Let’s combine the two most popular topics on the internet today into one: Windows 7 on netbooks. Microsoft has already confirmed that it will ship a version of Windows 7 designed for netbooks, the popular small laptops that appear to be the only bright spot in an otherwise abysmal PC industry climate. However, with various reports indicating that Windows 7 already runs fine on netbooks, this raises the question: what exactly is Microsoft planning?
Basically, I think there are two possible routes for Microsoft choose from when it comes to the netbook edition of Windows 7. Either they remove functionality and make it cheaper for OEMs (and thus, customers), or they add functionality and specific tweaks to make the netbook edition a better fit for the usage patterns of netbook buyers.
The latter route is the interesting one, because you can theorise wildly about what type of tweaks and additions Microsoft could make to improve the user experience of Windows on netbooks. If you look at Microsoft’s competition in the netbook space, most Linux distributions tailor-made for netbooks include a special interface for launching the most common activities for netbooks, such as emailing and browsing; it’s not far fetched at all to assume Microsoft is working on something similar. When it comes to tweaks, Microsoft may disable resource/disk-intensive services, to save battery power and disk space.
As interesting as the added-functionality-route may sound, I think it’s more likely that the netbook edition of Windows 7 will have reduced functionality, a sort of Windows 7 starter edition. This would allow Microsoft to charge a lower OEM price for Windows 7, which in turn makes Windows netbooks more competitive against Linux-powered netbooks.
What kid of netbook-specific features would you want to see on a netbook version of Windows 7? What functionality could Microsoft remove from such a version?
>In other news, it is now known the new OS will integrate natively with sensory hardware within desktops and laptops, such as GPS chips and light sensors. Microsoft said that a laptop with GPS connectivity would know where it was in the world without third-party software, and deliver location-specific information to applications that require it, such as weather updates to the weather gadget on the Windows desktop.
Wow just brilliant! Waste time on software that needs to be outside! How often do I open my notebook, or desktop outside? WHAT A FREAKEN waste of time and money, and goes to show why Microsoft is a value trap.
I appreciate the fact that you could use this on mobile phones, or PDA’s. BUT on notebooks? Desktops?
It might be pretty handy on netbooks though. You know, what the article is about.
I f–king HATE this. It’s bad enough when web pages to this, but now all my apps are going to start second guessing what I want to do based on where they think I am.
Any webmaster who sets up their site to send me to http://www.foo.se , despite the fact that I typed http://www.foo.com just because I happen to be in Sweden should be publicly beaten. If I wanted information specific to Sweden I would have asked for it.
“I f–king HATE this. It’s bad enough when web pages to this, but now all my apps are going to start second guessing what I want to do based on where they think I am.”
calm down there slick, this feature is as easy to turn off as unchecking a box in perferences.
blah blah blah. whine why don’t you? you don’t HAVE to be outside to make use of a GPS. My phones picks up 8 sats in my office at work. And it has been useful inside sometimes. specially in large buildings.
If you don’t want it, don’t friggin’ buy it.
Here we go, another “edition” of Windows, when Vista already has too many.
Seriously. Apple has the right idea, 1 desktop, 1 server. IMHO Windows probably has good reason to have a “corporate” edition as well, but now (assuming all Vista edition are kept) Windows 7 will have:
*Starter
*Home basic
*Home premium
*Business
*Netbook
*Ultimate
That’s 6 editions, just for the client! Utterly ridiculous.
Make it 7 versions of 7. Don’t forget about Vista Enterprise.
So, which one exactly is the “seventh son of the seventh son” ?
Windows really only needs three editions of the client OS:
* Home
* Corporate
* Ultimate
Home would have simplified networking and file sharing with homegroup, wouldn’t have AD or domain networking, and possibly media centre features.
Corporate wouldn’t have homegroup, would have advanced networking and filesharing, domain/AD support, policies, wouldn’t have media centre, and so on.
Ultimate would combine the two.
During the install, it should check if it’s a desktop, laptop, netbook, and configure default settings accordingly. Things like power management policies, disk access policies, 3D accel, and so on.
Of course, that would be just too logical for MS. They seem to be getting further and further away from KISS.
Anyone who buys the Ultimate edition deserves to be shot for their stupidity. The first time around it is (maybe) forgivable that they fell for microsofts bull****.
