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Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon 705

Posted by CowboyNeal from the for-starters-only dept.
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."
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Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon More

Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon

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  • Arbitrary marketing decision (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:23PM (#12514495) Homepage Journal
    It is of course, an arbitrary decision manufactured by the marketing department as to my knowledge, there is no real functionality that is enabled on the "Pro" version of Windows with the Pentium 4 or Athalon chips. So, it seems like a fairly simple hack to get around this issue, as there is likely no real difference in the codebase of the Starter Edition other than some features that marketing has decided to disable and of course the above mentioned check, yes? (likely to violate the license terms)

    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.

    • Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan&gmail,com> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:27PM (#12514528) Homepage Journal
      On your second point, I think that Microsoft ought to have an option for screens to go black on errors.

      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.

      • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by macdaddy ( 38372 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:32PM (#12514578) Homepage Journal
        Unless of course the blatently obvious applies. I would have to say that close to half of the Windows machines I see on a daily basis (including my own!) use a blank screen as their screensaver. Also don't forget that all Energy Star-compliant monitors will turn the display off after a certain period of time. I would much rather see a user get a blue screen than arbitrarily giving their computer the one-finger salute every time their screen saver kicks in or their monitor goes into energy saver mode. I can just imagine the helpdesk tickets and support calls now: "My computer locks up every day while I'm at lunch!" or "Every morning when I come in my computer has locked up."

        • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:11PM (#12514891)
          Actually, this reminds me of an old trick we developed to use on the Amiga on a public-access cable channel. The software was under development and crashed occasionally, so rather than having a flashing "guru meditation" up on a local TV channel until it was rebooted the next day, we came up with a plan, that would probably work on a Windows machine as well (or just about any other system)

          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) ;P

          N.

      • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by stevey ( 64018 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:46PM (#12514698) Homepage

        Of course when the machine is in such a mess that it decides to blue-screen you're probably not going to trust it to write a file.

        After all it might have crashed because it encountered a strange filesystem error - and writing to it could trash your whole disk.

        There have been similar suggestions for the Linux Kernel; write information somewhere when the kernel panics, but they are usually shot down for the same reason.

        When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible. (True some people have done it but its a hard problem - because you can't actually rely upon the kernel to do anything correctly when it's mid-panic).

        • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Informative)

          by g0at ( 135364 ) <ben&zygoat,ca> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:03PM (#12514815) Homepage Journal
          The Mac OS X writes data to the machine's NVRAM on kernel panic, which is then retrievable and interpretable once the system reboots.

          -ben

        • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Informative)

          by RupW ( 515653 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:33PM (#12515038)
          Of course when the machine is in such a mess that it decides to blue-screen you're probably not going to trust it to write a file.

          Yes but it *can* safely write to swap space. On the next boot (I think!) it'll pull the crash dump out of swap and saves it in your windows folder for analysis. System Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Write debugging information. On XP and 2003 it'll then look at the crash and either point you to a web page with help on the STOP error or, if it doesn't recognise the crash, it'll ask permission to upload the memory dump to Microsoft.

          This does mean you need at least as much swap space on the system drive as you have memory for a full dump - which can be a problem if you've deliberately taken a small system partition, as our co-lo host used to do by default.

        • Re:Perhaps a strange suggestion, but... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Foolhardy ( 664051 ) <csmith32@g m a i l . com> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:40PM (#12515083)
          When you direct NT to make a memory dump on BSOD, it uses disk space already reserved for the pagefile. You need to have a page file on the boot volume large enough to hold whatever size memory dump. Since the sectors are already allocated, it's as simple as writing memory directly into them; the filesystem need not be involved for this. The next time the system boots, it copies the memory dump contents into a new file (which is now safe to create) before the pagefile is used for paging again. Another area is pre-allocated to hold space for a crash event in the event log.
        • I'm certain someone else must have already pointed this out to you. Many types of windows BSOD's say "beginning dump of physcial memory"; they're writing to the disk. Solaris does it, Linux does it, Mac OSX does it. Of course there are failures that cause hardware to become unavailable, but those are usually hardware errors. All of the OS's we're talking about are fairly sophisticated, and they generate the blue screen or panic screen because someone is doing something naughty that leaves the kernel in ques
      • There is an option to automatically restart on errors. Though, I agree with you, it would seem like MS would be jumping all over themselves to allow some customisations to high traffic BSODs. I know, if I was an MS Rep, I would offer airlines a customised OS that says "OS/2 has crashed again" whenever it would normall BSOD.

