If netbooks don't have XP started edition or vista starter edition, why would they have windows 7 starter edition?

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass [...] terFS.mspx

Ok, so I liked VIsta, but most people didn't...This is probably the worst sales concept I've ever heard. What is MS trying to pull? Nice, lets try to actually push people to OS X.

I personally liked Vista and happily use both x64 and x86 variants but this? Really?? Sure, for the netbook crowd it could work out fine, but anyone else; you know that manufacturers will try to load this up on unsuspecting buyers and just hate the whole experience, never looking at what Starter means. I want Win 7 when it's out, but Ultimate or Premium. This is going to push customers further away...

Doesn't matter , someone will come up with a way to bypass it sooner or later. just another pos they made to make their main product cost seem correct.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/w [...] arter.aspx
Windows Vista Starter is not available in developed technology markets such as the United States, the European Union, Australia, or Japan. Windows Vista Starter ships on lower-cost computers sold by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Microsoft OEM distributors in 139 countries.

In essence, Windows Vista Starter is ideal for beginner computer users, and is the most affordable edition of Windows Vista.

@predaking MS will stop supporting XP once Win7 is released & the few netbooks with vista on them didn't sell well because of their high price and/or slow performace. Vista is way to resource intensive for the likes of a netbook. To tackle both these problems MS will make a Win7 starter ed. for netbooks since starter ed. is cheaper than the Home ed. and Win 7 is not as resource intensive as Vista.

While I don't know that this sales design is the best, it IS a cheaper alternative for those that are very basic users. That's the difference between Win7 Starter and XP Home on netbooks. It costs less. Win7 Home will cost you a bit more if you want the full functionality. Then it's not really different from what you pay for today on XP Home.

Vista Basic 64 rocks. Lean and mean, no bloatware or MS crap sofwtware I didn't want. I'm glad I saved money and have a faster system than people who got suckered into the premium versions.

I hope Windows 7 has a similar version that is just the core OS without the software added in. I do need to open a lot of programs and such, so "starter" isn't going to cut it I guess. Hope MS reads this post so they make a version just for me

Microsoft is so worthless. This is one more major company creating stupid, pointless, and idiotic limits on their product in order to force people to spend more money on another product which is not actually any better.

The next upgrade from this just won't have the limit. Then perhaps it'll throw in some other stupid freebie. These artificial limitations companies put into products like this are simply greedy.

If they really want to create a version of Windows 7 for folks who can't / won't spend as much as Microsoft wants, they should just charge less.

I'll bet you if they charge far less anyhow, they'd likely see more sales, and a little less piracy.

@phatboe Phatboe Vista starter and XP starter are not available for developed markets.

Why would windows 7 be?

LOL
A netbook user isn't going to (and cant go to) Mac OSX.

Sorry to ruin your day, but most people are PC users because most people cannot afford Apple hardware.

It's Microsoft's ship to sail. MSFT price is hanging on this release. The price will be based on people buying products. I am perfectly happy with Windows XP and can see myself remaining very happy with it for several more years, as I seriously doubt that the game manufactures are going to stop supporting it any time soon. While I may miss out on the spiffy DX10 and the DX11, I will not have to deal with Vista SP2 in the mean time. I am hoping that many people, all over the world, do the same as I plan to do, and skip yet one more generation of Microsoft products.

My biggest hang up with Vista, and now 7 is the UAC use. If they were smart, they would make it a smart application. Instead of using a carte blanche approach to launching programs, it should be capable of making many of the choices it forces on the user, repeatedly. Thus you either shut it completely off, or suffer with it.

My recomendation is to make a setting that works as a firewall with antivirus software as the first key, and as a last resort, user input. Basically, it would open the file in a virtualized area, allow antivirus software to check it, and if it is ok, do a checksum and mark it as always allowed, until the checksum is invalidated. Using it as a check ONCE verify/block, would take 98% of the irritation away,while taking not one bit of the security away. Only when a program is flagged as virus or possible virus, would UAC prompt the user whether it wanted to continue, and because it did this virtualized test of the program, it would be able to give accurate detailed information to the user, which they could then use to make a decision as to whether to allow or block the program from moving into the sommon working space.

As a safety measure, safe mode would have options to reset individual program UAC flags or system wide UAC flags.

A Stoner,
You do realize that Microsoft really doesn't care that you're not buying Win7, right? A small amount of their income is OS sales, they really don't care. People like you, who don't know how to use the OS then come whining with feedback in the wrong places, is why we can't have anything nice. It's why Vista was given false, bad hype for years.

I see you wrote a bunch of garbage about security, why don't you take that to Microsoft feedback instead of a comment section on a news and review site?

The starter edition is an elegant way to translate Windows TRIAL EDITION. I disagree with this 3 progs limitation, but I don't see any other alternative except charging less for the basic edition, but then, everyone would jump to the basic bandwagon... I personally use vista HP for about a year, and I never missed having Aero on. Aero doesn't add nothing really useful and just bogs the system down and raise power consumption...

I think this will only drive users to format their brand new lappies and put a pirated copy of XP. Problem solved.

another april fools posting? the question is will a netbooks even support a single running windows 7 application, let alone 3 at the same time. i have windows 7 installed and i've stripped it down as much as i can and i just cant see how they are going to get the windows 7 pig, which is really nothing but vista tweaked, running on a netbook with the little amount of memory they normally come with. they maybe talking about those new netbooks that are really low end notebooks and priced at $500+, but not the 200 onces.ok they'll get it running, but it will be very slow as it spends all it's time thrashing, can you imagine running office 2007, ouch, i have 3 gb machine with dual cores and gets slow as i consume 1.5 gb...

