Microsoft Kills 3-App Limit For Windows 7 Starter Edition 352
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."
Outbreak Of Sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
At least someone realized that it was an epicly bad idea before the thing was released into the real world.
Re:THIS JUST IN (Score:4, Insightful)
"a small notebook PC for very basic tasks"
I would never trust Windows to do anything OTHER than very basic tasks.
It's like trusting a 3 year old to stack all your fine China.
Re:Other suggestions that make about as much sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who says netbooks are only suited for basic tas (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Or you know, was the plan all along (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:THIS JUST IN (Score:5, Insightful)
a better example is sending an 8 year old to the grocery store. You CAN do it, but unless you give them VERY specific instructions they'll come back with a shopping cart full of poptarts and cereal.
Re:Windows 7 is a good release (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Surprise, surprise.... (Score:5, Insightful)
.
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?
Re:Windows 7 is a good release (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Outbreak Of Sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason for arbitrary limitations (it costs them nothing to unlock them) is to encourage people to buy the more expensive version instead. That logic has worked in the past because users haven't seen anywhere else to go (except even further up the price range with Apple), but Linux is doing well on netbooks and I think MS is starting to figure that out.
Re:"even more attractive"... what? (Score:1, Insightful)
As a Linux user I find it hilarious that Slashdot thinks Linux in general can be used with minimal hassle.
Re:Other suggestions that make about as much sense (Score:5, Insightful)
THIS.
Holy fuck, this.
Why do we *still* have windows you can't fucking minimize until you answer their inane questions?
Re:"even more attractive"... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it can.
I use ubuntu on both my laptop and desktop. Both work just fine with very little hassle.
Ever tried installing Windows on a machine and then spending the next few hours updating drivers and security patches, and then downloading all the stuff you need (firefox/OpenOffice/trillian/winamp/whatever) to actually get your stuff done? THAT is a hassle.
Installing Ubuntu consists of:
1) stick thumbdrive in netbook
2) boot netbook
3) click "install" and decide how big you want the partition to be
4) notice that while you're doing that it has found your wireless network
5) run pidgin and talk to people while waiting a few minutes for the install
6) tell friends you're going down for reboot and will be right back
7) boot working system with tons of useful software
Re:Outbreak Of Sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is, Microsoft is just starting to figure it out, others are way ahead of them.
There's about to be a watershed in the OS field, and a company which is collecting 85%+ profits won't be able to compete. With Qualcomm, Freescale, Longsoon, et al prepping supercheap machines, there simply won't be the margins for an expensive MS OS. Microsoft will have to reduce its prices and profitability just to stay in the netbook/smartbook market.
They've even managed to scare their long-time collaborator, Intel, into developing Moblin. If Intel didn't do something to keep a toehold in the low-power/cost end of the market, they could see themselves swamped with ARM, MIPS, Snapdragon etc Linux netboox/smartbooks that are cheaper, get better battery life and still run most of the Linux application stack.
Re:Outbreak Of Sanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone on Slashdot acts like every edition of Windows cost the same amount. It's true, every edition has a physical merchandise cost that is essentially a few dollars, but you're paying for other things as well. As in, it might cost Microsoft the same amount to sell each version, but it costs Microsoft vastly more to produce the advanced features novice users do not and should not have. Frankly, Bitlocker is an advanced feature nobody at /. should want everyone to have. Bitlocker has the potential ability to totally, irreversibly lock someone out of their account. It's great that Truecrypt offers a free alternative, but developing and supporting such features is a hassle. The people that rarely, if ever, even reply to support requests on their own forum.
The only reason they sell different versions is because it means they can sell editions that match product segments and purchasing power. Enterprise customers are going to be buying more licenses and they want all the features under the sun, and they'll pay for it handsomely. Selling them a different, more featured version that has features that are only truly taken advantage of in an Active Directory environment is logical and profitable. Selling the average consumer a version that doesn't do everything the enterprise version does, and selling it for less, is logical and profitable.
