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Asia is more the issue than XP actually. XP is used in Asia mostly because it is easy to use a cracked version (i.e. free) and it runs most popular windows programs etc. (low hardware reqs too) So if MS just released a cheaper version of their OS in Asia (africa and south america too) of their OSes then we could all move on.

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That's what Starter Edition is.

If Starter Edition lacks the "easily pirated" feature, then it can't really displace Windows XP in these cases.

I like this idea. MS should drop the price on Win 7 Starter / Home Basic to something like $9.95 after Win 8 is released. Then run a massive campaign to promote the security benefits of the "freshly outdated" version. If they do this well, they could easily rake in a few dozen million dollars without hurting the Win 8 market.

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