Neowin.net

would be an awesome option for photographers (192GB)

Sorry, mate, but my ext4 supports partitions up to one exabyte. And it's even speedier than ext3.

Why is Microsoft artificially limiting their Windows 7 x64 editions to 8, 16 and 192 GB? Current x64 platforms can access up to 1TB of RAM and eventually we will have platforms that will be able to access up to 16EB of RAM.

By the time people exceed those ram limits, windows 7 will be old. Its Microsofts way of keeping people upgrading

Man is about Ram, not about file systems (hard drives)

Which in Vista I believe is 16 Terabytes, minus 64 kb.

Don't think so, mate! Seriously. Windows 8 is going to be so late they will have to have a Windows 7b or c or will it even matter then?

Excuse me; how many motherboards support more than 24 GB of RAM today?
(Paul is discussing *system memory*, not hard drive space.) Quite honestly, except for hyperniche uses, most would be hard put to use even six gigabytes of system memory, let alone 24 or more.

Finally, *any* user that goes to the trouble of building a system that would be running a x64 edition of Windows above XP64 should buy *at least* Home Premium, if not Ultimate, as anything less is deliberate underbuying, and said user deserves the limits they have placed on themselves.

Yea, mate, and I'm here with a one exabyte limit (just slightly more than 16TB) but of course where can I get a 1 exabyte drive?! Well, at least if one's not available, it's at least possible!

See what I did there?

Last edited by Dark Scizor on 26 Apr 2009 - 04:15

...and he's a newsposter?

...and that means he's perfect? Lol.

16GB for Home Premium is WAY more than enough for damn near everyone (and probably will easily be enough for the life of Windows 7)... heck i dont even see 4GB becoming 'not enough' anytime soon because with ram getting bigger and bigger nowdays without programs taking up mass amounts of ram i dont even see 4GB becoming obsolete any time in the foreseeable future let alone say 8GB which should be plenty for a good 5+ years without breaking a sweat.

192GB = overkill (unless maybe your some super high up business?)

i was thinking the same thing!

Maybe those who would use this OS for server specific services and will not justify spending more money on the server OS would find more access to RAM a viable option. Though it's clearly obvious MS is tailoring each edition to a specific audience by limiting the amount of RAM available to the user)

If you use Blender then you could use some more RAM. But not that much, lol.

In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 2^64-1 which is over 1EB, but although you're bragging on about ext4 supporting 1EB, you do know that it's limited regardless by the harddrives use of MBR and LBA addressing right?

... what?

When I wrote "Systems" I meant the AMD64 and EM64T systems, not the hardware built around those two systems. Sorry, I should have been clearer.

I think 32 or 64G would be a better limit.

Right now, even fairly cheap PCs come with 4G; virtually anyone getting an i7 machine is getting 6G or more.

We're really only two doublings away from hitting a 16G limit.

For comparison, when XP came out, 256M and 512M were common memory sizes.

You had three, if not four doublings available before hitting the limit. And we still ended up with a lot of "I put in 4Gb, why can't I use it all" anger.

In addition, Microsoft has to be ready for another XP/Vista situation.

If Windows 7 is well-recieved, but 8 is not, or simply comes late to market, then they could be selling Windows 7 machines longer than they expect. Arbitrary limits should be set to assume it.

What's annoying though is it's all market segmentation, not a technical limit the way it was with 32-bit XP.

The point I am trying to make (as is Microsoft) is that the limits (practical) are defined by the motherboards themselves, despite how much RAM the processors themselves could attach to.

Also, unlike XP (or even Vista) the minimum memory requirements for the respective SKUs have not gone up with the versioning; in fact, the minimum/recommended system-memory requirements are actually unchanged from Vista (and, realistically, have actually dropped; I run 7 Ultimate RC 64-bit with just a single gigabyte of RAM and do an average level of multitasking getting real things done; while going to a second gigabyte will get me thoroughly out of the swapfile, it's not a necessity).

One question - why would you need one exabyte? Are you a mirror for Google or something?

192GB of RAM? Are we sure that isn't a typo? It seems like a huge jump: 8, 16, 192? Man, that's insane! That thing would cane! I've been using build 7077 on my laptop and it runs on 2GB of RAM beautifully, way better than Vista. 192? omg lol. Yes please

He's just trying to brag, yet totally missing the fact that we're not talking about file systems but RAM. And even then, he seems to miss the fact that NTFS can support up to 16EB but that MS limits it for other reasons.

