It’s the news that all Netbook lovers and manufacturers have been waiting on. Netbooks will not have to have a cut down version of Windows 7 installed.
Until now, manufacturers were being forced into installing a restricted version of Windows 7 which has a lot of features missing, when the new operating system is officially released on the 22nd October.
Microsoft also confirmed that the three application limit originally planned for the Windows 7 Starter Edition has been removed.
Yes, this latest news is going to put a smile on a lot of faces and obviously the heavy hints to Microsoft dropped at the Intel Developer’s Forum earlier this week have paid off.
“OEMs and ODMs have the choice to install any version of Windows on a netbook,” said a Microsoft UK spokesperson to TG Daily.
“[But] Starter is an entry version and doesn’t have many of the consumer or business features. The three application limit isn’t there anymore.”
When Netbooks first started appearing almost exactly two years ago now, most of them came with the open sourced Linux operating system which is free.
Microsoft didn’t want to miss out on the rapid growth of Netbook sales so they lowered the license fee for Windows XP for Netbooks and very quickly dominated the Netbook operating system market.
Since then an operating system war has been waged as others tried to muscle in and knock software giant Microsoft off of its perch.
Windows Vista was never a contender for Netbooks because it eats up too many resources whereas Windows 7 apparently runs very well on Netbooks.
We will have to wait a bit, but not too long, to see how OEMs deal with this latest announcement.
Netbook manufacturers have all been busy preparing for the new operating system in the belief that the Windows 7 starter edition, which only comes in 32-bit form, same as Windows 7 Home Basic (for emerging markets only), and which doesn’t include Aero Glass, Taskbar Previews and Aero Peek amongst other features, is all they could really offer for Netbooks but that doesn’t apply anymore.
Of course whether or not a particularly Netbook can actually handle running more than three apps at a time is another matter altogether.
We will also have to wait and see if the latest news affects the future pricing of Netbooks. I hope not!
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[...] Microsoft announces no restriction on Windows 7 for Netbooks [...]
Nice writing.
I think that Microsoft are actually taking a huge gamble, by shipping a heavily restricted version of Windows 7 on new netbooks.