Microsoft lifts Windows 7 Starter’s 3-app limit

Microsoft has confirmed rumours that it’s lifting Windows 7’s arbitrary three-app restriction on the number of programmes that can be run concurrently.

The confirmation came on the company’s official Windows 7 developer blog over the weekend.

Even Microsoft staff were confused about what constituted an “application” under Windows 7 Starter’s 3-app limit.

In a phone interview with NBR, and others, even Microsoft’s vice president for Windows product management, Mike Nash, was unclear what constituted an app (the answer, now irrelevant: Windows gadgets don’t, but IM, IE and chat programmes do).

Although NBR testing has shown that the full-blooded, Ultimate edition of Windows 7 runs smoothly on a netbook, commentators are assuming many manufacturers in the price-sensitive ultraportable market are expected to plump for the lower-cost Starter edition (which will remain short on multimedia features despite its new ability to run any number of apps).

Microsoft’s accelerated Windows 7 deployment schedule is partly in response to HP and other netbook makers experimenting with models that run on Google’s Android OS - the latest of which has just been unveiled by Asus.