I'm sorry, but what? Most quality DDR3 motherboards have 6 memory slots, meaning a 4x6 combination will give you 24GB. Larger memory quantity is possible by using larger memory modules. So if we disregard the price of it all, which is still very high, these combinations (16-48 GB) are certainly possible.

Sorry James, but are you some Anti-Microsoft - Pro-Linux fanboi or something?

Firstly, you are saying that Windows 8 is going to be so late that we are going to get Windows 7 editions a lot like Windows 95 editions...? A bit early to start throwing that around aren't you?

Also, *we* and the article creator etc are talking about RAM, not hard drive space, so why the hell mention ext4? Who cares which one store the most hard drive space? We won't be using that type of storage for quite a long while.

I really wouldn't of expected that from a Neowin News Poster...

There is a tech explanation somewhere but I forgot where it was. It makes sense to limit it.

Dont think so....Tech is moving faster than ever in our wildest dreams so (Im not saying this is true but) we may see 16GB ram chips in a 5 year time period.

Windows has always been filled with artificial limitations. Its their way of making more money. Luckily Linux doesn't have such limitations placed on it.

Too bad that we're talking about RAM memory here. No such things as partitions and file systems in RAM.

Why is it that the Linux trolls always come out in force in the Windows 7 topics and news post. It's wonderful that EXT4 supports 1EB hard disks, now come back and reiterate that point when that actually means something, if standard hard disk drives hit 1EB sizes in the next 10 years i'll be shocked.

T, FTFY.

Generally, AM2+/AM3/LGA775 boards will have 2 or 4 slots, to match with a dual-channel memory controller. LGA1366 boards will have 3 or 6 slots, for the triple-channel controller, with the exception of a few which have just four slots and a warning "only use slot 4 if desperate for more RAM"

Didn't say that. Just figured a news poster for a tech site would know the difference between RAM and a hard drive...

I think 16GB for home premium is ok assuming MS keeps to it's 3 year release cycles. I really don't think RAM needs are going up at the rate they were earlier in the decade for general consumer purposes even if motherboards do have that level of support. Those that are spending that much on hardware probably won't be overly fussed spending a tiny bit more for the more expensive versions anyway.

Professional workstations based on Core2 Xeon CPUs can support up to 32Gb of RAM
The newest Core i7 Xeon based workstations, like the HP Z800 will support up to 192Gb when appropriate memory modules are released in Q4'09

ITs been stated by microsoft that there ram maximum is determined by what they can actually get in their hands to test. so it could handle more but they havent been able to test it.

TYAN S2915A2NRF-E My motherboard supports 64 Gigs but I am only using 16 gigs in it to play World of Warcraft and a few Apps

Even although it is only DDR2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...pk=S2915A2NRF-E

Sorry but comments like this from News Reporters here make this site lose credibility a LOT. I mean... wtf this dude can't make difference between RAM and HDD. Probably is blinded by his linux fanboy love.

Hm, only one exabyte? NTFS supports up to 16 exabytes last time I checked.

Let the OS wars BEGIN! Oh, err... continue I mean. LOL

Windows Server editions support up to 2 terabytes of ram, so I don't think that's the issue. And really, if you want to use that many system resources, you can afford the Server licence, why mess around with a consumer desktop OS?

If you're really interested here's a screenshot with the proof.
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/a...21/3092070.aspx

Last edited by Saucy on 27 Apr 2009 - 12:24

Do you know what RAM is? Because after your last 2 posts, you're really making me wonder.

Microsoft knows that most PC's don't support over a certain amount of RAM thus the reason for the limits.

Server hardware is different it can support larger numbers and most don't even support over 64 Gig of RAM now. I've seen one server EVER in the real world with 256 Gig and that's pushing it, sure there are servers out there that push those limits but in a normal and in most corporate environments you'll hardly ever see over 64 Gig on average.

Sorry this was a filler post only because you can't delete a double post. Sorry...

Last edited by Cellar Dweller on 27 Apr 2009 - 16:46

First off most motherboards for most PC's do not support over 8 Gig and maybe some at 16 Gig if you are lucky, and if you can find the ram sticks at 4 Gig is another story, for what you'd be putting any of those OS versions on. 4 slots by 2 Gig sticks or 4 slots by 4 Gig sticks.

