Windows 7 will target netbooks
The man in charge of Windows says Vista’s successor will run effectively on netbooks, the slimmed down laptops designed mainly for internet use. If that proves true, it could take advantage of a growing market where Apple doesn’t compete.
The issue came to prominence when it emerged that the high-profile demonstration of Windows 7 at a Microsoft conference yesterday was run from a fairly low-end netbook with just 1GB of memory.
Speaking to ArsTechnica, Windows head Stephen Sinofsky insisted many netbooks were perfectly capable of running Vista, but acknowledged that it was simply impossible to install the system on models based around flash storage – in some cases as low as 8GB. He explained that, given that netbooks were relatively rare when Vista was developed, the company didn’t feel a need to squeeze the system to fill the lowest disk space possible.
Sinofsky also said that the company is weighing up methods to give users more control over exactly what components of Windows 7 are installed on their machines, without risking the installation process becoming too time-consuming or confusing.
As we reported last week, Microsoft blamed disappointing Vista sales in recent months on the comparative increase in netbook sales against traditional laptops and desktops. The firm believes many netbook manufacturers steered clear of Vista believing (rightly in some cases) that it wouldn’t work on their machine.
Demonstrating that Windows 7 is suitable for netbooks would help capture business in that growing market. It’s a particularly valuable opportunity as Apple has made clear it isn’t interested in cutting prices enough to compete in the netbook market (beyond pushing the iPhone as an alternative to a computer).
The downside is that Microsoft might well find itself having to lower the price of Windows 7 (or produce a special slimmed-down version) to make it financially viable in netbooks. That risks making the system less profitable – though the boom in low-end machines may make that inevitabile anyway.
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October 30th, 2008
Running and running well are two completely different things. Let’s hear it for Windows Mobile and Windows CE! Hip Hip Hur…why aren’t you cheering?
There is no reason to try to shoe horn a fat woman into a size 2 dress and brag about how it fits after you triple stitch the seams.
Netbook + Linux=$399 responsive device for low resource tasks like email, surfing and playing DVD’s or mp3s. You can run a full OS including networking off a 512 Meg flash drive that is perfectly usable and scaled for the kind tasks that Netbooks are intended to do. Aside from giving Microsoft more money, I can’t think of any reason to put Windows on a Netbook.
November 7th, 2008
“Speaking to ArsTechnica, Windows head Stephen Sinofsky insisted many netbooks were perfectly capable of running Vista”.
Yes Stephen is quite right, I personally know a number of people who are very satisfied with their Vista notebooks: there’s Goldilocks, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, and several others.