Windows 7 Starter Edition: Designed to be upgraded?
By: Mark O'Gorman | August 12, 2009
Well over at the ComputerWorld Blogs, Preston Gralla has taken Windows 7 Starter edition for what it really is, a way of baiting people into buying the higher priced version of Windows 7, not that there is anything really wrong with that.
Windows 7 Starter Edition is only for low powered netbooks and will only be sold on netbooks with screens under 10.2 inches, 1GB or less of RAM, a single core processor running at 2GHz or less and a max of a 250GB hard disk or 64GB solid-state drive. According to Preston Gralla, Windows 7 Standard edition is just a “bait and switch” system in which these low powered netbooks are advertised by the dealer as coming with Starter Edition for a nice low recession appealing price, and then once they have your attention they talk you into getting the more pricey versions of Windows 7 on a higher powered and higher priced netbook. Whether this will work is yet to be found out, but with only a few months left before official Windows 7 public release, we haven’t got a long time to wait.
My question to you readers, would you be swindled into buying a higher powered netbook with a more pricey version of Windows 7 if you had indeed already got your eyes set on a nicely priced netbook that came with Windows 7 SE? Would you stick to your guns and keep to the cheap system? Or would you upgrade depending on the offer? Let us know here at Product reviews!
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If I am looking for a low end netbook I will likely buy based on battery life and hardware spec. If the version of Windows that comes on it too crippled I would just drop back to linux. I am windows guy, but if I am going for cheap then linux will work for most of the basics. I stick to my more powerfull systems for the hard core stuff. Netbooks for me are relagated to e-mail, remote support and basic web browsing. For my customers that want to use a netbook for more then the basics I won’t suggest they even look at a unit with the SE edition on it. The SE edtion is to lame and if you buy the upgrade you might as well had the better unit. MS is going after the uneducated users with the SE edtion and that is really pathetic to prey on them like this.
Only used it for a day, but win7 ultimate is pretty nice (on my eee 1005ha)…. I would need to see exactly what features are cut, from ultimate to standard editions. Realistically most people including myself, are going to be using these relatively simple machines for relatively simple things. SE will come with media center, aero-nuevo and most of the basic computing features that netbooks are ideal for… hopefully it will be a streamlined version, because I doubt I actually need 49 running processes, which i have now with ultimate.
There is hardly any difference between the different versions (except obviously this Starter edition which restricts hardware).
About the only advantage for Windows 7 Ultimate is Bitlocker.
You can see the version comparison chart here:
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/30/windows-7-whats-the-difference-between-the-editions