That's why they have Windows 2008 Server for Servers...

As much as you may hate it the reason why MS is putting memory limits on the desktop OS is to force people to upgrade. When XP was released 256MB seemed like a lot and 512 made you a God, now almost a decade later XP's 4GB memory limit is becoming one of the more compiling reasons to upgrade. My theory is that MS is building limits into the 64-bit versions to force people to upgrade at some point down the road so they don’t have another XP that no one wants to get off of. 16GB for Home users probably means they will need to upgrade their OS every 4 years (sense memory seems to double every 18-24 months). The higher limit for the professional editions represents not only the higher memory requirements for some business applications but also the stability of being able to run the same OS for many years that companies want. Yes, it is all about revenue assurance. Open-source gets a 1+ on this one.

A news poster should know the difference between RAM and disk storage. Hopefully it was just misread...

MS, you'll please many many people and also increase your profit margin by allowing home users to purchase additional licences, or introduce 'family packs'. You do this with Office and is favourable towards the enterprise market, why limit your users?

It's called buy one copy and install it on all your computers! Lol, oh yea, illegal, right.

They should have a family pack, otherwise ppl will probably do what I said.

@andrewbares then those copies would not activate

wanna bet?

I think it should be "formerly Virtual XP", as mentioned in this previous news entry.

The text in italics is directly from his blog post. Check the "interesting details" link

You're a calculator. What do you know?!

Because you already payed for the main OS when you bought your MAC, If you go and buy a PC with windows already installed you will find the upgrade versions are around that price or actually cheaper.

Im not sure what your trying to argue with your intel point? It really doesnt make sense I wasnt aware intel was running a development team as big as Microsoft to program an OS aswell as design there hardware?

For the record Microsoft also make alot of hardware aswell...

And if Microsoft offered a similar deal for home users, they would be sued (for dumping). Apple has done a VERY good job painting themselves as *David* (and Microsoft as Goliath), whether the comparison is real or not. Because of that perception, there are certain things Microsoft is barred from doing under the law (because they have the "dominant" position) that the competition is permitted. Microsoft (over a decade ago!) wanted to offer a retail bundle of Windows and Office (upgrade editions) aimed at home users and non-enterprise users (Windows 95 and Office 95 Professional, to be precise). The OEMs didn't complain, the VARs didn't complain, either. The complaints came from Apple and the Department of Justice. This was even though the offering would have been no more than what Apple was already doing. Apple's argument (which the DoJ concurred in) was that Microsoft merely doing the same thing that Apple did would be tantamount to killing Apple. Lastly, the multi-license deal is for five *upgrade* licenses (in short, for five Macs, as Leopard can only legally be installed onto Apple hardware). Apple's already collected their *tax* when it originally sold those Macs; therefore, it can make it look like you're getting a deal by shaving money off software that is unusable elsewhere.

@Vandalsquad

Let's turn it financial for you to better understand what I'm saying:

MS Net Income 2007 - 15 Billion dollars

Intel Net Income 07 - 7 Billion dollars

Well... As you can see, MS mainly sells software. That said, once the software is done, you can say that you just duplicate it to deliver. But Intel has to make the hardware to sell it (more costly, less margins). So, the point is, if you want to compare, we can say that, maybe, MS could cut their software prices by 50% and still proportionally have the same income (or more) that Intel does.

AMD - Apple

Intel - MS

Can you understand this correlation and why they are the Golliath that can ask for whatever they want high prices for their software?

You've got to be kindding. Does MS not provide support for its software? Does it not patch and update its software almost weekly? Does it not handle the entire LIVE setup, similar to Google? They have an online group that is massive, as big (notice i did not say better) as Google, and just as comprehensive.

Intel on the other hand researches and develops hardware and software (driver) for their own hardware. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Mac, to round out this argument, has both software and hardware, but because you need the hardware they make for the software it is a small closed circle.

This not an apples to oranges comparison. This a comparison of pricing and costs point of view. And it does make sense, but you're failing to understand the financial. And I can't help you with that, because you would have to study for some years as I did.

