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Links: First multilingual version of XP released (actually first multilingual Starter Edition); Microsoft Offers English Windows in India; and (via Bink.nu) Microsoft to launch multi-lingual Windows XP Starter Edition:
New Delhi: Giving a helping hand to the Government, Microsoft Corporation has offered to provide tools for language-based computing which includes a new multilingual Windows XP Starter Edition among others to address the problem of digital divide in the country.This collaboration between them came up as part of a strategy aimed at supporting the Ministry of Communication and IT, after a series of discussions that took place this week at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters between the visiting Union IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran and Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation.
I continue to believe that the Starter Editions are mostly token PR offerings to placate Third World government bureaucrats rather than serious players in the local IT scenes or any kind of antipiracy balm. From the first link:
More than 100,000 copies of Starter Edition XP have been sold around the world to date.
November 16th, 2005 at 8:04 AM
[...] The Arabic and Turkish versions will be distributed in partnership with the governments of Egypt and Turkey, respectively. As I have observed before, the Starter Editions seem to be mostly a sop to 3rd world goverments as opposed to real players on the local IT scene. More interesting is: Starter Edition is one of three initiatives Microsoft’s using to get its wares in developing countries. The others: Local Language Program (LLP) and Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR). [...]