      • they've already got it (Score:3, Interesting)

        by alizard ( 107678 )
        On your second point, I think that Microsoft ought to have an option for screens to go black on errors.

        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:No (Score:3, Insightful)

        by symbolic ( 11752 )

        Having a screen go black merely covers up the problem. Yes, it makes Microsoft/Windows look better than it really is, but it leaves people with a false impression. What you call "obtrusive" I call "informative".
      • On your second point, I think that Microsoft ought to have an option for screens to go black on errors.

        That should be simple to implement. Just call the Power-off routine.

        • I have a better idea. Anyone remember this?

          A:\>debug
          -F 200 L1000 0
          -A CS:100
          xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301
          xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200
          xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1
          xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80
          xxxx:010C INT 13
          xxxx:010E INT 20
          xxxx:0110
          -g
          Program terminated normally
          -q

          (80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 )

          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

    • Microsoft CEMENT (Score:5, Funny)

      by macdaddy ( 38372 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:27PM (#12514532) Homepage Journal
      Don't forget Microsoft CEMENT [tburke.net]. (Alternate link [google.com])

    • Not arbitrary. Calculated. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by team99parody ( 880782 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:29PM (#12514560) Homepage
      I think Microsoft is well aware of what it's doing.

      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.

    • 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?

      Windows XP Editions and Products [microsoft.com]

      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 run

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:33PM (#12514584)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Blue screens in airports?? AAAA!!!!

        Recently when travelling through Chicago, I saw the screen on a baggage scanner: it was running DOS. What's more, the operators seemed to need to power cycle it quite freqently (I saw this happen a couple of times while in line to have my bags scanned).

      • Blue screens in airports?? AAAA!!!! Better than the "Core dumped" errors I've gotten now and then on linux I guess?


        I don't see how they are better... if you got a "Core dumped" error, then an application died, but the OS was able to handle the dead application and continue running. If you have a blue screen of death, the OS has also died, and your computer is now completely useless until you reboot it.

      • the "Core dumped" errors I've gotten now and then on linux


        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.

    • 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.

      We can only pray that they "hack the planet" [imdb.com] and put THIS [mugshots.org] on all the displays on earth....

    • Totally agree. At Rome airport a big european trip with my fiance - we saw this.

      http://img243.echo.cx/img243/6999/curiousindeed7ev .jpg [img243.echo.cx]

      I wasn't going to either place thankfully. The error looks pathetic.
    • 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?

      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 en

    • Why this won't work (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alphakappa ( 687189 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:39PM (#12514638) Homepage
      Having lived in India, I can tell you why this won't work. The users who pirate Windows are not people who need computers only for basic word processing - they are proper users who use computers as part of their lifestyle, much like people elsewhere in the world do. They do not like their OS to be crippled in any way.
      Why then, you ask, do they have to pirate Windows? The reason is cost: A user can afford to spend $100-$200 for a legal copy of Windows in the US, but in India due to the exchange rate it becomes a huge amount! It's comparable to the actual price of the desktop, and note that people spend a large fraction of their income to buy a desktop in the first place. Microsoft does not price their software according to purchasing power, instead it does a straight conversion of $$ to Rupees.

      If Microsoft offers a cheaper Windows for a lesser price, people will just keep pirating the 'proper' OS for free. And sometime later, they will migrate to Linux when they find that Linux can offer them pretty much the same functionality. If MS wants people to use Windows and PAY for it, all they need to do is offer an uncrippled OS for a price that is affordable in India.

