Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon 705
Apu writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition operating system specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction on bootup and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected."
Arbitrary marketing decision (Score:4, Interesting)
So, quick question: Windows has appeared to evolved into a seriously fragmented OS. How many different versions of Windows are there? There is a Mobile, Embedded, Server, Pro, Home, Starter, Handheld......What else?
Oh, and Microsoft......If you cant make Windows more stable, you might want to do something about those error messages that crop up on computers running things like displays at airports. Almost every time I fly these days, at the airport, I see a computer running an information display that has crashed. Either a bluescreen of death (soon to be redscreen AND bluescreen of death in Longhorn), or a fundamental error message. This never looks good to customers and is bad advertising in large traffic areas. One of these days, one of these systems is going to get hacked and something truly embarrassing is going to be displayed on all of those big displays.
Low-cost and entry-level (Score:5, Interesting)
This is fine as long as MS provides a patch when P4 or AMD64 is considered low-cost and entry-level.
Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft Operating Systems are used daily in environments where it really isn't useful to display large blue screens with technical error information. Printing that information to a file crit_error.dat and displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas", and probably wont add much tech time.
Just a thought I had upon reading your post. It doesn't really *solve* the problem, it just makes it more "friendly" to these sorts of microsoft displays.
dumarses (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they would be wiser to give away this crippled version on the hope that as India's economy develops they will capture some market with the full price Windows XP at later stage.
Not arbitrary. Calculated. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the same as having MSDE being a crippled SQLServer that limits the nubmer of threads it can run. Surely the CPU could handle more threads; but they cripple it so that more people buy the bigger one.
This Pentium4/Athlon decision makes perfect sense - if someone can afford the higher-end processor, they can afford the higher priced OS.
More Monopoly... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll be the shoe thanks.
Re:Arbitrary marketing decision (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not having a go but how many linux distro's are there? Before you stab me in the eye i'm a linux fan but the difference is that all the versions of windows work - for the end user - pretty much the same. In linux, there are so many desktop enviroments - and iterations of the the desktop enviroments - that it really (IMHO) turns people off - thats the key to why windows is world dominent, by having the market share everyone knows how to use the OS and feels comfortable in the "enviroment". If everyone had linux - that would of course be great but - when someone took a new job they'd have to spend ages getting used to the differnt desktop enviroments, never mind doing any work - of course thats asuming you'd let them have a gui...
Marketing Geniuses (Score:2, Interesting)
At the risk of sounding new here, I am amazed at the mindset. Whatever happened to making the best product you can and trying to sell as much of it as you can? The idea at Microsoft appears to be to sell your product as much as you can by making it perform poorly compared to itself. Or something like that.
Imagine being the engineers tasked with writing the feature that disables the OS on "advanced" CPUs. What pride they must have in their work.
Then consider the conversation between the marketing guru and his twelve-year-old son. "So, Dad, what did you do at work today?". What pride they must have in their work.
Then consider the poor sap who buys XP Starter Edition and finds out that it won't start. He can't return it, having opened it. All he can do is put it on EBay and hope he doesn't get sued [slashdot.org].
Re:Low-cost and entry-level (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the report actually mentions Athlon not AMD 64.
Early Athlon 32-bit processors are low end now.
Another reason to use OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
pricing method (Score:2, Interesting)
Leverage War (Score:3, Interesting)
they've already got it (Score:3, Interesting)
But I think it's a bug, not a feature. Haven't you ever tried opening a Windows program and had the screen go black or the computer reboot?
I think even the average user takes this as a "something is REALLY wrong" hint.
Re:Marketing Geniuses (Score:5, Interesting)
back in the old days of DEC and VAX/VMS, there were 2 models of VAX (780 and something else; forget the exact numbers). they were sold as systems that were 'fast' and 'faster'. what was the diff? every few machine instructions, there were NO-OP's inserted to slow things down on purpose! no other technical diffs. none!
but - if you bought the slower box and paid to upgrade it, it was 2 things - new skins (color change, I think; at the least it was a model # change in the labelling). they'd change out some/all of the backplane just to make it look (to the customer) like 'real stuff' was upgraded. but it was really just firmware on the cpu boards. ha!
maybe it was the VAX 750, now that I think about it.
