Windows 7 a focused netbook solution
Microsoft has acknowledged that one of the biggest struggles Windows Vista has faced has been in the netbook arena. The unfortunate truth is that Vista requires more grunt in the hardware department than most tiny netbooks are offering.
Data from IDC shows that 6.5 million netbooks were shipped during the first three quarters of 2008, up just a tad from 181,000 the year before. The majority of these netbooks are running either Windows XP or Linux.
This new market has for the most part elbowed its way past Vista in favor of lighter operating systems such as Windows XP and Linux.
In its quarterly earnings report, the software giant pointed directly at explosive netbook sales as one of the main reasons for the sluggish year-over-year Vista growth.
Not only are Vista’s hardware requirements to high for the netbook market, but the licensing costs are too much for budget netbooks. Many netbooks retail for less than R5000, so keeping costs to a minimum is a priority for most netbook OEMs.
Microsoft has no plans to push Vista on netbooks (Vista is currently running on just 1.5 percent of netbooks according to IDC). It doesn’t look like the hardware requirements or licensing costs for the operating system are going to change anytime soon.
Until now Microsoft has been tight lipped regarding its plans to fix the problem at hand. Recent news from the software giant indicates that Windows 7 will be the solution to the netbook problem. Yesterday, the company stated outright that netbooks with solid-state drives with as little as 16GB of storage capacity will be able to comfortably run Windows 7.
Microsoft has been hinting at the Windows 7/netbook connection for a few weeks now. It has been adamant about how much more nimble, lighter and faster Windows 7 will be than Vista. At this year’s Professional Developers Conference, senior VP of Windows engineering Steven Sinofsky proudly displayed a netbook running Windows 7 to much applause.
Netbook sales are only growing, and Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch stated that “Windows 7 has to run on netbooks. Microsoft has no other choice but to make it happen. Netbooks are the computing category of the moment, and demand will only increase as the economy falters, I predict.”
Windows 7 should arrive in late 2009.
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