Don't tell me Windows costs and arm and a leg, you're a savvy user. You know how much business apps run. Windows is one of the cheapest "business" applications you can buy. It's cheaper than Photoshop, it's a tenth the price of Maya, it probably has more lines of code than the entire Adobe CS suite, and costs close to one twentieth as much.
Re:I think they're finally listening to slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Even without a large install base, Linux continues to be a force in the market.
I'm not sold on this whole "small install base for linux" idea. There are over 1000 different distributions of Linux and hundreds of thousands of applications, not including versions. This is not the work of three guys in their mom's basement.
With regard to marketing netbooks, apparently The Register [theregister.co.uk] apparently thinks they're having another Seinfeld Moment with their "It's better with Windows" [itsbetterwithwindows.com] Asus comarketing campaign, which strangely enough doesn't require Silverlight. Apparently, "It's better with Windows" has something to do with XP, Microsoft Works, and your teen daughter uploading pictures of herself from wherever she's roaming unattended while you've abandoned her and your hot Latina wife to be on the road spilling coffee on yourself. Yeah, that's living the dream. For extra laughs, it's set to banjo music. Highly recommended, it's a must-see. They could have gotten a little edgier by showing the photos actual teens upload to the Internet, but that one's probably not even suitable for cable. Since the hot points are "trusted", "familiar" and "compatible" it's pretty clear they're trying to prevent sales of Vista 7. I can't wait to see how this works out.
Re:Who says netbooks are only suited for basic tas (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I think they're finally listening to slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you have more of a point with the extension of XP, but don't forget Vista also runs like crap on many netbooks; Keeping XP around seems like a natural response, despite Linux.
I *know* Linux has had some influence concerning these things, but the amount of credit you're giving it is over zealous, IMO.
I'm glad you asked. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are several things going on here. The first and worst is that of course they think they can put over their proposition by sheer force. As one of them once told me, "Vendors are coin operated". You can only get so far with that before you're being investigated.
Then there's advertising companies. Advertising companies recruit and train the most creative, intelligent and resourceful people they can find to fulfill their mission: to sell advertising. They have incredible surveys and statistics and magical advertising quadrants that tell you that the right thing to do is pay them more money, and they've got the numbers to prove it. That's right: they spend 90% of their time, intelligence and effort not to sell their customer's products, but to sell theirs. I have a story that goes with this. It's stolen, but I've filed the serial numbers off:
One day in northern Arizona I stopped at a one-pump gas station for a soda. As I walked to the lonely single cooler in the back, I passed by row upon row of salt. There was the picnic shaker, the kitchen cylinder we all know. There was rock salt, road salt, salt lick and salt brick. There was sea salt from 9 of the seven seas. There was powdered salt, granular salt, bacon salt and several kinds of cheese salt. I was amazed. I dragged my soda up to the counter, and said to the wizened old man sitting there, "man, you've got a lot of salt.".
"That's nothin'" he says. Look up here. He pulls down the hatch to the attic an it's full of bags and bushels and bins of salt. "And look down here" he says, pulling up a hatch to the basement, where it's chock full of barrels and bags and piles of salt.
"You must sell a lot of salt" I said.
"That's the funny thing" he tells me, "I don't hardly sell no salt at all. But that salt salesman that comes through here once a month, he sure does sell a good bit of the stuff."
Historically Microsoft's market dominance hasn't come from advertising. They got it by other means I'll leave you to investigate. You can start by checking out the Halloween Documents.
The answer to the third piece of this puzzle has to do with a discussion I was having yesterday with a friend of mine. He was frustrated with the constant reorganization of the company (not Microsoft) that he works for. After discussing it for a while, I came out with the idea that the permanent reorganization process was by design. With constant shuffling you might get the perfect mix of creative individuals unsupervised by a policy wonk long enough to have that perfect summer - the year where everything heterodynes into the magical project that delivers unexpected miraculous results. But most of the time you get a bunch of creative people frustrated by people who've risen to influence through the mastery of process. At the end we agreed (I think - I don't want to speak for my friend) that the churning was a necessary evil because left static the process geeks would build their empires and drive out the creative folk and the magic could not happen. Which would of course make the churning a brilliant piece of social engineering. Because Microsoft doesn't employ this bit of social engineering, once the founders took off the process geeks took over - with predictable results. Conservative and uncreative, these process geeks are the very target market for the advertising sharks I led with. Unfortunately for them, this disease is inevitably fatal.