      Note to Microsoft: People don't want to buy your crippled software, even if it cheap.
      • If you sold Microsoft licenses in India for cheaper, you would see them on eBay for minimal prices as well. Microsoft's in a lose-lose here right up until they start suing the companies big enough to really regret not changing OS's and wealthy enough to afford it.... The question only exists as to whether they'll be able to manipulate the Indian legal system as effectively as they have the US legal system.
        • f you sold Microsoft licenses in India for cheaper, you would see them on eBay for minimal prices as well.

          You are talking about selling legal copies of Windows on eBay. The simple way out is to brand the copies sold in India as Windows - India edition, with no other differences. Make sure that the license says that the India edition can be sold only in the Indian subcontinent - that way no one would be able to sell them on eBay legally unless the buyer is in India.

          Before someone says that a licence i
      • Is the price of hardware that highly differentiated that you get a state-of-the-art P4 desktop machine, with no Windows, for $200 in India?

        Ruling out all P4s and old Athlons may be a bit excessive, but do you truly say that those CPUs ruled out by this limit would be an option in a system at this price point?

      • Re:Why this won't work (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dpilot ( 134227 )
        You miss the point of outsourcing in your post.

        The whole point of outsourcing is to PAY India-scale wages to your workers,
        but at the same time, PRICE your projects according to US-scale prices.

        Never mind that it's inconsistent, unsustainable, stupid, shortsighted, or any other such adjective one might care to mention. At the endpoint of the current outsourcing rage, in the US for the most part the only high-paid workers will be executives, and the rest will work at barely above minimum wage, which will st
    • How many different versions of Windows are there?

      A lot less than Linux distros and a lot more than Mac OS versions, but I'll still stick to windows because unfortunately it's got the best app base.

    • Re:Arbitrary marketing decision (Score:5, Funny)

      by djdavetrouble ( 442175 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @09:16PM (#12515295) Homepage
      something truly embarrassing is going to be displayed on all of those big displays.

      something like this [aglar.ath.cx]?

      (work safe link)
      (really!)

  • Low-cost and entry-level (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:23PM (#12514498) Homepage
    it is designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors

    This is fine as long as MS provides a patch when P4 or AMD64 is considered low-cost and entry-level.
    • I like how the invisble hand has been replaced by the guy in that cubible over there.

      State set prices, corprately set prices .. whats the diff?

      Sure they have the option to do this, but holy shit, that venerable Honda car on a Toyato road argument, when all it is is just rubber tires on a concrete surface, strengthens by the day.
    • PS. I plan on selling very low cost beer, but only if you drink it from a glass from a partner who hooks me up with suckers who pay MILLIONS for beer, if I pass him business.

      Its market collusion if its true. How can it not be?

    • Re:Low-cost and entry-level (Score:5, Interesting)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:42PM (#12514668) Journal
      This is fine as long as MS provides a patch when P4 or AMD64 is considered low-cost and entry-level.

      Well the report actually mentions Athlon not AMD 64.

      Early Athlon 32-bit processors are low end now.

  • That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DuranDuran ( 252246 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:25PM (#12514509)
    That's nothing! My copy of WinXP fails to continue if any kind of CPU is detected!

  • Low end only (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiredlogic ( 135348 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:25PM (#12514513)
    But will it run on a 386?
  • what "low cost" means anyway?

  • You would think (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tenchiken ( 22661 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:26PM (#12514518)
    You think Microsoft would have learned after the games they played with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and DR. DOS. This will not make the anti-trust crowd any happier, and just serves to tick off the opponents of Microsoft more.

    Microsoft is essentially creating a market for Linux by doing this. It's all about standardization and if companies have to purchase two different versions of Linux to use their hardware, they are going to look hard at the decision before doing so.

    • Microsoft is essentially creating a market for Linux by doing this.

      Shhhh! Someone mod this down. We don't want this to get out.

    • You think Microsoft would have learned after the games they played with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and DR. DOS.

      What did Microsoft learn?

