Latest Windows a non-starter for some

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Cpt Neverdie

Windows Starter Edition comes unstuck on Athlon and Pentium 4 processors
Microsoft really doesn't get it. Remember the Starter Edition we keep hearing about? You know, the one that PC makers only have to pay a few dollars for, that you cannot buy as an individual and is for beginner computer users. On the last point they are not joking: the operating system will not work on a computer with an Athlon or Pentium 4 processor.

The new starter edition for India will not run if it detects a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor. You have to put it on machines with a Celeron, Duron or Geode chip. Microsoft seems to not understand why they are not selling more copies of the product in the poorer nations. I'll give you a hint: crippleware has never done very well, anywhere, ever. The question is why do they do this. One reason I have seen is that MS doesn't want people bundling the OS into machines destined for company use. One group of people that will want the cheap OS are the game players _ they just want a life support system for their next gaming adventure. But they want power and speed, something not supported by XP crippled. Game players also typically have the best connections for software of dubious origin.

So what is Oracle doing in secret with the Mozilla Foundation? We know that it has something to do with the Lightening project, which is the one linking Thunderbird with Sunbird. The joining of those two projects will produce an alternative to Microsoft Outlook.

At the moment there are a bunch of people out there paying a lot of big money for Exchange. A decent open source collaboration alternative would be the key to making a few cracks in Outlook's market domination. If you think about it, the core of just about everyone's Microsoft use is somehow related to Outlook, either the full version or Express.

If Lightening did go into operation and there also happened to be an open source version of, say, the Oracle Collaboration Suite, then you can do the maths. Like Firefox, it is unlikely to take out Microsoft or IBM but they could put enough pressure on the lowering of prices and on the next feature set. Or perhaps this is all just idle speculation and Oracle wants to make sure that OCS works neatly with Lightening comes out. Right now, however, no one is saying anything.

Is there a case for software piracy? I was asked recently to check on the prices for an AutoCAD product. Like always I check the best price in the US and use that as a base for comparison. I then add five percent for the import duty, another seven percent for VAT, and that gives me a base price for the product in Thailand. Remember that I am using street prices for my calculations, not trade. The product in the US was $3400, which you will admit is not cheap.

I then contacted one of the distributors listed by AutoDesk in Thailand and they quoted me $7300 for the same product. Now I am not sure how you would react to this, but I was astounded. I was expecting perhaps a 20 percent markup, but not more than double. If you factor in cost of living, the price is about four times what it should be for the local market.

Now imagine a poor student or a startup surveying or designing firm. For an individual with a base salary of, say, 20,000 baht this would represent over a year's salary. To be fair this was a 5-user licence pack, but they calculated it locally as five times the single price. A 5-user pack is typically less expensive than simply multiplying by 5.

I sent this information off to AutoDesk for their comment but don't have one back from them as I write this. I pointed out that it is very hard to complain against piracy when the prices are so high. Am I advocating software piracy? No, of course not, I am asserting that it is very easy to understand why people may want to pay 120 baht instead of the real price though. Support for applications in Thailand tends to be poor but I also admit that I don't know what it is like for AutoDesk products.

Industry news

The new Xbox, the 360 console from Microsoft, has been announced. The new unit has an oversized power button surrounded by a ring of LEDs, has two slots for 64 MB memory cards and another for a 40 GB hard drive. Peripherals include a wireless headset, an EyeToy-like camera, and a DVD remote. It also looks like at least one version or model will support Windows Media Center. The unit is fairly powerful in processing terms _ three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each with two hardware threads per core, a VMX-128 vector unit per core and 1 MB L2 cache. The graphics processor has a 500MHz processor with 10 MB of embedded DRAM and supports 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines. These are a few highlights _ the full spec list is long and impressive. Over to you, Sony and Nintendo.

Will your next PDA have a hard drive? Probably. PalmOne's LifeDrive is real and will have a 4 GB drive, come with a 320 x 480 LCD and run Palm OS 5.4 "Garnet" on a 416MHz Intel XScale processor. You also get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The unit will weigh 193grams and at 11.8 x 7 x 1.9cm is no Mini O2. Worth keeping an eye out for this one.

Hitachi has claimed the notebook hard drive performance, beating out the latest by Seagate. The 2.5 inch drive runs at 7200rpm, has 2MB of cache and is shipping the parallel ATA version now with a Serial ATA in July. Shock resistant to 1000G non-operating and 300G with an average latency of 4.2ms, and 10ms average read time. Soon available in a notebook near you.

Microsoft has kind of named a date for Office 12, or Office 2006 _ July 2006. This is at least better than "around the time Longhorn ships." Office 12 will come with improvements in workflow, rights management and advanced scheduling. Getting people to buy it may be an issue, as Office 97 still accounts for about 30 per cent of the total customer base.

With the recent announcement from Toshiba the size issue is really not that significant anymore. The 30 GB to 50 GB gap between HD DVD and Blue-ray has shrunk to just 5 GB, with the latest storage capacity bumped up to 45 GB. They do this by inserting a third layer onto the media.

There are reports of two new vulnerabilities for those using FireFox 1.0.3. A cross-site scripting flaw and a remote system access flaw were recently found and, if combined, can lead to an exploitation of your browser. There are no known cases of this happening so far, however.