The fact that microsoft is going to pull the same trick twice makes me really angry and hopes nobody buys it, so microsoft will learn. I hope for the best, but I very much expect the worst
from a marketing perspective having an “ultimate” version of ANY product is good. statisctics prove that… well, people are stupid and if teh name SOUNDS better people will often go for it. it happens all the time, i get users who wan to upgrade to the new version or _____________ (insert any app here) because it is either new, or because it sounds impressive by the name (this has no relivency to if they infact need it or if it would fit their needs).
example: ChrisComputing’s custome fire wall (a rebranded version of Comodo’s fire wall) was avalible on the site, it was downloaded only 21 times. The link on the site was later renamed to Chris Computing Security Firewall+ . It was downloaded 312 times, in a week.
Moral of the story: market hyping names to sell a product works, people fall for it, its just that simple.
absolutely.
I would, however, like prospective buyers to look at vista ultimate and not have the memory of a goldfish…
Edited 2009-01-26 21:54 UTC
IMHO more than two Client Versions is already too much.
If there would be an Corporate version that wouldn’t work with home groups that would be an disaster. Just imagine all those business Laptops that are almost useless for working at home.
Having two versions is already an nuisance. Vistas versioning scheme was one of the reasons i switched to Mac. I could never manage to remember what Version would come with exactly what features and ultimately would have required the Ultimate version which costs more than an second hand MacMini/new Office PC in europe 330€ (=420$) and yes, i’m aware of the OEM versions which come at slightly less ridiculous prices, but those get bound to the Mainboard you install them on first time and i don’t spend 200€ on throwaway licenses.
I totally agree. Additionally, I don’t think there should be any licensing distinction between 64-bit and 32-bit versions. I should be able to just buy a e.g. Windows 7 Ultimate Edition and install whichever word-length works best on my hardware.
Additionally, I should be allowed to switch word-length at will (e.g. If I was only using 32-bit because my printer wasn’t compatible, I should be allowed to go 64-bit when I upgrade my printer. Or if I discover that the 64-bit drivers for my graphics card are unstable, I should be allowed to go 32-bit while I wait for improvement.)
Well what makes you think they’re going to keep all those versions. I’d think they would’ve learned something from the Vista adventure by now…
I don’t see why people care about this. All 99% of people have to care about is the difference between home basic and home premium, and that can be explained in under 20 seconds.
You mean “Fancy graphics and Media Center”?
Anyway, that’s not the point. “Home Basic” has no real reason to exist beyond “Windows Vista from $99”. The only PCs that ship with it are super-budget models.
That 99% of people should not even have to care about the difference between “Home Basic” and “Home Premium”. They should just get “Home” (which would be roughly equivalent to “Home Premium”).
the netbook version will be little more than a few tweaks to battery life enhancements, having a few services not run on start up, less of the older print drives will included by default (aka drivers based on seriel and parrallel ports), and screen size optimizations. aside from that not to much, but thats really all thats needed.
Why not just have one version of the client, where you can select the deployment profile at installation?
Hardware restrictions.
If they do produce a netbook version then bang goes their aim of getting everyone onto 64bits.
My Atom powered eeeBook is 32bit. AFAIK, going to 64bit will increate the power usage which will defeat one of the KSP’s of these low power devices.
but your netbook is current gen, and were talking about a next gen OS. Current Atom proc’s with an N or a Z do not suport 64 bit, BUT all the next Atom’s will same with VIA’s Nano.
The key to 64-bit adoption is for the difference between 32-Bit and 64-bit not be exposed to the user.
The fact you have to purchase or send-off-for a specific version of Windows, and then install it, and then download different EXEs and installers is what prevents, and will prevent Windows 64-bit ever reaching mainstream adoption.
I am freaking glad that Snow Leopard may make the whole 32/64-bit thing totally transparent.
You can run 32bit apps on x64 just fine 99% of the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64
Edited 2009-01-27 01:07 UTC
I didn’t mean that you could/couldn’t run 32 & 64-bit apps at the same time, I meant that in order to have a 64-Bit OS on a PC, you have to go through an insane amount of hurdles. You have to download different EXEs or installers for your apps. Users cannot handle this.
How do Microsoft expect regular users to send off for an x64 DVD, then install it, locate the drivers, and then locate and download 64-bit versions of the apps they have. It’s complete bullcrap; excuse my language.