Re:Marketing Geniuses (Score:3, Interesting)
thought of another analogy. I once bought a sony cd player. back in the early 90's, when digital out (spdif) was still kind of new and high-end.
there were 2 models of cd players. the regular and the 'es' version. the es version had coaxial spdif out. the regular one did not.
I ordered the repair manual ($10 at sony - great deal!) and found that my pc board was identical to the one in the ES model. just that it didn't have a few parts on the board. but sony being cool (back then) you could order repair parts (as a regular joe, not even a service center ID needed) and then upgrade your own.
I got a good laugh from one of the parts, though. it was (really) called inductor, small. really! not even a Henry value on it. just 'inductor, small'. basically a single loop of wire thru a ferrite bead.
ordered the 3 parts I needed, soldered them in and all was well - I now had the digital output that the more expensive ES version had.
this is more common in the industry than people realize. the idea of making a high end product 'full' and then removing features for lower-end versions.
Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea was that while the software application was running, it drove a continuous 1khz tone out the audio port that kept a relay energized (that kept the signal on-air). When the system crashed, the audio output stopped, which meant the relay was no longer energized = video signal switched back to a stock SMPTE bars signal from a test generator.
Something similar could probably be developed fairly easily for other machines - if the system freezes/BSODs, the audio stops (hopefully not looping ala a video game crash), and a relay could trip the reset switch on the front of the computer and auto-reboot it, could power it down, or any number of other applications.
It was a very, very simple hardware project to engineer and worked flawlessly (unlike my software at the time)
N.
Re:Arbitrary marketing decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny, I've been using Linux since 1995 and I've never seen any of those. But BSODs in Microsoft products I've lost count. Even XP, which is supposedly "more stable", has given me its fair share of blue, or rather cyan, screens.
I'm not the biggest OSX fan, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Marketing Geniuses (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Low-cost and entry-level (Score:3, Interesting)
It's true. I don't know what these idiots are thinking. It's one thing to disadvantage a product for market differentiation. XP Home vs Pro makes sense, even if the actual difference is arbitrary, because Home users aren't going to need server features. It's similar to the Athlon/Duron split. But this is as bad (or worse) than the original cacheless Celeron. Do they think their customers aren't going to realize that this product is crippled? Processors this (P.)O.S. won't run on can be had for about the same amount they're asking. I wouldn't be surprised if they raised the maximum specs due to lack of interest.
In the article, though, I heard this echo of Microsoft's worst nightmare: "In India, for instance, professor Jitendra Shah has translated a version of Linux and a number of applications into the regional languages of India to help villagers learn computing."
It's all about getting people to learn one thing -- your thing -- so they'll feel they can't go anywhere else. The brand loyalty of a huge learning population is at stake into the future. Microsoft still insists on being one of if not the most expensive components of a PC, of course. Which may also be something that doesn't last.
Re:apparently you don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Trust me, they do. I know it's wrong to generalize, but here's a fundamental difference between a PC buyer in the US and a PC buyer in India. In the US, PCs are pretty much commodity items - people buy it the way they buy television sets, which means that many people just buy whatever the salesperson at Best Buy recommends to them.
In India, from my experience, people do a lot of research before spending a large part of their savings on a PC. Which means that the model is recommended by some geek friend (and in India there are plenty of computer geeks to be found all over the place) and trust me - no one will ever recommend XP starter edition.
The above statement is NOT intended to show how well informed the Indian buyer is compared to the American buyer. All I am trying to say is that the demographic in India that spends money on a PC is different from the one in the US.
Should a cost of $15 be considered dumping? (Score:2, Interesting)
How will MS be able to recoup the expenses of researching IP related to expensive features like DRM and TC if they sell this so cheap?
You could argue that they saved money by leaving features out of the Stunted Edition, but actually it costs more to create a separate edition than to make identical copies of the same disks. Did they leave DRM out? I doubt it (CPUID support is in there...).
So, how low can the price go before someone claims that they are dumping?
Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
For those who don't recognize it, thats the commands you enter into debug.[exe/com ?] (back in the DOS days) to erase the partition tables
Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
As I recall, it has something to do with changing filenames or moving files in the File Open or File Save dialogs. Something like that. Long as he stays away from that, everything is fine.
What got us was that it ran rock solid on Win2K on his previous computer. He got a new computer, and this problem started. We tried both 2K and XP, same result, so started suspecting it was hardware but Dell wouldn't trade it out. He finally figured out the trigger, and we quit trying to fix it.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)