Lastly for this week in the "it's not really news" category, more and more people are starting to listen to digital music over the radio. Right now the radio listeners are still in the majority but the balance continues to shift. No one seems to know when the balance will move in the favour of digital listeners but sometime in the not so distant future the radio stations will have to find new uses for all that transmission gear.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/25May2005_datacol55.php

Captain Neverdie

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Message:	On 2005-05-25 15:50:48, Neverdie wrote >Windows Starter Edition comes unstuck on Athlon and Pentium 4 processors >Microsoft really doesn't get it. Remember the Starter Edition we keep hearing about? You know, the one that PC makers only have to pay a few dollars for, that you cannot buy as an individual and is for beginner computer users. On the last point they are not joking: the operating system will not work on a computer with an Athlon or Pentium 4 processor. > >The new starter edition for India will not run if it detects a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor. You have to put it on machines with a Celeron, Duron or Geode chip. Microsoft seems to not understand why they are not selling more copies of the product in the poorer nations. I'll give you a hint: crippleware has never done very well, anywhere, ever. The question is why do they do this. One reason I have seen is that MS doesn't want people bundling the OS into machines destined for company use. One group of people that will want the cheap OS are the game players _ they just want a life support system for their next gaming adventure. But they want power and speed, something not supported by XP crippled. Game players also typically have the best connections for software of dubious origin. > >So what is Oracle doing in secret with the Mozilla Foundation? We know that it has something to do with the Lightening project, which is the one linking Thunderbird with Sunbird. The joining of those two projects will produce an alternative to Microsoft Outlook. > >At the moment there are a bunch of people out there paying a lot of big money for Exchange. A decent open source collaboration alternative would be the key to making a few cracks in Outlook's market domination. If you think about it, the core of just about everyone's Microsoft use is somehow related to Outlook, either the full version or Express. > >If Lightening did go into operation and there also happened to be an open source version of, say, the Oracle Collaboration Suite, then you can do the maths. Like Firefox, it is unlikely to take out Microsoft or IBM but they could put enough pressure on the lowering of prices and on the next feature set. Or perhaps this is all just idle speculation and Oracle wants to make sure that OCS works neatly with Lightening comes out. Right now, however, no one is saying anything. > >Is there a case for software piracy? I was asked recently to check on the prices for an AutoCAD product. Like always I check the best price in the US and use that as a base for comparison. I then add five percent for the import duty, another seven percent for VAT, and that gives me a base price for the product in Thailand. Remember that I am using street prices for my calculations, not trade. The product in the US was $3400, which you will admit is not cheap. > >I then contacted one of the distributors listed by AutoDesk in Thailand and they quoted me $7300 for the same product. Now I am not sure how you would react to this, but I was astounded. I was expecting perhaps a 20 percent markup, but not more than double. If you factor in cost of living, the price is about four times what it should be for the local market. > >Now imagine a poor student or a startup surveying or designing firm. For an individual with a base salary of, say, 20,000 baht this would represent over a year's salary. To be fair this was a 5-user licence pack, but they calculated it locally as five times the single price. A 5-user pack is typically less expensive than simply multiplying by 5. > >I sent this information off to AutoDesk for their comment but don't have one back from them as I write this. I pointed out that it is very hard to complain against piracy when the prices are so high. Am I advocating software piracy? No, of course not, I am asserting that it is very easy to understand why people may want to pay 120 baht instead of the real price though. Support for applications in Thailand tends to be poor but I also admit that I don't know what it is like for AutoDesk products. > >Industry news > >The new Xbox, the 360 console from Microsoft, has been announced. The new unit has an oversized power button surrounded by a ring of LEDs, has two slots for 64 MB memory cards and another for a 40 GB hard drive. Peripherals include a wireless headset, an EyeToy-like camera, and a DVD remote. It also looks like at least one version or model will support Windows Media Center. The unit is fairly powerful in processing terms _ three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each with two hardware threads per core, a VMX-128 vector unit per core and 1 MB L2 cache. The graphics processor has a 500MHz processor with 10 MB of embedded DRAM and supports 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines. These are a few highlights _ the full spec list is long and impressive. Over to you, Sony and Nintendo. > >Will your next PDA have a hard drive? Probably. PalmOne's LifeDrive is real and will have a 4 GB drive, come with a 320 x 480 LCD and run Palm OS 5.4 "Garnet" on a 416MHz Intel XScale processor. You also get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The unit will weigh 193grams and at 11.8 x 7 x 1.9cm is no Mini O2. Worth keeping an eye out for this one. > >Hitachi has claimed the notebook hard drive performance, beating out the latest by Seagate. The 2.5 inch drive runs at 7200rpm, has 2MB of cache and is shipping the parallel ATA version now with a Serial ATA in July. Shock resistant to 1000G non-operating and 300G with an average latency of 4.2ms, and 10ms average read time. Soon available in a notebook near you. > >Microsoft has kind of named a date for Office 12, or Office 2006 _ July 2006. This is at least better than "around the time Longhorn ships." Office 12 will come with improvements in workflow, rights management and advanced scheduling. Getting people to buy it may be an issue, as Office 97 still accounts for about 30 per cent of the total customer base. > >With the recent announcement from Toshiba the size issue is really not that significant anymore. The 30 GB to 50 GB gap between HD DVD and Blue-ray has shrunk to just 5 GB, with the latest storage capacity bumped up to 45 GB. They do this by inserting a third layer onto the media. > >There are reports of two new vulnerabilities for those using FireFox 1.0.3. A cross-site scripting flaw and a remote system access flaw were recently found and, if combined, can lead to an exploitation of your browser. There are no known cases of this happening so far, however. > >Lastly for this week in the "it's not really news" category, more and more people are starting to listen to digital music over the radio. Right now the radio listeners are still in the majority but the balance continues to shift. No one seems to know when the balance will move in the favour of digital listeners but sometime in the not so distant future the radio stations will have to find new uses for all that transmission gear. > >http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/25May2005_datacol55.php
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