Devil's Deal

With the cost of the Windows operating system remaining relatively unvarying, even as PC hardware components costs have dropped over the last 10 years, PC purveyors in the up-and-coming markets are more and more being driven to Linux in order to maintain their profit margins. The poor more and more are going to the net, the world wide web. I think it’s a trend that should continue.
However you have many in the world who want to highjack the marketplace. It stands to reason that if hardware price is down then why not is cost of Windows operating system still so high and getting higher each time. Microsoft has identified emerging markets as a major sales opportunity partly few PCs have yet been sold there. Can’t afford XP you poor souls then the XP Starter Edition is for you guys. Company executives have said it (Windows XP Starter Edition) is not a stripped- down version of Windows, but instead a tailored version in local languages.
Oh really? The starter OS lacks support for advanced features such as ability to establish multiple user accounts on a single PC and limits the number of applications that can run at one time to three. Also the OS will only work with some CPUs such as Intel’s Celeron®, Celeron D and Celeron M; AMD’s Duron™,Geode™ and Sempron™. There’s an 80 GB maximum hard disk space and last but not least 256 MB for maximum RAM.
So someone explain this to me how is that not XP stripped down. Oh I know. The people in poor countries are use to getting seconds. In the U.S., about 60 percent of households have a PC. In India the figure is below 2 percent. Russia and China are below 5 percent. Its getting harder to sell the U.S. public magic beans, now its time for a new group that has not caught onto the game.
It’s sad to see PC vendors in the over seas market more and more being driven to make a deal with the devil. The XP Starter Edition is just that a devil in camouflage. There are other alternatives out there, so don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t have a choice.