Easily duplicated? Just try and make your own version of Windows. Good luck with that. Since you're probably talking about copying the binaries or install discs, that's like saying a book shouldn't cost $10 because it costs virtually nothing to print.

I mean seriously, books can cost $10 or even $100 (or more) even if they're written by one person, maybe working with a few editors or other contributors, over a few months.

Windows 7 was developed over 2-3 years by thousands of bright, hard-working people (who need to be paid) and requires an enormous investment in tools and other R&D costs. Nevermind the cost of Sustained Engineering, the on-going development of free additions like the Windows Live Essentials, or support.

Oh, and Leopard costs roughly the same as Windows Vista. The standard client version of Leopard is $129 for the upgrade disc. Vista Home Premium is usually $110 for the upgrade disc. Vista Business is a steal compared to Leopard + ARD.

Brandon, I'm not saying that the effort for building Windows is easy or low value. But the margins are huge. MS could have the same net income or even a little lower one by reducing prices and increasing demand for a highly pirated software. My comparison to Intel comes from the fact that both companies are huge, but Intel has costs for developing products r&d like MS does. But Intel's income margins are lower due to the cost of the hardware. MS could reduce prices keeping salaries and improving demand for better products, not Starter or Basic humilliating lack of features.

I'd like to know *how* you know the margins are huge?

And just for the record, a paper book costs a HELLUVA lot more to print than the pennies it takes to burn a DVD. And since MS doesn't provide manuals, etc., that's pretty much their entire distribution costs.

Except what it costs to write the documentation. (Microsoft *still* has to do that, even if it is entirely HTML, as it has been from XP Service Pack 2 forward.) Also, how much does it cost to run Microsoft Press? (In case you have forgotten, Microsoft Press is the documentation and publishing arm of Microsoft, which the company owns entire. It is directly responsible for *all* the documentation for every Microsoft product, both hardware and software. Electronic or bound and printed; if it's documentation, it goes through Microsoft Press at some point.). I'm a Microsoft shareholder, and Microsoft Press is not exactly a gold mine, or even a silver mine. (In terms of revenues produced directly by Microsoft Press itself, it may be, at most, an aluminum mine.) So the *margins* of Windows (or even Office) are huge simply because a lot of those margins appear in other parts of Microsoft (Microsoft Press, for example); is the cost for producing the documentation for Office charged to the Information Worker Division, for example?

Go get their financial reports online and have some business administration classes. I don't have time nor space here to explain it to you.

What you say doesn't make a lot of sense. The money used to "duplicate" the hardware isn't exactly the greatest. More expensive than DVDs? Hell yeah, but when you are using material from India, it gets cheaper, trust me.

Actually my comment doesn't make a lot of sense to you because you obviously can't understand it, nor made research to support yours with actual data.
Thus it is very obvious that material and HR from India, Malaysia and China are cheaper. So what?

So they(MS) should ignore the economics and sell it at a cheaper price? They have to sell x amount of copies at a y price in order just to break even for their R&D spending, fortunately for them they've been able to do more than that and make big profits, but because they make profits, they should lower the price and reduce profits?

Doesn't make sense from a business standpoint, I'm sure there are many economists calculating the price based on demand and break-even analysis. Basically if it works, why change it. What works for one company doesn't necessarily work for the other, Intel and MS both sell at a price to maximize profits.

Because lowering prices to increase demand and still maximize the profits is a risk that they don't want to incur, because they are too conservative. But the results can be very good in the long-term. They spent almost 11 BILLION DOLLARS only for marketing and sales. This is an absurd compared to Apple, where it's close to a billion or less.
Now you tell me: does Microsoft REALLY need 11 billion dollars a year to promote their products? The internet and mouth to mouth promotion is what really drives the company success. Almost everyone needs Windows. Now if they just quit spending such an insane useless amount of money with propaganda, then you can bet they could reduce their software prices a lot, increase the demand in long-term and still have the same amount of profit in the short-term. Thus there isn't better marketing than high quality products with great prices. You can bet!

How often do we hear this crap from Apple fans. Apple's margins are better because they force you to buy their hardware, meaning they have already made their profit, therefore they can recoup their money that way. Microsoft don't have that going for them, they are a software company.

If OSX was actually a genuine Alternative to Windows in that you could just buy it for $115 and install it on any computer i'd agree that it is a steal, but when you need a mac for it, it isn't such a steal.

