08.31.09
Vista 7 Starter Edition Called “Too Wimpy” by IDG, Compatibility Problems Foreseen
Summary: Elements of truth about Vista 7 trickle in just 7 weeks before its release
AS WE ARE WELL aware of the reality behind Vista 7, there is no need for CNET to hype it up in vain, but CNET — along with other such publications — has Microsoft pay a lot of money to advertise Windows. About 2 years ago, CNET signed a very special deal just to advertise Windows Vista; it was not an ordinary case of advertising.
As more and more people find out, the illusion of Vista 7 on sub-notebooks not only evades the reality that Vista 7 is too heavy for what we used to know as "sub-notebooks" (or “Netbooks”); what gets installed is significantly inferior to GNU/Linux distributions because it’s only Stater Edition. PC World has the new article titled “Windows 7 Starter Edition Is Too Wimpy for New Netbooks” and it says:
Given Starter Edition’s lameness, you’d think that netbook vendors might shun it and install Windows 7 Home Premium instead. Not so. Samsung says its Go netbook will ship with SE, starting in November. Nokia’s Win 7 plans are fuzzy at this point. And Dell recently told me that its netbooks will continue to offer a variety of OS options, including “Ubuntu and Windows-based editions.”
Something’s fishy here. It’s not as if the entire genre of netbooks is too wimpy to run Windows 7 Home Premium. If that were the case, Microsoft would have announced recently that Win 7 SE users will be able to upgrade to Home Premium for $80. Rather, this is about Microsoft’s desire to cripple the netbook category and upsell consumers to Home Premium.
Sadly, many buyers will shell out $400 or so for a reasonably-powered netbook with a 10-inch display, only to learn they’ve been saddled with a feeble version of Windows 7. A classic bait-and-switch? It sure looks that way. It’s also a recipe for consumer ire. Nobody wants to pay a fairly significant sum for a consumer electronics device, only to learn they must pay an additional $80 for features they were expecting.
Why are hardware manufacturers not ignoring Vista 7 then? Is it pressure and blackmail? Looking at news headlines from the past week, there is not even one about “Vista”, whereas there are 11 for “Windows 7″, which is not available yet. Microsoft is hyping up Vista 7 not just for direct buyers of the software but also for OEMs that buy this software from Microsoft and then force customers to get it with a new computer (about 80% of licences are sold this way).
Vista 7 is not much different from Vista when one descends back to reality. Even the same compatibility issues persist and Microsoft intends to charge a lot of money to resolve this issue that it itself created. From GCN:
Microsoft introduces application compatibility help desk
[...]
However, those beset by such problems need to be prepared to open their wallets to get such support. Microsoft’s Advisory Services help costs $210 per hour and is available for up to 20 hours. The program doesn’t provide any on-site support.
“Windows 7 backward compatibility is now a “profit center’,” argues one of our readers. This is actually very interesting because Microsoft can now make its software less secure, then charge for “security” packages, as it already does. Likewise for compatibility?
Watch this new experience:
Uninstaller overcomes Office 2007′s Error 1310
[...]
Now that I’ve managed to uninstall a Microsoft program I didn’t ask for, don’t want, and couldn’t get rid of, I can now install the Microsoft application I paid more than $100 for. Why would anyone choose to do business with such a company?
That last question is of course rhetorical. Time to face reality. █
“Acer and Intel, for example, are already complaining that Windows 7 Starter Edition simply won’t sell.”
Andrew Macabe said,
August 31, 2009 at 7:20 am
Netbooks with discrete graphics have been ready for a while, that is, being able to render high video def (h.264, mkv-matroska) using a seperate gpu.
They have not been release to market because OEMs are waiting for the Vista 7 starter to be available to the public (according to Lenovo and Samsung). It seems here we have a hardware product , paralyzed or frozen technology, being held back due to Microsoft’s OEM strangulation.
Then on the side of the coin, when it does get released will it be like the Medions which seem to be GNU/Linux repellant through its BIOS.