Microsoft: Most Users are ‘Starters’

      by Wyatt Walter

Microsoft has announced that it will be selling Windows 7 Starter Edition as a lower-cost option for low-end netbooks. The edition limits users to only 3 concurrent applications to be run. Microsoft has cited performance on the low-end netbooks and a survey that showed that on average, a consumer uses just over 2 applications at a time as a reason for the offering. They deny trying to force users to spend more money on the premium version of Windows 7, but the restriction also includes applications that are running in the background which seems extremely limiting. For instance, if I wanted to run an IM client and leave my mail application running in the background to check for new messages while browsing the web I cannot play music via another application since that would push me over the limit.

I’m not quite sure what Microsoft is trying to do here.. I know that just buying the Premium edition is only $50 more, but this is getting out of control. The version really brings no value to the marketplace other than costing consumers more money when their needs change. If their true reasoning behind the restriction was to make sure that the lower-end machines performed the way they should for users, wouldn’t it make more sense to allow the users to just leave extra applications open rather than re-launching? The upgrade path to Home Premium is simply the purchase of a license key. I haven’t found any documentation on how much this license would cost. This is almost worse than Cisco shipping firewalls that have gigabit ethernet ports on them only to restrict them to 10/100 via software..

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Feb 10th, 2009

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