You do know that Win7 is barely over the resource usage of Windows XP on a small-memory system, right?

You do know that NT6/6.1 uses more memory when you have more, and unloads that extra usage when something else needs it, right?


Oh right, you don't. You don't know what you're talking about and I suggest you learn. You're spreading bad hype and driving away customers from an OS because YOU don't understand them.

P.S. New OS are small upgrades from the last, I suggest you look at the history of Windows.

Nearly everyone here, including the article, has any idea what the point behind Windows 7 Starter is.

Win7 Starter is for NETBOOKS and similar applications. If it ships on your new Dell, that's Dell's scamming, not Microsoft's.

The 3 application limit is because Netbooks (by definition) probably won't have more than a browser open.

The limitation is a bit unnecessary and extreme. I regularly run more than 3 apps on my Aspire One netbook with WinXP - if all Win7 netbooks come with this limitation, XP will still be the de-facto Netbook OS (together with Linux).

I wonder if I can run a program that spawns off other programs as child processes. Seems to me Microsoft would have to limit the number of visible programs open. But then what happens if your Antivirus pops up a warning, but you can't open it because the message window would count as an additional program putting you past your limit? What happens if one program you use often likes to spawn other processes in the background?

I'm sure there will be work arounds, and those work arounds will be quickly exploited.

I haven't used a netbook, so I have to ask the question. Are netbook users really going to be running an e-mail client, a web browser, a word processor and, say, a photo editing program all at the same time? on a 1 or 2 GB Atom processor? On a 9 inch screen? Do they demand the same capabilities they get on their $800 desktops from a $200 netbook? I'm not being sarcastic; I really wonder if users will demand so much from these devices.

My opinion - I suspect that netbook users are generally checking e-mail, surfing the web and running one more program as a norm. Is it really that harsh a limitation?

One last question. Are we all going to get sued for using the term "netbook"?

I beg to differ, The Dell Mini 9 fully supports OSX

http://mydellmini.com/forum/os-sho [...] &sk=t&sd=a

Completely ridiculous and just shows how greedy and out of touch Microsoft is. What is the logic in having an inferior, stripped down POS of an operating system and actually going out of your way to inconvenience the user with artificial limitations?

QF-****ing-T

+1.

April 1...

That is soooo an engineers joke.

Absolutely. On my 8.9" Aspire One I typically run:
Live Messenger (open, not just in the tray)
Live Mail
2-3 instances of firefox, each with 1-3 tabs (I use instances for the general category of websites, then tabs for individual websites)

While those are running I find myself sometimes also opening one or more of the following: OpenOffice Writer, Paint.net, Spotify, WinAmp or Media Player.

I often have 10 buttons or more on the taskbar for various running programs. RAM usage is typically below 700MB and CPU usage

Actually the 3 applications limit has been known for a long time.

with limitations such as this being placed into the base windows 7 platform. It makes me wonder why anyone going the route of cheap netbook would wish to use Windows at all? Most people who are netbooking, aren't looking for power computing and don't intend of playing intense games on their machines.

It almost seems smarter to forget Windows 7 Basic entirely and go the route of a pre-installed Linux package. Free, No limitations, and unlimited expandability.

This is just the ticket that Linux developers needt o jump all over to gain that impressive market share in low end computing.

wow, driving away customers, i didn't know my purpose in life was to bring in suckers, i mean customers

i don't work for microsoft, i personally dont' care either way, i posting just what i see, what are your credentials there buddy, what's your beef, jack, i'm running windows 7, running it for some time, i can see how much memory it's using, how much of my cpu it's utilizing, i can compare it to windows xp, windows 9x, windows nt, ect. i have them all running here, have a good number of machines running all kinds of oses, aix, hpux, solaris, ect...

maybe you should take the time to do the same before telling me i'm driving people away, i'm sorry to hear microsoft created a dud with vista and windows 7 is nothing more than a tweaked vista. google for it, see infoworld and other publications and what they have uncovered about what is under the hood, their benchmarks, ect.

i'm so sorry, not, that i'm not lead like a mindless sheep by marketing hype, excuse me, i've worked too many years in the industry getting noobs like you and friends to pay gold for sh*t to be fooled by any of it.

haven't you seen what happens, the hype, the interviews, the favorable previews, ect. then you buy the game and it's like eh... the magazines, websites, ect have sold their sold for a free copy, for the swag.

oh by the way how do you get your copy of windows, do you go out and buy it, do you get it pre installed on some machine you buy, i get my copies free of charge directly from microsoft. got a case of vista ultimate edition the other day, a way of them saying thanks for helping them out, got lots of copies of all their books, software, ect... been to microsoft got thousands of dollars of goodies for dropping by, nice place, nice lunch, nice people, nice company store,

got so many copies i don't know wtf to do with them anymore. maybe ebay ;-)

oh by the way if they want a netbook that runs half decently they would have you install windows 9x and office 9x, because thats basically the hardware you are getting, slow cpu, not much memory and storage, unless you want to spend $500 or more, ok harware prices will come down, just about what was around when it was around, not vista nor windows 7. netboks run linux well because linux is good with lowend hardware, always has been, and yes i've run linux since day one, since before linux, any of you all heard of minux and xinu... go google for it, jr. ah, the good old days when people knew reality and were not blinded to the thruth by marketing billions...