You could read the other 15 comments of the thread, which have developed into a completely new idea, instead of posting this crappy common-place comment of yours.

How much more demand can there possibly be? With a world-wide market share of 97% there's no price-sensitive demand left.

It's especially important to keep in mind that the actual cost of Windows for most users is a fraction of the retail price. Most users get their operating system by upgrading their PC hardware - those users typically buy from the major dealers like HP and Dell. Major OEMs pay almost nothing for their operating systems because they do so much volume.




While many people use Windows, most aren't using Vista. I'd go futher and say that nobody needs Windows in the same way they need fresh milk. It's perfectly possible to run a profitable business using decade-old Microsoft software. Somebody who hasn't purchased one of your products in 5-10 years barely qualifies as a customer.

While there are a handful of Mac and Linux users out there, Microsoft's biggest potential market is their existing customer base. They have the almost uneviable position of convincing their customers that "Our product that you use now and has been working fine forever is unsuitable, you should upgrade to our (new) product".

@+even

Your comment does mention the demands that Microsoft still didn't catch, plus there's a huge one you forgot :

1. Customers that have older versions of Windows and don't upgrade because the new ones are too expensive.

2. People who have illegal copies of Windows and MS Office (which we can presume is very high). Just check the number of torrents available.

97% does include pirated copies. although I don't know how much of this % is illegal software.

Loling at Luis Mazza telling Microsoft how to run it's business...
When your the director of a multi billion dollar company then come back and give us business lessons, until then hush.

On a side note, i've been working as a business and home computer consultant since 2001 and only a tiny proportion of my clients (maybe 2%) don't upgrade because of the price. Most just don't see the point or don't need to.

Well, if they want to hire me it would be great. I used to work for investment banks when they were at the top. And I'm impressed that you say you're a home computer consultant and you forgot to mention that this is not even the actual gold mine I'm talking about: I'm talking about winning piracy and quit spending money with useless marketing. If they're okay with their old style way of making business because they're at the top for a long time, then this recession may teach dinosaurs some lessons, if they do not evolve. Get GM for instance... Some analysts told them that by not investing in new tech out of the gas circle, they would die. Low-end critics (maybe you're included) said the same: "but you're trying to tell GM how to run a multi-billion company? you're crazy". Today we see the results, don't we?

For large business the cost of upgrading isn't in the software it's in man-hours spent retraining, testing, and rolling out upgrades. There needs to be a significant improvement to justify that sort of expense and most of the things added to Vista or 7 just aren't going to matter in a typical business environment.

Even for home users: ask you mom if she wants the new Windows for $40 -- unless she's a geek she's not going to care one way or the other because XP run Facebook, iTunes, Solitare, and Word just fine.


How cheap does something have to be to compete with free?

Given that Linux is good enough for many typical uses and they can't gain traction giving it away I don't think Microsoft will gain much. People willing to pirate now just don't care about the price. You can't compete with 'free' by being 'less than free', especially when the pirated product is arguably better than a legitimate copy.

Good that you mentioned my mom. Yes, she would love to pay $40 for Windows 7, because her in-home analyst already told her it's a good upgrade for her Windows XP. Me too. But she's willing to buy a new notebook when the upgrade is free in July. Although if the OS was cheap enough, my father would also buy Windows 7 for his desktop computer. But paying the equivalent of $200 (in my country, Brazil) is out of question because unfortunately he runs a pirated copy of Windows XP pretty fine.

Competing with 'free' software is not easy, but MS has done part of their job by making the life of pirates more difficult. The problem is the software is still too expensive at the supermarket. So the company's home work is half-done.

There is a point where lowering price does not produces more profit, the calculations are partly subjective but mostly accurate and I'm sure MS has many people working on this. The price is not just chosen by accident, there are many calculations behind it and I'm certain it's what they think maximizes profit. Same for Intel and most other for-profit companies. Why would they risk it if it's producing good profits already?

Being as big as they are I can see how MS needs to spend a lot of money in marketing, especially when their competition's marketing is targeted directly at knocking them down, MS is a target to many other companies due to their position and public image is worth billions. I kind of agree that good quality is one of the best marketing tools, however it doesn't always work that way and good products can go unnoticed (opera). If you really think MS should do things different to maximize profits maybe you should apply for a manager position there, since it seems their current staff has other visions on how they should manage things and it's been working pretty well for them so far.

