No more than 3 programs open at a time? Thats a deal killer for me. I could work around it but I usually like to have web pages open, with a word processor running, a text editor, and at least one or two file explorer screens up and I would be frustrated constantly at this limitation. Either put Windows XP or LInux or a full verion of Win7 on it or forget it…

This is so typical Microsoft. I think they have forgot their roots and figure they can stick anything on a computer and people will buy it just because it is Microsoft. The sad part is that they are right…

Stop the anti Microsoft bashing and face the facts that they make their money from selling the OS so restating the fact that Linux is free is stating the obvious.

I agree MS are being silly by supplying a hampered version of W7 but they are offering an option and not limiting you to it. You are free to chose whatever edition you like. For a company that sells its O/S then not much else could have been expected. However I might I have provided a version that couldn't physically use no more than 2GB RAM and lock it to an ATOM CPU or even better I would have just locked out many features. I am sure they could have come up with another feature slice to suit the lower price.

The problem with limiting the number of apps that can run is that this will tarnish Netbooks and to some extent Windows 7.

I can't help think that MS haven't thought this through. The vendors (who are the biggest customers for MS) don't really want to sell netbooks as the margins are so low so MS may be bending to their requests here. However they should think of the negative press they will get over a disabled version of Windows 7.

If it was my choice between upsetting the vendors or the customers I would have learned my lesson with Windows Vista. Wouldn't you?

Article on arid.net (http://digg.com/d1pTAK) that talked about windows 7 starter edition and had suggestions on a better way to implement the starter edition for netbooks.