Microsoft tries to avoid disruption

Microsoft is to launch a crippled 'starter edition' of it's new Windows 7 operating system for Notebooks. The starter edition will only run 3 applications at a time. As several people have pointed out, Windows 7 runs fine on Notebooks, so why do it?  

It's probably about avoiding disruption. Notebooks make computers affordable to people to whom they would have been a luxury item previously. I think this version is not targeted at current Windows customers, but at the people who would love a computer but can't quite afford one. MS will make it easy for people to upgrade to Windows 7 in a few minutes, so it has nothing to do with the capability of the notebooks.

The cheaper the hardware relative to cost of the operating system, the more the choice of operating system becomes an issue. Desktop and laptop PC's cost several thousands and the operating system a hundred at best, so the difference between comfy old Windows and unknown Linux was a small part of the purchase price and the operating system could be bundled as part of the purchase. The difference here is a almost a factor of two with the full Windows OS on. So if Microsoft OEM's bundled a full version of Windows 7 there would be a sizeable market of people who can't quite afford the Windows version but can afford the Linux version. These are the people I believe MS is targeting with the crippled version - MS wants to make choosing the Windows-based system easy again.

If MS did not do this, Linux would be adopted by a user base of, for instance, kids for homework, particularly in emerging markets. For those old enough to remember the early days of Unix, this is exactly why Unix caught on - it was affordable to those at the entry end of the market who were fed up waiting for their turn on the mainframe, and ran on low-cost systems. Because of this it became popular in university departments. Eventually these people grew up, graduated and got purchasing budgets of their own - and they bought what they were comfortable with. The danger for Microsoft is that the same will happen with its OS's.

What I believe Microsoft is doing is trying to prevent itself being disrupted by offering a lower-price-point OS that can again be bundled by OEM's for a small cost. This is exactly the same strategy as Intel offering the Celeron as an entry-point processor to prevent itself being disrupted by a cheap startup. MS doesn't want to lose the new market of have-nots, a proportion of which represent its future customers for its more valuable products. 

However, whether crippling the OS is the right approach is highly dubious - the Celeron was slower and lacked some functionality, but once in a PC these shortcomings could be overcome by code, albeit running a bit more slowly. Kids want to experiment and download a whole slew of dubious but entertaining and free little programs, so they might switch to Linux (at the cost of a little experimentation) to get more freedom. 

I think it would be better to restrict the ability to run the more expensive programs. This would mean those who can afford, for instance, full MS Office (as opposed to the student edition) would be forced to upgrade to the full Windows 7. The kids can continue to download and play with free software while the rest of us get the performance we are used to with the full OS.