Comments on: HP to offer 3 Windows 7 flavors on netbooks

By: Goodman

Goodman — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:33:33 +0000

Actually, the easy and probable solution would be for Microsoft to offer Windows 7 Home Basic to netbook makers. Currently Home Basic is only going to be available in emerging markets. I think Microsoft is going to have to back down here eventually, as Starter is just going to tick off users, and Home Premium suffers too great a price disadvantage relative to Linux on netbooks. Microsoft will likely do what they have to, to keep Linux from getting a foothold in the consumer market. (On the other hand, Microsoft seems really, really committed to the proposition that the operating system should be the ONLY element of a PC that doesn't go down in price, despite the fact that their economies of scale mean that Windows is basically a license to print money.)

By: levill

levill — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:46:17 +0000

If it gets bad rep, they will eliminate it from the developed market. They will play a balancing game of fighting off the Linux competition, not killing their own profits and making sure they don't shoot them selves in the foot in the eyes of the consumer. I think they have a plausibly working formula here. It is definitely better than anything I could come up with (and I am really smart

By: levill

levill — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:43:28 +0000

This is interesting. So if Skype/IMs minimize into the system tray, that is good enough for most people I know. My wife uses a browser and openoffice. (Really). On rare occasion the Kodak photo program. She has skype running. That's it. Most users are more like my wife than me for example who is quite amused by the OSX netbook experiment on how many things you can run at the same time (That is one of my concerns in considering OSX on a netbook

By: HP to pack up three versions different of Windows 7 for netbooks | eeePC WorldWide News

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:08:54 +0000

[...] Computerworld via Liliputing [...]

By: jake123

jake123 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:32:35 +0000

I love xp home.

Vista(win7) w/o aero = why vista(win7) at all.

MS is going down.

By: Brad_D

Brad_D — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:40:46 +0000

Starter Edition is garbage. There is no technical reason for it to even exist, other than MS being greedy a-holes. Hopefully it will get the same bad rep that Vista got (deserved or not) and people will largely avoid it in favor of Linux and tell MS where to get off.

By: Brad Linder

Brad Linder — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:45:10 +0000

Actually from what I've been reading, it looks like anything that runs in the system tray instead of the taskbar doesn't get counted. And that means that you can get around this limit by using apps that minimize programs to the system tray instead of to the taskbar. But that's not something that most customers are going to realize.

By: Mikez

Mikez — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:42:02 +0000

It may be they do not count “services” only interactive programs in that limit.
Otherwise it sounds more like an advanced DOS with eye-candy.

By: HP Offer Three Versions Windows 7 on Netbook | Gadget Folder Free Gadget Review

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:10:42 +0000

[...] Source HP to offer 3 Windows 7 flavors on netbooks [...]

By: domino

domino — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:08:45 +0000

3 program limit?
Is this a joke?
Turn on your browser and listen to some MP3's while doing it and you have one thing left?
Hmm, do I REALLY need to have that IM going? Or Skype?
Nah, lets leave them closed and if someone wants to talk to me they can just use the phone.

I presume this limit doesnt include AVG, firewall, Ad-Aware and the other programs I have to run whenever I have to boot into Windows?

By: TheHoldSteady

TheHoldSteady — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:49:06 +0000

The three program limit will be completely alien to most computer users and I haven't a clue how a computer company like HP can clearly explain this strange limitation to potential customers. Many have made hay with the return rates of (some) Linux-equipped netbooks (you heard me, Psion), but the returns of Starter may lap the field.

By: levill

levill — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:18:33 +0000

Being from Hungary (a country much similar to what you describe) but having lived in the US from 1995 to 2006 I can say I have a unique perspective on this. And you are definitely right about one thing. An average Hungarian consumer is definitely more likely to sit down and figure out how to get a functional OS on his or her machine if the crippled one seems a little too crippled. Either that or pirate a functional OS. The US consumer is more likely to pay up. Hungarians have less choices, are used to having to figure things out and definitely have less financial resources to dump into luxuries (like not having to sit down and figure things out - having the solution handed to them for a fee.) But the trend is definitely going towards the US model where people are willing to pay just a little bit more to get a better service. We'll see how much the economic recession will reverse this trend. To an extent it certainly will.

As for me, you do not have to convince me that I have choices. I actually don't think I have a choice because I absolutely refuse to use Windows on any personal computer of mine. The Windows software I do need to use are on my work computer to which I can RDC into. I just bought two netbooks. One for myself (with an Ubuntu) and one for my wife (which shipped with Vista but that'll be the first thing to go).

I guess I am not the only person reading this blog so it is not a bad idea to reiterate that people do have choices. And, no, it is not that hard to install Linux.

By: Portable Monkey

Portable Monkey — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:45:52 +0000

Overcoming the 3 program limit for the Starter Edition sounds like a trivial matter for a hacker… I'm sure we'll see hacks for this pretty quickly…

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:40:21 +0000

Just a quick note here … if one has been using Windows for a while, and consequently one has some files on the netbook that one doesn't want to “just wipe” … then a few extra steps are needed. Either (a) in Windows, just after running Unetbootin, one needs to copy the “Documents and Settings” directory from Windows onto the USB stick, or (b) one needs to do the same thing in Linux when running the liveCD before one runs the “install to HD”.

Finally, once Linux is installed to HD and running, one needs to copy the previously-saved “Documents and Settings” from the USB stick back on to the netbook.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:17:46 +0000

>"You and I both know this. We also know never to buy a crippled Windows machine."

Unfortunately, in my country, there is almost no choice. Either one buys a reasonable-spec netbook machine with Windows, or one buys a considerably-reduced-spec netbook machine with a constrained and quite lame version of Linux. This is all that retail outlets will offer for sale. Dell (of all OEMs) has even refused to offer for sale its Linux version of the Mini in my country.

Fortunately, the Windows Home XP that comes with these machines is obviously heavily subsidised by Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it transpired that Microsoft was paying OEMs to pre-install Windows on these machines. Given that fact, it is no skin at all off my nose to just wipe Windows. It amuses me to think that Microsoft might have even made a small contribution to the purchase of my Linux netbook machine.

Windows 7 starter edition would be roughly the same situation as is current with Windows XP Home. Not worth anything, no impact on the cost price of the machine ... so no disincentive whatsoever to just wiping it after you first open the box and have verified that Linux works on the machine by booting the liveCD-on-USB-stick.