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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Sep 29th 2004 6:34pm





$36 XP Easy On The Wallet, Hard On The Eyes?

from the artificial-barriers dept

theodp writes "Reading on-screen is hard on the eyes, wrote Bill Gates, stressing the need for higher screen resolution to prevent irritating and distracting computer users. But Gates' concerns apparently don't extend to those who are only able to cough up $36 for the Hindi version of Windows XP Starter Edition, which features crippled display resolution, limits the number of open windows or running programs to three, and provides a Taj Mahal screensaver in lieu of home networking and multi-account capabilities." Not sure that's really true... At a lower resolution, everything should appear larger, meaning it may be easier on the eyes. Of course, this might, in part, be a response to some of the geographical goofs Microsoft has made in the past, including angering many in India over its world map, to the point that some versions of Microsoft software were banned.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    800x600 Resolution problems

    identicon
    theodp, Sep 29th, 2004 @ 9:52pm

    As this Gates speech notes, Microsoft has been targeting at least 1024x768 resolution for YEARS, and Microsoft warns that their own web pages will look bad (e.g., clipping of content) when displayed with the maximum 800x600 resolution of 'XP-Lite.'

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Compromise World

    identicon
    dorpus, Sep 29th, 2004 @ 11:58pm

    In poor countries, people tend to spend a pound to save a penny. Offering a degraded windows is a compromise for the millions of fake windows machines with no security patches, which allows computer viruses to wreak havoc throughout Asia and waste so much productivity. For every Indian that is doing "well" with an outsourced US job, there are 10 more Indians still living in abject poverty. In the IT world we may only hear about the prowess of elite Indians, but if you go into the public health professions, India/Asia is still an epic tragedy.


    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 30th, 2004 @ 7:56am

    Arabic script fonts look terrible at low spatial resolutions. They look like doctor's prescriptions: a line of scribble with the occasional vertical or diacritical.

    Chinese/Japanese/Korean ideograms look terrible at low spatial resolutions. They look like an endless row of # signs.

    It's not the size of the letters, it's the size of the pixels. The same amount of script on a higher resolution display is MUCH more readable for non-Latin characters.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    submission text

    identicon
    Chuck, Sep 30th, 2004 @ 9:01am


    Reading this submission made me realize how hard it is to read the italicized text. ;-)

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Re: 800x600 Resolution problems

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 3rd, 2007 @ 10:29pm

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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