Priced at RP$5M, Zyrex Ubud to Run Windows Vista Starter Edition

by atticus ~ March 14, 2008

Zyrex Ubud, an ultra portable based on the Via Nanobook UMD reference design, is the Cloudbook equivalent for the Indonesia market. Since my last introduction on Zyrex Ubud, we have managed to gather more information on the mini laptop.

Zyrex Ubud has started selling in Indonesia and is priced at RM$4,999,00 (US$545). The key difference between Zyrex Ubud and Everex Cloudbook is that the former is running Windows Vista Starter Edition. Zyrex website is not updated as it is still showing Windows XP Pro as the sole operating system option for Ubud.

So what exactly is Windows Vista Starter Edition? Here is a description from Wikipedia:

Much like Windows XP Starter Edition, this edition sells only in “emerging markets” such as Brazil, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines — mainly to offer a legal alternative to using unauthorized copies. Microsoft does not make it available in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia or New Zealand (although users can install a trial-version from the 32-bit DVD). Vista Starter has significant limitations, such as only allowing a user to launch three applications with a user-interface at once, not accepting incoming network-connections, and a physical-memory limit of 1 GB. It retails only as a 32-bit system. It supports only AMD’s Athlon XP, Duron, Sempron and Geode processors, and Intel’s Celeron, Pentium III processors and certain models of Pentium 4. The usable portion of the hard disk has a limit of 250 GB. Starter Edition comes with some desktop-wallpaper not found in other versions of Vista

I believe it is a good initiative by Microsoft. However, I find that the starter edition is priced too high for the developing markets. According to one of our readers, Windows Vista Starter Edition cost around US$50. In countries where software piracy is rampant, I was hoping that Microsoft can be more aggressive in their pricing.

Before I end this post, check out the following photos of Zyrex Ubud (courtesy of Victor).

Thanks to Prana and Victor for the information and photos!

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