operating systems to drive them out of the market.
It's still anti-competitive. It's still MS.
ws
Vista has the same limit (Score:5, Funny)
If I try to run more than 3 apps under Vista, I run out of memory.
Wow, this would wind me up fast (Score:5, Informative)
I've got a netbook, which gets used heavily as an ultraportable machine. As long as you're sensible, it's fine. It's far from unusual for it to be running: ...and I'm already over the limit while very plausibly doing a single task (albeit not a typical one for a netbook, but one that is surprisingly usable from experience). I'm working on some graphics software at present - perhaps I'm checking something in Paintshop Pro or similar. I use the Windows calculator a lot (lazy I know :-) - that would suddenly become unviable.
* Visual Studio
* OpenOffice showing some documentation or notes
* Web browser
* DB program of some description, usually SQLite Admin.
Why, why, why? Anyway, as has been pointed out, plenty of apps seem to have already found ways round this. Annoy your customers in their day-to-day use and they'll find ways to stop the annoyance - if that means you're creating a group motivated to hack your security, that's just a terrible idea.
Stay out of your users' way and let them work the way they want to. If I'm daft enough to want to try to host a commercial website or want to do serious software development on a netbook, that's my problem.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most useless thing I ever heard of... It's like selling an incomplete OS...
The point is to sell automatic upgrades to more expensive versions of Windows.
"I'm sorry, to do that, you need Windows Ultimate Edition. Would you like to upgrade now? Yes/No"
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Re:Name Those 3 Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
User: "Aw man, I can only load three apps? Well, I guess I can use Google Docs in my browser... what else can I do online without installing anything?"
And that's how Microsoft plans to simultaneously make people hate their operating system and also not buy their other shrink-wrapped software.
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Re:DOS (Score:5, Funny)
>Why are they deliberately fucking up their OS?
A question asked by many ever since Windows ME.
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Re:What constitues an app? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Will probably sell quite well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually that gorilla would be posix (Score:4, Insightful)
I can still compile and run unix apps written 20 years ago on linux today. Can you say that for running a win32 app on Windows 3.0?
No , didn't think so.
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Re:Here's betting MS apps won't count (Score:5, Interesting)
That is esentially the administrator password recovery tool.
Use "at" to schedule explorer to run. Kill explorer, wait 1 minute and yippy, you have explorer with system credentials(higher than admin).
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