Being an investment banker doesn't make you a business expert. Microsoft have made a pretty big fortune so one has to guess they must be doing something right

The Basic, Starter and Ultimate split up were an excuse to make more expensive or poor software versions. This is called greed. MS success was mainly due to two versions: Home and Professional. This greedy split up only harmed their brand. People look for Windows on the shelves and with Windows 95 they used to pay $99. Now they pay $200. That's the perception.

PS: Being a former investment banker doesn't make me a business expert. But I can tell you that I have a lot of other qualities that do help me perceive some things. And 'busines expert' is pretty much a ridiculous label in any instance.

Last edited by Luis Mazza on 26 Apr 2009 - 21:37

Window Vista comes in different versions because consumers don't have to pay full price for unneeded enterprise features, and Windows 95 was $209 for the full version. Windows Vista's upgrade is only about $20 more than the Windows 95 upgrade was. Sounds like a pretty small increase for 15 years to me. And which investment bank did you work at?

Last edited by GreyWolfSC on 26 Apr 2009 - 21:58

Merrill Lynch , ABN Amro and some regional consulting firms.

I remember when Windows 95 was launched. We could buy the upgrade version without upgrading anything. That's part of it's huge success. Actually people were paying $90 at that time. There were no OEM partnerships to worry about, so people could run to the stores and buy the beautiful box with the OS. Now they have to fiddle with OEM (a marketing no go, as there's no beautiful box and no BRANDING). Thus there are so many versions that they just don't know what to get. For me, they got a commodity and tried to split into sophistication and simplicity. But an OS is only an OS.
Te result is a brand with no consumer appeal, like Apple has managed to have. They screwed the admiration people had over the company, because of greed. I also have more theories, but that's not the case to put them here.

Ok, it's evident you don't know what you're talking about now. There have always been OEM versions of Windows, and just because you could do a clean install with an upgrade Windows 95 disc doesn't mean you were licensed to. Besides, from what I remember, the upgrade discs required you insert a previous Windows disc in order to run. I'm not interested in wacky theories, just that your facts aren't straight. There has been a negligible increase in the cost of Windows. (Less than the increase in the cost of a McDonald's hamburger, in fact.)

Vista Home Premium is $222.99 from Newegg, with the upgrade clocking in at $122.99. Windows 95 was $109 and $209 respectively.

Yes, I somewhat assumed the costs at the time because I tried to make a research with Google and I found $70 to $90. But I can't really say the real price.

What I'm really certain is that you could buy the upgrade license pretending you had Windows 3.1, even if it was at the time (very easily) illegally copied.

But maybe you can also do that today.

OEM versions did exist, but now the contracts with these companies may have put some problems to the development of better pricing for products on the shelf.

The point is... I think less is more in this case.

PS: What you call a wacky theory is actually A LOT of psychology and sensibility.

Last edited by Luis Mazza on 26 Apr 2009 - 23:11

So basically you want Microsoft to charge less for their newer products than they did 15 years ago? That's a pretty quick way to end up bankrupt. Up to Windows 95, OEM was the primary way people obtained Windows. They just didn't sell computer software in every store in sight. Less is already more. There's 10x the functionality in Vista than was in 95 for only $20-$30 more. I call that a bargain.

Actually if I run through all the ideas that I put here, then the only bankrupt here would still be me, because they're all here for free!
But seriously... To recommend a better pricing I should have access to lots of information I would have to request. But one thing I'm absolutely sure: MS should stop splitting up the OS that runs on notebooks and desktops. Another thing is: make it simple and cheap, because they're already Microsoft and the best marketing they can get is making it good, cheap and simple. If they build a better brand with this, then they won't need 11 billion dollars thrown out of the window every year to be loved and admired, like they were until Windows XP.
Windows and Office are almost a commodity and should be treated like that: beans and corn. Ask Google!
Nice talking to ya! Cheers!

Take it that Microsoft's profit margin (based on this quaterly) is 21%. Satistics say that your copy of vista you paid $120 cost MS $96 to make.

The actual disk they used may only cost pennies to make but don't forget there is R&D and aftersales support like updates and extras e.g. Messenger.

