Windows 7 Starter Edition is a $875.000.000 rip-off!
Obviously all six (yes it seems there will be 6 different editions) editions will be different. However one edition seems to lack a lot more features than the others and is still very pricey.
Windows 7 Starter Editions lacks:
- 64 Bit Support
- Mobility Center
- Aero Features (oh snap!)
- Premium Games (something like Tinker!)
- Media Center
- Windows Touch (no touchscreen panning!)
- Advanced Network Backup
- Domain Joining
- Encrypting File System
- Group Policies
- Location Aware Printing
- Offline folders
- Presentation mode
- Remote desktop host
- AppLocker
- BitLocker
- Branch Cache
- Direct Access
- Enterprise Search
- MUI Language Packs
- Virtual Desktop Interface (you can boot from a virtual disk in Win7)
- Virtual Hard Disk Booting
.. and worst of all it only supports 3 concurrent applications (what the hell!)
According to Microsoft the Starter edition was mainly made for netbooks and low-end PC’s, therefore only 3 concurrent applications will ensure the best performance. Special software like firewalls and Anti-Viruses are excluded from this if Windows is able to identify them.
This seems like a good strategy to make people buy Home Basic or Premium and spend $25-50 more on Windows 7. For the enduser this might not be that much, especially since the bundled packages are cheaper than $200 (if they are preinstalled on your netbook or PC) but this will make Microsoft make millions.
Microsoft will make almost a billion if people buy Windows 7 Home instead of Starter:
Let’s do a simple calculation here: Microsoft sold 140+ million copies of Vista! If Microsoft also sells 140+ million copies of Windows 7 then maybe 25% (rough speculation) might want to buy the Starter edition, simply because there are more endusers than companies.
25% of 140.000.000 = 35.000.000
If only %12.5 decide to buy Home Premium instead of the Starter-edition then this would be a nice sum:
__________________
875.000.000 Dollar
I think the sum might be even higher than that because Windows 7 might sell more than 140 million times. The question is how much money did Microsoft loose because of their unsuccessful Vista campaign!
The user should be able to decide how many applications will run smoothly on their PC/notebook and not Microsoft. Digg this to boycott it!
Must-read: Why Windows Vista is still better than Windows 7. Some people just ignore the facts.
Date posted: February 11, 2009
Article on arid.net (http://digg.com/d1pTAK) that talked about windows 7 starter edition and had suggestions on a better way to implement the starter edition for netbooks.