      DR DOS was a threat to MS-DOS. Using windows 3.11 they put doubt into the minds of users that DR-DOS wasn't truly stable and compatible. Follwing this was a fierce second blow with windows 95 which finished off DR DOS. Eventually, after Microsoft killed DR DOS they settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. However this sum could never amount to a pittance compared to

  • Windows ain't done. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:26PM (#12514519)
    > specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction on bootup and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected.

    Windows XP Starter Edition ain't done, 'til... umm... Wintel and AMD won't run?

    OK, boys, time to haul ass over to DEC^H^H^HCompaq^H^H^H^H^H^H^HHP and dig out those Alpha chips! Anyone got an P-II or a K6-III we can borrow until then?

  • dumarses (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dopeghost ( 107650 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:27PM (#12514533) Homepage
    thats stupid .. i mean atlhons started at, what, 500mhz? ...or what if someone ends up upgrading their machine from a duron/celeron?

  • Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobbis.u ( 703273 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:28PM (#12514546)
    ...that users will try Starter Edition, find out it has all these restrictions and assume that all versions of Windows must suck and just load a free, non-crippled OS (mentioning no names!).

    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.

    • They'll user starter, find out it sucks, use Home and/or Pro, find out it sucks, get bigger and better machines and find out that after all these years IT STILL SUCKS.

      Then mumble something about "need Word and Outlook for work..." as they go to buy another copy.

      /Why Yes, this WAS typed on a mac!
    • "...just load a free, non-crippled OS (mentioning no names!).

      I hope you meant a pirate copy of XP Home or Pro. Although you did say non-crippled.

    • Re:Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:09PM (#12514869)
      ..that users will try Starter Edition, find out it has all these restrictions and assume that all versions of Windows must suck and just load a free, non-crippled OS (mentioning no names!).

      or 'worse', say 'screw this' and get a warez version of full xp pro, with sp2 already integrated.

      its not hard to find. the corp edition has no need to phone-home to register and reregister whenever you change hardware.

      or so I hear, from rumor. yeah, rumor.
  • This is slashdot, so of course I didn't RTFA, but going by the headline - XP Starter edition is supposed to be aimed at low end machines. I bought my first Athlon probally 3 - 4 years ago. I think it was 1.2ghz. That's not low end these days?

  • shoot(this.foot); (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AaronStJ ( 182845 ) <AaronStJ@nOSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:30PM (#12514561) Homepage
    Apart from the fact that this kind of artifical limitation is really stupid, not to mention evil, it looks like Microsoft is really shoorting themselves in the foot here. From TFA (emphasis mine):
    Microsoft hopes to use Starter Edition to familiarize these markets with its products. Plus, because these countries are also havens for piracy, the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker wants to use perks such as bug patches and alerts to demonstrate the value of legal software.

    Microsoft claims they're using this software as a way to get pirates to start paying for the software. But tell me, what is the average person going to use: the "starter edition" that doesn't even work on their PC, or the pirated edition that does? The value of legal software indeed.
  • If no special instructions are in use, can't somebody just find the right system call to replace and return whatever string is acceptable?

    That was the old hack proposed for defeating CPUID in the first place.

  • Probably to prevent competition... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xeroc ( 877174 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:32PM (#12514575)
    It seems there doing this to prevent PC Manufacturers from bundling it with the cheaper end of the higher-end PCs - probably because buisnesses and others who need a lot but don't need all the full features, would want it, as it is about half as expensive as Home edition, and a lot cheaper than Professional.

    If they let it run, then, it would effectively compete with their full versions, hurting their profits!
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This is what happens (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When a company has monopoly power in a market. Imagine Ford coming out with a car that will not start in certain supermarket parking lots, or a TV that will not show you a specific channel. Why is it Microsoft can get away with shit like this but other companies in other industries can't?

  • Hackable (Score:2)

    by hey ( 83763 )
    Sounds like a fun thing to try to disable.
    Also pretty easy since you can search for the
    instruction in question.