To make an analysis of this data you provided, it's necessary to have the volume. There are fixed and variable costs. At which volume this $96 is based?
MS spends more with marketing than with R&D.

So you are saying they should just throw sales away because of the whining of a single user who has no idea what they are talking about, and doesn't appreciate the reasons that these other versions of Windows are made? In this modern day and age the variations in performance of the computers on the market are far larger than they where in the days of 9.x, and the cut down versions of Windows are designed for these machines. Besides, the whole point of doing this is to reduce piracy, instead of just having 2 editions, they have one for every level of the market. If the only editions that where available where the high end ones, low end consumers just wouldn't buy them.

It is nice for people like you to just sit there and say "MS should reduce their prices" but in reality it just doesn't work like that

Whatever. I don't care what you think.

But MS atleast do charge us for a service Pack But oh no Apple does so your $132 os-x ends up costing you three time as much in the end

+1
lol.

Also, does anybody know what the RAM limits were with 64 bit vista?

i think it went
basic 8gb
premium 16gb
business/ultimate 128gbs

128 is the number coming to my mind...

where in the hell does it state that os x comes with photoshop. i looked on apple's website, did google search and was unable to find info that states that photoshop comes included with OS X

Jokes, man, jokes...

It says it right here from one of the bigger mac fanboys himself.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con...0415_602968.htm

edited due to wrong link in original message.

Last edited by sirgh0st on 26 Apr 2009 - 05:16

does OS X even have a ram limit seeing that there are 64 bit versions out there and there is essentially only one consumer and one server edition.

LOL

Maybe this isn't openly said but do you know why MS limits ram and physical CPU's more the cheaper the SKU?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the why.

not much difference to win7 that is. no big deal, ever since x64 winxp.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx

He problably didnt see the video...

Intel's dual-processor workstation boards (around $500) support up to 12 DIMMs.
Fill those slots with 16GB modules (around $1400 each) and you'll have 192 GB of ram.

And you'll also be out of money for the rest of your life. You'll have one hell of a system though.

Opinion:

You acutally wont as applications written for Windows 7 wont be optimized to use that much as RAM

With that amount of RAM, regular consumers would have one hell of a RAMdisk.

Starter or basic will not be sold in developed nations. So not in the US, Europe, Australia, etc.
You will only see Home Premium and Professional on store shelves.

Correction, only Home Basic isnt going to be sold in the US, Europe, and Australia. Starter will be and is going to be included with netbooks in the future in the US, Europe, and Australia.

MS has already said basic and starter will not be on store shelves in developed nations. This is fact, comes straight from the horses mouth. Only Home Premium and Professional boxes on store shelves.

There is speculation they may put starter on netbooks but I very much doubt it. Either way the starter edition box still won't be on store shelves.

what?
I think you're confusing Virtual Memory with RAM

No, he's talking about a RAMDRIVE. Google it and learn.

Why would you install a app to a ramdrive? Once the power is cut there goes the app.

Sure the performance will be great, but still.

If the OS manages the memory right, and you have 120 GB RAM, it should run the app from RAM anyway and not page it to disk, making a RAM drive unnecessary. Those are only to force stuff into RAM, and rarely used today since OS memory management is generally so good.

Tried to restart MS Word after having run it before? Chances are it'll launch instantly the next time. That's because Windows put it in its own personal "RAM drive" (memory cache) since it saw you used it.

He's basically saying that his hard drive is smaller than the maximum memory he could put in his PC. So he could have more memory than HD space. Quite ironic...

XPM

Last edited by rm20010 on 27 Apr 2009 - 06:44

I know what you mean, there are most definitely limitations to 4GB - definitely for power users. 192GB is most definitely enough for now - even for power users

So then don't use the 32bit basic edition...power users are not likely to use that anyway.

And lets think about what you put 4x200M=800M, so lets double it again 800Mx2=1.6GB, leaves you 1.4G free doesn't it? I say 1.4G because you are going be using decent video cards and the upper 1G block is probably still going to be used to reserved the vid card memory.

Last edited by schubb on 26 Apr 2009 - 13:02

Read again. No MPEG-2 support for Starter and Home Basic editions, users of which will have to buy it as an addon. All others will have it.