Re:Windows 7 is a good release (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all, I believe they put out a hollowed out RC version without all the bloatware to try and convince people that it was a different beast than Vista and they should hold out for it rather than acting on an impulse to switch away from Windows. I believe they knew it'd never be released as it was but wanted people to think it would be and not notice the added bloat.
Don't you realize how nonsensical this is? Let's break it down in traditional Slashdot style:
1) MS knows people don't want bloat
2) MS makes a version without bloat, so that people will think the OS is good
3) People think the OS is good without the bloat, and want to buy it
4) MS adds back in the bloat at the last moment!
5) ???
6) Profit!
Seriously... why, upon reaching step 3, would they not just release it as is? They are not villains or sociopaths. They're just greedy. And in this case their greed would drive them to release the product that people want to pay money for.
Not as though this is something up for debate. I have W7 on my laptop in the other room. It runs fine. It's only using ~8 gigs of harddrive space, and that's including all the programs I've installed. For comparison, the "Windows" directory of my rarely used Vista install is about double that at 15 gigs. Seems like they must have cut some serious cruft.
And, lest I come across as advocating for this (or any) OS, let me state that the best I can say about W7 is that, if required to do so, I'd be okay with using it. I'm just tired of this childish notion that Microsoft is some sort of den of evil, when it's really just another business.
Re:Other suggestions that make about as much sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we *still* have windows you can't fucking minimize until you answer their inane questions?
Because then you could just drag all the EULA's and Important Microsoft Product Activation notices off the side of the screen and keep on truckin'.
Re:Who says netbooks are only suited for basic tas (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm writing this on a 4 year old Pentium M, 1.5 GHz, 1.5 GB, 80 GB disk.
No reason to upgrade.
Re:Other suggestions that make about as much sense (Score:3, Insightful)
How about making window management not block when a modal dialog is open?
The whole *point* of a modal dialog is to block the application underneath it. Blame the application developers, for poor use of modal dialogs.
Re:Outbreak Of Sanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux comes in again because Linux distributors come now will a full featured netbook product line. OEM want to get discounts, so they will strike some Linux deals to drive Microsoft crazy.
Re:I think they're finally listening to slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think MS is worried about OS X for a few reasons, but are worried about Linux for different reasons. OS X is made by Apple, a company that ties its os to its hardware. Apple only has so much capacity even if it is farmed out. It still requires a certain amount of overhead at Apple to care for. If they increase capacity too much, their quality suffers. And so does Apple's 'cache'. Apple would have to target cheaper models and their profit margins erode. Plus a bigger company means a more unfocused company. Also, all those Windoze PCs run software that only runs on Windoze, corporations are not going to give up a sunk investment easily. And Apple is predicable....although that seems to be changing a bit now. But then MS has never felt bad about allowing others to develop a market before finding a way to take it over.
Linux (and FOSS) is much harder for MS to deal with. It is decentralized, federated. It cannot be targeted easily by targeting the company making it. And because it is decentralized, it is much more unpredictable. It also has a 'business model' that is somewhat like a wooden stack aimed (although not directed by anyone) at MS's business model. Add to that a distribution system that MS cannot control, the interwebs, and at least one competitor with ambitions larger than MS (Google). MS's biggest fear is that Google becomes much more than a one trick pony and able to push FOSS down the throats of Business School Product that MS has spent years spoon feeding.
One thing MS gets is Business School Product. They understand how Business School Product thinks, i.e., it is vapid and willing to take any 'solution' which is cleanly packaged no matter how it sucks the life out of the companies Business School Product has metasticized (sp?) in. Apple doesn't get Business School Product and doesn't appear interested. Google gets Business School Product and Google is using FOSS among other things to get their foot into MS's turf.