Windows 7 Starter Edition - Is It Really That Bad?

Windows 7 Starter Edition's three-app limit is real, but is it really that bad?

The Windows 7 beta and release candidate that some of us have been running are the Ultimate versions. Given the option to test any SKU that we want, why not go for the best one?

The thing is that the version that most of us will be using won’t be the top one. Microsoft said before that it expects that the Home Premium version to be the most popular one – especially bundled with decent pre-built machines. While Home Premium will be enough for most of us, what about lesser versions?

Windows 7 Starter Edition is expected to be the OS for low-cost netbooks. With the lowest licensing fee, OEMs wanting to keep costs low will go for the cheapest version of Windows 7. But will Starter Edition do? With the three-applications-open-at-a-time limitation, many users are already writing Starter Edition off as something unusable. To find out more, Ed Bott last month blogged on ZDNet about his time with Starter Edition, and some of his findings might surprise you.

“For starters, that three-app limit isn’t as cut and dried as it sounds,” Bott wrote. “Well, for starters, you can open as many windows as you want from a single program. So if you want to open 15 tabs in your browser, six images in your photo-editing program, and a couple of instant messenger windows, you can do it.”

System applications such as Windows Explorer, Control Panel, Task Manager, Command Prompt and even desktop gadgets do not count as applications, so you can navigate through your system tools as much as you like without stepping into the three-application limit. Antivirus software also seems to live outside the three-app limit, as does some system utilities that start up and reside in the system tray.

Bott concluded that Starter Edition proved adequate for netbooks when used as the way they are intended. “In short, when I used this system as a netbook, it worked just fine. On a netbook, most of the tasks you’re likely to tackle are going to take place in a browser window anyway. … If I tried to use this system as a conventional notebook, running multiple Microsoft Office or OpenOffice aps, playing music in iTunes or Windows Media Player, and using third-party IM programs, I would probably be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of Starter Edition.”

How do you use your netbook? Would Windows 7 Starter Edition be good enough, or will upgrading be one of the first things you'll do?