  • great.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mindwar ( 708277 )
    it doesnt run on athlon/p4 ant cant run/runs like shit on lower. gee. thanks MS

  • More Monopoly... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Spacepup ( 695354 )
    This just reeks of some hush hush deal with a hardware vendor to keep people locked in to older hardware in a bid to get rid of over stocked parts.

    I'll be the shoe thanks.

  • Upgrade cost? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 )
    My question is, if someone finally gets the money to upgrade their low-end CPU to something faster, why should the OS stop working?

    The point is to help poor countries develop, not to just "help poor people in poor countries do basic stuff".

    What if those poor countries were given high-end computers as DONATIONS? Like for schools, universities, etc?

    IMO Microsoft is asking for BIG trouble here. Key term: Discrimination.

    • The market this version is aimed at is not the sort to open their machine for any reason, much less to replace the core componant of their system. Sure it's easy for us to do, but the people who will buy machines with this bundled will never crack the case, unless directed to by tech support (which in India, would be your neighbor most likely...)
  • ...is the part that says "Microsoft ... wants to use perks such as bug patches and alerts to demonstrate the value of legal software."

    Interesting, that bug patches are cast as "perks." - Of course leaving unaddressed the value of software that doesn't need bug patches in the first place.

    So maybe that's why there are so many bugs in Windows -- So we'll all be so dang grateful when we receive the bug patches!

    This finally explains why I like Microsoft products so much...
  • If you're buying new hardware and you're forced to buy OS with it, and only option is the MS one, you can save hundreds of dollars by selecting this crippled version instead.
    Naturally it won't be any use, but since your company already has volume license to Win XP Pro, you can just replace the crippled versions with the proper one.
  • People at Microsoft never can stop surprising me. Too bad it's in the bad sense most of the times.

    Think about it. You live in India. You consider yourself lucky for being able to afford a computer, but still, you have a very limited budget compared to Americans / Europeans / whatever. What would you do? Buy a better system and get a pirated version of the OS or do The Right Thing (TM) and buy a worse system but with a legally acquired OS? Sure, you won't help your friend whose family is starving, but you'

  • Marketing Geniuses (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lheal ( 86013 )

    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

    • Re:Marketing Geniuses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OverflowingBitBucket ( 464177 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:55PM (#12514763) Homepage Journal
      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.

      They are effectively competing against themselves with the cheaper product and have to make sure it isn't too good. I'm not sure it is a matter of shame, just trying to capture an additional market segment.

      For example, with my software [entropicsoftware.com] I have a number of different editions, effectively free, budget, and full (I call them the Free, Silver and Gold Edition). It took a decent amount of extra work to develop the Free and Silver Editions, and this was done by disabling features that would have been simpler to just leave in. Some people are simply not going to want to fork out for the Gold Edition, so if I can give most of what they want through one of the Silver Editions, at least I made a sale when otherwise I wouldn't have. But the danger is that the Silver Editions and the Gold Edition do compete with each other. If I leave too much in the Silver, everyone will buy that, and the Gold sales will suffer.

      I think the general gist in both cases is to make a product that is good enough for people who don't want the full version, but not so good that it affects the sales of the full version.

    • Re:Marketing Geniuses (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:01PM (#12514799)
      Imagine being the engineers tasked with writing the feature that disables the OS on "advanced" CPUs. What pride they must have in their work.

      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:5, Interesting)

        by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @08:43PM (#12515101)
        I'll give you another example of this kind of thinking. About twenty-five years or so ago, my father was systems manager working on HP3000 systems (MPE, and all that) for a State of Illinois database installation. They had a ton of Hewlett-Packard disk subsystems there, and they decided to upgrade them ... I believe they ordered double their existing capacity on several of the units. Out comes the HP technician, and he just went down the line of disk drives, opened their rear panels, reached in and flicked a switch. Voila! Twice the storage. He showed Dad where the switch was, and said that they were welcome to switch the rest of them on the same way, but that HP wouldn't service them if they did.
    • Imagine being the engineers tasked with writing the feature that disables the OS on "advanced" CPUs

      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. jus

  • What am I supposed to run this on? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:40PM (#12514651) Homepage
    I dont get this. EVERYONE (well, most) have p4s an athalons. What am I supposed to run this thing on?????

