The next versions of Windows

[jducoeur]

For those who care, here is a description of the Windows 7 lineup.

A few interesting notes are coming out of this. They're trying to reduce the confusion that arose from having too many versions of Vista pushed at users, so they're stripping the message down: for most people, they are pushing either "Home Premium" (with the Aero interface and all the Media Center goodies), or "Professional". Professional is specifically a complete superset of Home Premium, rather than being the annoyingly overlapping sets they were in Vista. Professional will have some useful features for home office use, such as remote desktop hosting capability, but Home Premium is really what they're pushing for all normal users.

"Ultimate" will still exist -- essentially a single-user version of the "Enterprise" version -- but they're going to softpedal it as irrelevant to the average user, since it was more trouble than it was worth for Vista.

So (you ask) if there is a "Home Premium", what the heck happened to "Home Basic"? That exists, too -- but will not be available in the US. It'll be a little stripped-down in terms of UI, and only available to emerging markets. (Which means it will take approximately ten minutes before it is also available in the US. It'll be interesting to see how the pricing comes out on eBay.)

And there will also be a "Starter Edition", designed for netbooks, which can apparently be described as "Windows Sucking Edition" -- it will have an artificial limits placed on it, so that it can only run three apps at a time. This appears to have the sole purpose of convincing people that they *actually* need to buy Home Premium instead, although in fact it might suffice for a true low-end netbook. Mostly, it helps convince me that Windows is a poor choice for a true netbook, and you really ought to just install Linux instead. Which, in general, is looking like a more and more plausible option these days. (I'm seriously considering a Dell Mini 12 with Ubuntu, as possibly my perfect netbook...)

Comments

Howls of derisive laughter, Bill

[metageek.livejournal.com]

it will have an artificial limits placed on it, so that it can only run three apps at a time.

Boggle. I run more than three apps at a time on my handheld.

Re: Howls of derisive laughter, Bill

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I wonder how they distinguish these limits from the rest of the ones they built in? ;-)

Netbooks

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

If the Mini 12 is a netbook, then I've been using netbooks since 2003: it's nearly the same size and weight as my old PowerBook. That said, I think the Mini 9 is probably the best netbook on the market. And that in spite of the fact that I generally have as low an opinion of Dell as I do of Microsoft.

Re: Netbooks

[jducoeur]

As far as I can tell, the Mini 12 is simply a repackaged Mini 9, with a 12" screen and a larger keyboard. Form factor is apparently about the same as a Macbook Air. It sounds like a fine compromise to me...

And, sadly, I have to support this stuff!

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

Their support info for Vista was inadequate at best, now we get 6 freakin' versions of 7. And let's not forget there will be all the 64-bit versions, too.

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Is a netbook like a laptop?

And what's the point of limiting the number of programs you can run? If you run more than it can handle, you'll slow it down so much it's unuseable or crash it and then you'll learn not to do it again. Right?

[jducoeur]

Is a netbook like a laptop?

Correct. "Netbook" is the currently-vogue term for very cheap, low end laptops that are powerful enough to run a browser, check email, and stuff like that, but too wimpy for many tasks. They're generally very small and light (some of them as little as two pounds, with tiny screens and terrible keyboards), and under $500 (sometimes as low as $300). My OLPC was essentially a very early netbook, albeit a pretty weird one.

Basically, it's a fad that is quickly turning into a genuine market niche, due to the economy as much as anything. The smart money says that the lines between "netbooks" and any other notebook computer will blur fairly fast. For example, the Dell Mini 12 that I'm intrigued by is just a *little* too large and too expensive to fit most definitions of a "netbook", but it's pretty close.

And what's the point of limiting the number of programs you can run?

To be annoying. No, really.

This is what is known as "up-sell" in the technology business. You sell someone something that is *almost* really great, but turns out to be irritatingly limited, in order to convince them that they really need to buy the more-expensive full-power version. In this case (I suspect), the main point of Windows Starter Edition, from a business POV, is to convince people to pay for the unlock codes to turn it into Windows Home Premium.

They can get away with this mostly because netbooks are fairly limited computers to begin with -- if you only bought the machine to run Firefox anyway, being limited to three apps isn't *completely* insane. But it's not really the hardware imposing the limitation: it's just Microsoft doing so artificially, to convince people that they really want the complete operating system...