Microsoft Releases piece of crap scaled down XP in India.
What a joke, read the part in red below… Why would someone even in India want a piece of crap… Personally I think this will encourage more underground piracy. This will give people a taste of XP and unfortunately, they’ll want more… So they’ll seek out the full copies instead of buying the full version.
Just go to SuSE Linux or Linspire or any of the MANY totally free versions of Linux and you’ll get a MUCH better computing experience compared to “Mini-XP”!
And found this interesting piece of information when searching Google.
As reported by C|Net Windows XP Starter Edition will only work on “Intel’s Celeron chips, AMD’s Duron or Geode chips, or processors from Via Technologies.” If one tries to run it on a processor such as the Intel Pentium 4, the operating system will read the processor ID and stop functioning. This was done to prevent “Starter Edition from supplanting standard versions of Windows XP.”
Microsoft hopes software will help reduce piracy
BANGALORE, India – Microsoft Corp. launched this week a low-cost, stripped-down version of its Windows XP operating system in India targeting users who don’t speak English.
The U.S.-based software giant hopes to sell 200,000 Hindi copies the first year, said marketing and business operations director Ranjivjit Singh of Microsoft’s Indian division. Nine other languages will be added later.
“It is aimed at first-time users looking for simple, easy and local language-capable software,” Singh said.
He declined to give the price for Windows XP Starter Edition, saying it will be bundled with entry-level personal computers that cost $432. Windows XP’s full version sells for about $85 in India.
India is the largest of the five emerging computer markets that Microsoft is targeting with its stripped-down operating system. The others are Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Russia.
India has only 16 million computers for more than a billion people, but sales are growing 35 percent each year.
Microsoft enjoys a 90 percent market share in India. It hopes cheaper software will help reduce piracy in a country where only one in five computers use more expensive licensed software. Microsoft also faces a growing threat from the Linux non-proprietary operating system.
The XP Starter Edition can run only three programs simultaneously, lacks capabilities for home networking and multiple users and has lower-resolution graphics than more expensive versions.