  • Another reason to use OSS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MikeCapone ( 693319 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .llehretleks.> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:49PM (#12514722) Homepage Journal
    This is just another example of why OSS is the way to go in developing countries. I even think that this move is condescending from microsoft (and it isn't the first time).

  • Leverage War (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:56PM (#12514767) Homepage Journal
    I remember when MS introduced Windows 3.0 in 1990 (the first "working" version of the OS), it ran on DOS - or any of the competing DOS-compatibles. However, Win3.0 was hardcoded to fail (quit with a vague error) if it found that it was running on, I believe, "DRDOS". Because DRDOS was the #1 competitor to MS-DOS, and part of Microsoft's strategy was to use demand for Windows to compete (unfairly) with DRDOS. Such bundling leverage of market dominance has made MS what it is today. AMD gets dissed because its popular with Linux, the only credible competition to Windows (Apple doesn't use AMD, so it's immune to that competition). I wonder what exactly MS has against the P4?

  • Whhaa... huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tony ( 765 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @07:57PM (#12514772) Journal
    ...it is designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors...

    Uhm.... isn't it just MS-Windows XP with stuff ripped out? If so, then it is NOT "designed for low-cost, entry-level desktop PCs running value-based processors." It is designed for the exact same computers for which XP is designed.

    It's marketed for cheap-assed computers. But it was designed for x86 computers.
  • Do they mean that it's actually possible to run Windows on anything less than a P4 or Athlon?
  • Marketing person #1: You know, we have a real problem with piracy in developing nations.

    Marketing person #2: Why is that?

    Marketing person #1: I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that our OS costs more then most families make in a month.

    Marketing person #2: If they're poor, why do we even want them as customers?

    Marketing person #1: Because they're probably not going to be poor forever. Plus, there's like a billion people in India alone.

    Marketing person #2: A billion? Please, we're professionals here. Stop making up numbers like "billion" or "gazillion".

    Marketing person #1: Sorry about that. But there *are* lots and lots of people there. I think most of them do tech support for Dell computers for like a dollar a day.

    Marketing person #2: Wow. That is a lot. Well, we have to figure out a way to make money off them.

    Marketing person #1: I just got a great idea! Let's strip out some of the functions of our operating system and sell it really, really cheap over there.

    Marketing person #2: Awesome idea, dude. We can call it "Windows Jr."

    Marketing person #1: I don't know about that name... it sounds too much like IBM's PC Jr. and nobody liked that product. I mean, wireless keyboards? What kind of crazy person would want that?

    Marketing person #2: The PC jr? That was released like a gazillion years ago. What are you, 30 or something?

    Marketing person #1: Shhhh!!! I'm 31, but the boss thinks I'm 23.

    Marketing person #2: I'll keep my mouth shut if you buy us drinks after work, old man. How about we call it "Windows XP: The Revenge of the Sith". Wait, no, even better, "Windows XP: The Starter Edition"

    Marketing person #1: That's way better! I would have never thought of that on my own. I guess it's because I'm so old.

    Marketing person #2: I see a problem though. How can we strip down a product when 95% of our users never use the extras we bundle with Windows to begin with?

    Marketing person #1: We could pull out Internet Expolorer

    Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

    Marketing person #2: That's rich old man. But seriously, how can we do it?

    Marketing person #1: We can make sure it only runs on obsolete computers.

    Marketing person #2: Of course!! Celerons, Durons... poor people use those, right?

    Marketing person #1: Heck if I know. I'm not poor.

    Marketing person #2: Then it's settled. We'll make a version of Windows XP, remove the "calculator" and "MS paint" applications, and sell it to poor people. We can even market it as an upgrade to Windows ME.

    Marketing person #1: Didn't you get the memo? We want people to use ME. That was one of the clauses with Gates' contract with the devil.

    Marketing person #2: Whatever. Let's go to the bar.

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