“Windows 7 Starter” Gives IE Privileged Position

Update: Oops. I misread the article, and I’m not the only one. Thanks to Ed Bott for setting us straight. Ignore the below – IE is counted as one of the three. But still, run Linux, and no-one will ever try and stop you running as many apps as you want ;-)

Is it anticompetitive to exempt IE from the 3-app limit on Windows 7 Starter Edition, but not other browsers?

So if you use IE as your browser on Windows 7 SE, you can have three other apps open, but if you use Firefox, you can only have two. Seems like a fairly big disincentive built into the OS to use alternative browsers, to me. That doesn’t sit well with “EC Principle 2” – Windows Must Not Provide a Technical Advantage to IE.

2 thoughts on ““Windows 7 Starter” Gives IE Privileged Position

  1. gerv, I do not see where he says that IE is exempted – he is just saying that you can have multiple tabs and windows of IE open at the same time. At least that was my read.

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