Gail Shaw wrote:

>> E.g., Server 2003 Standard 64-bit supports 32 GB RAM, while Server 2003
>> Enterprise 64-bit supports 1 TB. There is absolutely no cause for this
>> difference other than an artificially-added limitation. It's just as
>> easy to implement either. (Indeed, arguably it's *more* work to add the
>> limitation...)
> 
> True, but my point was that if you only offer a version with everything and
> the kitchen sink, less people would buy, because they don't want to pay for
> what they don't need. Less sales means that the prices for the One Version
> with Everything would have to be higher so make the same revenues (and
> shareholders require that revenues only go up not down)

Sure, offering a version that doesn't contain expensive stuff that 
people don't need is a sensible strategy. But deliberately disabling 
functionallity that doesn't cost anything, just so you can charge money 
for it? That smacks of cheating...

Take WinXP Home vs Pro. The Pro has SMB networking, the Home doesn't. If 
you're a home user, you geniunely won't give a **** that SMB isn't 
there. And SMB is a complicated technology; it costs money to make that 
stuff.

What we're talking about here is software that has the ability to do 
something, with no additional effort, but that function has been 
purposefully disabled so the manufacturer can charge money for it - even 
though it doesn't cost them anything.

> My bet is that the current multi-version hell of Vista is due to market
> research on what people would buy. It would not have just been one dumb
> exco's idea that stuck.

Oh, I'm sure they *very* carefully planned the whole thing. (How long 
has this software been in development now?)

> Some (many?) of the models have limitations in the software to make them
> slightly less powerful than the next model up

Oh, that's really cute. Is there also a black market in devices to 
"crack" the limiter and get all the available power from the engine?

(Back in my day, the less expensive car would have an engie with 
physically smaller cylinders... Which is weird, really, because that way 
it has more metal in it, and metal is presumably more expensive than air...)

But then, Intel's low-end chips are actually high-end chips that didn't 
quite pass QC, so they turned the clock speed down a bit. :-S

As should be abundantly evident, I've never owned a BMW. (And it's 
unlikely I ever will...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/

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