WinXP Starter Edition - MS spins an ecosystem from crippleware

Zardon · Aug 11, 2004, 01:10 PM

It's cheap, it's crippled, and if it's a bid to convert Asian PC users from pirate copies of Windows, it's surely futile. Microsoft announced Starter Edition as a five country, one year pilot to be tried out in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and two more that have yet to be announced. It's essentially a localised version with much of the useful stuff in XP pre-broken, and it will probably cost around $30. This is clearly a lot less than the full price version, but a lot more than the pirate version, or the free pirate version you borrowed from a friend. From the point of view of the cash-strapped individual user with ambitions beyond their budget it isn't an attractive prospect, nor does it significantly reduce the overall entry cost to IT; $500 for a PC may not seem too much in the developed world, but elsewhere it's unattainable.

register

Aug 11, 2004, 01:10 PM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	WinXP Starter Edition - MS spins an ecosystem from crippleware It's cheap, it's crippled, and if it's a bid to convert Asian PC users from pirate copies of Windows, it's surely futile. Microsoft announced Starter Edition as a five country, one year pilot to be tried out in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and two more that have yet to be announced. It's essentially a localised version with much of the useful stuff in XP pre-broken, and it will probably cost around $30. This is clearly a lot less than the full price version, but a lot more than the pirate version, or the free pirate version you borrowed from a friend. From the point of view of the cash-strapped individual user with ambitions beyond their budget it isn't an attractive prospect, nor does it significantly reduce the overall entry cost to IT; $500 for a PC may not seem too much in the developed world, but elsewhere it's unattainable. register