Why buy when there is ffdshow available freely?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffdshow

A good question. :-p I don't understand why they don't offer this for free, it's a bit like having users to pay for Wordpad, as a "premium" feature. It's a basic OS thing these days. Windows 7 Home Basic can't play normal video files, Ubuntu being for free can, and OS X can. It doesn't really look all too good IMHO, especially not when it comes to a feature offered by everyone and everywhere for free. Besides Microsoft.

No no, I read it the first time perfectly the first time thanks (I'm one of those rare people on the internet who can do this). I thought it was quite obvious what I was referring to.

Yes, it does mean that Home Basic and Starter won't be able to play DVD out of the box.

the Microsoft MPEG-2 decoder has hardware support and will offload to your ATI or NVidia card (and maybe the latest Intel cards).

FFDShow is all software based.

That could mean the difference of watching 1080i taking 50% CPU (software) or 5% CPU (hardware offload).

I watch HDTV (which is MPEG2 based) under Windows Vista. I even purchased Vista Ultimate to get the MPEG2 decoder (I had Vista Business, which doesn't have the MPEG2 decoder).

Wild guess, but it probably has something to do with licensing costs. In other words, it's not free for Microsoft to include this.

If I'm right, Ubuntu and ffdshow are probably simply not legal and ripe for patent lawsuits down the road.

I'm fairly certain they're for developing nations anyway.

EDIT: Oh, and the EU, because lord knows there's other applications out there which support MPEG-2, and we don't want to limit competition now

And Netbooks

if i believe right from what i am reading it is built in to the OS

No, you read wrong. It is an "out of band" option, like Windows Live. You have to download the XPM update.

32 bit Vista supports 4GB of ram as well, but if it shows in Vista X86 as 3GB it will in 7 X86 as well, that is a chipset limitation not an OS limitation.

What are you talking about? 4 Gig RAM is supported in 32-bit Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

Support for 4 Gigs RAM isn't really a "feature". Since that is the limitation of 32-bit anyway.

Home Premium have a lot more to offer than Home Starter and Home Basic.

probably because machines running home basic or starter may be using less than optimum hardware for decoding those formats.

microsoft is covering their own behinds.

Because the licenses for those codecs cost money?

AAC is an audiocodec, not a video format.

You're kidding, right? While I might see your point when talking about H.264, AAC and MPEG-2 aren't all that difficult for even 5+ year old machines to decode.

Previous versions of Windows did not support those as well.

Windows Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate so far were the FIRST versions of Windows to support MPEG2 out of the box.

Why is it a stretch that they will continue the trend?

There is nothing stopping you from using a free AAC/H.264/MPEG2 decoder. Microsoft simply won't include THEIRS in the box.

Virtual XP Mode is largely aimed at businesses that are very reluctant to upgrade past XP due to compatibility issues. Certain programs worked better in XP than in Vista for them.

If I'm not mistaken, having XP virtualized means perfect, near 100% compatibility with all those silly programs that don't work on any other OS.

It means businesses that held back from Vista because their ancient app didn't work can now upgrade.

It means those running 64-bit Windows can now run 16-bit applications again.

There are lots of reasons to use it. It's a great feature. I'm looking forward to it.

Only Home Basic (whic is useless on a normal machine) and Premium, Professional and Ultimate for home users.
Starter is aimed towards the third world and Enterprise is strictly for business.

That's not gonna work, Business will not run Windows 7 along with virtualized XP. Applications which work only on Windows XP most likely requre domain environment which means company would have to support two OSs on each machine on doman...as i said not gonna happen.

Companies will stick with Windows 7, if not stay on XP.

Home basic is also for third world. You won't see it on store shelves. Only home Premium and professional will be on the store shelves.
Enterprise is for business. Ultimate is a single license enterprise edition. Ultimate in Windows 7 is not like ultimate in vista.

So you only have two versions to concern yourself with, Premium and Professional. Pretty much the same as XP.

It's called Home Basic for a reason...

Because multimedia codecs that can be added in later are totally a big selling point for me to buy a mac.

There has been a couple of years of developement on 7 so far.

what? windows 7 development started in the RTM stage of vista, over three years ago. Where have you been hiding all that time?

I don't think Microsoft ever stopped giving keys. They just stopped the downloads.

Errr.

Anyone with a hotmail account or anyone who makes one can get a key.

Pretty much the only one .

yup there will be only one version it'll just depend on which key you insert as to what you'll get