BBC: “Microsoft’s plan to impress new users with a cut-down version of Windows has come in for strong criticism. The software giant has created Windows XP Starter Edition for countries where the PC-owning population is still low. But analysts from consultancy Gartner said the cut-down version would be “frustrating” to use and warned firms and consumers to stay away from it. “
The big restriction to XP Starter Edition is that users can only have 3 applications running concurrently. What’s the rational thinking behind this?
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Wow, only 3 apps running concurrently? I had no idea.
How often does any serious computer user (or hobbyist) have less than a handfull of (5 or more) apps open at the same time?
Hmmmm, this doesn’t sound like a good move for MS. As a matter of fact, if this is the first impression one gets, it makes any other OS look better.
Are you sure the Open Source movement isn’t behind this stripped down version of XP ;~>
August 16th, 2004 at 11:40 am
Gah. Whatever BBC, and whatever to you Phil. You should know that this was never targetted at people who were going to run multiple apps.
The rational thinking is simple: The starter version is cheap. If all you need is cheap, you get cheap. Home Edition is more expensive, for if you don’t need networking. Pro is for if you need networking.
3 stages. For 3 different types of users.
If you had a better idea for what they should have done to satisfy people who actually need an incredibly cheap version of Windows, let’s hear it.
August 16th, 2004 at 12:11 pm
Get what you pay for i suppose.
August 16th, 2004 at 1:40 pm
Sounds like a good investment for little kids to play with. My daughter (nearly 2), has the most annoying ability to load half a million programs on my computer that I rarely use, forcing them to do things I didn’t know were possible.
At least with this version, I can minimise damage to my desktop :D
That’s about the only use I can think for it. Even my mum uses more that 3 programs at once and she is by no means a power user. Then again, 3 isn’t really that bad. One for email, one for internet, one for word processing (or similar). While its painful for power users, I’m sure it could have its place in the market.
Just means you could run it on a low spec PC after all (in theory).
August 16th, 2004 at 6:42 pm
This XP starter is a bit strange. Maybe I’m missing something here but, the target market is what?
Developing countries in Asia who are on the wrong side of a digital divide?
They (MS) have targeted 5 countries: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and two other countries in Asia to distribute the OS bundled into select computer packages.
The XP Light computers will run a max of 3 programs and have no networking capabilities.
Are there enough people in this chosen demographic who will surf the web, log onto messenger and run some Mp3’s with Media player for this to be a winning proposition.
Originally I thought that this was about providing low cost (business) computing to areas that were unable to access the technology due to social or financial barriers but that obviously isn’t the story.
As mrsmiley says,
Sounds like a good investment for little kids to play with.
Is that the point of this exercise?
August 16th, 2004 at 8:28 pm
explorer.exe + msn.exe + iexplore.exe and that’s it ?
what about all the spywares and services I want to run in background ? :p
August 17th, 2004 at 4:03 am
I don’t know. I mean, the target audience its aimed for, I mean, lets say a situation…
I read some email, while writing a letter, and listening to music. Thats my limit.
It seems too much of a restriction to make it worthwhile to sell well.
August 17th, 2004 at 6:52 pm
This would be my idea of hell :P
My taskbar normally has at least 32 windows open (normally about 48 windows). Thats before you count all my background services, such as IIS, Apache, SQL Server, MySQL, VMware services, AntiVirus, VNC, bluetooth, etc.
– Jason
August 19th, 2004 at 8:03 am