After receiving the house party kit from Microsoft , my Windows 7 house party did materialize yesterday at Kiruba Shankar’s office of F5ive Technologies. (Should we call it Windows7 office party?)
New Amazon Kindle was a cool gadget we could explore at the party. I’d not seen a Kindle before and got to spend a few minutes checking it out. It looks very nice, but at a pricing of 20k for the device and about 2$ per book, I doubt if it will succeed in India, more so because most of us do not have a habit or reading. Strong battery life, Wi-Fi, storage and lightweight are the pros while not having a backlight for night reading, no colour display and no touch screen for better navigation can be listed as cons.
We also had a RJ (Radio Jockey) at the party. RJ Dhruv, who conducts a show every Friday 7pm on AIR’s FM channel was with us during the party. (I’d met Dhruv in Club Mahindra’s Coorg trip and Dhruv is a lawyer and UNESCO Certified tourist guide for South India). I also got to drive is new i10 automatic and that warrants a different post.
The name Party doesn’t get justified without some food. So I did spend some money arranging snacks and juice. (Microsoft won’t be reimbursing this expense though). Guests played the Windows 7 puzzle game, got to wipe their hand with Windows7 tissue paper and also got to take home a Windows7 handbag.
Some more people could have been invited, but as timing was short (due to uncertainly and delay induced by DHL) and budget being tight, it was executed with a not so great number of guests.
Since many asked me various questions about Windows 7, listing below some key info about Win7 versions, pricing and features.
Windows 7 versions, features and pricing in India
| Version | Prince in INR (upgrade) | Price in INR (New) | Features | Remarks | |
| 1 | Win 7 Home Basic | NA | 5,899 | Bare minimum OS. No Aero | Available only in developing countries |
| 2 | Home Premium | 4,500 | 6,799 | New navigation features like Aero Shake, Jump Lists, and Snap. Quicker sleep and resume quicker | |
| 3 | Professional | 6,500 | 11,199 | XP Mode, Advanced networking,back up to a home or business network, Advanced file management, Location aware printing, Presentation Mode | |
| 4 | Enterprise | NA | For corporate customers | ||
| 5 | Ultimate | 11,799 | Parental Controls ,Windows Aero™ with Windows Flip 3D , Windows Media Center, Windows Tablet and Touch Technology, Windows BitLocker™ Drive Encryption, Windows Ultimate Extras, Business Networking |
Windows7 is priced lowest in India, but I doubt if people will care to pay. Recently heard is that cracked Win7 are being sold for Rs 200 on Richie street in Chennai. Instead of selling 10 copies at Rs 10k, Microsoft can try selling 100 copies at 1k, earning the same amount they intended to, while achieving goals like killing piracy and gaining better market share. Something Microsoft should try, at least on an experimental basis.
Strong DRM (Digital Rights Management) is another discouraging feature in Win7, from an users’ perspective.
Windows 7 hardware requirements : 1 GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor. (Netbooks with Intel Atom can technically run Win7, but avoid if possible) Minimum 1 GB RAM 32-bit or 2 GB RAM 64-bit . 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit). DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver.
Check with Microsoft’s upgrade advisor if you’re not sure. This was my first Party hosting experience- if I had more time and budget it could have been better, anyway I'm happy I did justice to what was expected of me. Thanks to Kiruba for letting me host it in his office, thanks to RJ Dhruv for dropping by and thanks to all guests.
I agree MS could have sold more copies at lower rates. Something like moserbaer cheap original cd and dvds
ReplyDelete