You are right about drivers, but wrong about apps. There are a handful that require different versions, but the only ones I have personally run into are TortoiseSVN, Nod32, and iTunes.
Edited 2009-01-27 13:07 UTC
Not at all … if it is a 64-bit Linux OS on your PC. The liveCD for the 64-bit version installs a configuration of repositories for 64-bit versions of the binaries for you. It is all automatic, and just works.
Oh, you meant Windows, not just PC. Sorry, you are right .. Windows is a mess.
Microsoft brought this on themselves. They insisted that hardware OEMs write Windows drivers. If they bit the bullet, and had hardware OEMs publish specifications, so that OS programmers wrote the drivers, then Windows wouldn’t be in this mess.
But Microsoft were sooooo clever (in insisting that hardware OEMs deliver binary drivers only, and normally, only for Windows, thereby forcing other OS vendors to try to compete by writing drivers in the dark) that they have bamboozled themselves. The other OS vendors now have the source code for their drivers, and Microsoft doesn’t.
I’m not so optimistic regarding Microsoft creating a netbook-tailored OS. In most cases, what they’ll do is removing (what they think are) unnecessary features. For one, hardware limitations will be put in place (like no more than 2 Gb or RAM or no HDD bigger than 160 Gb), just like they did with XP Starter Edition, that way they could lower the price. Additionally, I believe Win7 still takes too much disk space. A clean but fully patched virtual machine I created used almost 10 Gb. Compare that to Linux or XP ~ 2-3 Gb. Still it’s better than Vista, but far from lightweight, specially for an 8 or 16 Gb SSD.
runs like a charm, installed as dual boot under my Ubuntu OS. So I dont know why MS would want to change anything, and I also dont know why I would want to run it. Lets face it Windows is dying. Who will want to pay for an OS under current economic circumstances if Linux/Open Source does the job for free. We see a clear indication here in Europe where more and more goverments start switching to Open Source to bring down the IT budget. Obviously its just the start of an exodus. Prelude to mainstream.
Yes, there are programs that Linux doesn’t seem to have, but for most poeple, what they use their computer for, they can get by just as well as Linux.
If it weren’t for Rhino 3D, a few games, and Photoshop, I wouldn’t use Windows at all.
I installed Windows 7 Beta on my Dell Inspiron 9400 today to give it a whirl.
It froze up after rebooting.. XP is back on.
What do you want? It’s a beta. Microsoft also warns that it could be quirky. I’ve had Windows 7 on my Dell notebook for a while. Yes it flaked out in the end. I shrugged and put Ubuntu back on. But I did get to play with the feature set and the OS for a bit to see what all the fuss was about, and that was my goal, and incidentally also MS’s goal.
After reading all the claims about how fast and stable Windows 7 beta is, I was hoping to experience that.
I eagerly ran out to buy Vista and was sorely disappointed.
I’m just trying to have a little faith in Microsoft, but it”s very hard to do.
haha you have to realize that not everyone’s experience is going to be the same. Also laptops are notoriously bad in terms of drivers etc etc and their little hardware that are so annoying to get to work right.
Also like the other poster already said its a beta so take it with a large grain of salt. I would have honestly run it in a VM first before making it my main OS.
Also if you ran out and bought Vista, well I am sorry but thats your own fault mate because I think every story on the internet about that OS was about how big of a steaming pile of turd that OS actually is though now I must say its gotten a lot better.
As for useful features, how about a removal tool with a refund request attached?
XP on netbooks has simply been a temporary need for Microsoft. As soon as they have a netbook edition of 7 they will start the full court press on all manufacturers to install ONLY 7.
Microsoft is desperated with linux netbooks eroding its OEM market and high margins. First MS sold the zombie XP at very low prices and is making marketing around Windows 7 as the final and definitive solution.
Yes, of course windows 7 is the only solution for MS to sold againg a high priced operating systems for the low and falling price of netbooks and PCs in general. MS will bury XP definitively and all the cheap windows versions will rest in peace.
Windows 7 is just a Vista SP2 with a revised and more conservative GUI. MS is gaining time to the hardware of netbooks become more powerful and to run windows 7 decently.
Linux is a better and definitive alternative and it is disponible today and (the most of distributions) for free.
…”desperated”? “Disponible”? Those are some perfectly cromulent words.
In fact it wouldn’t suprise me if it is one of those two versions. Think about it, Netbooks are feature limited so they minimize the size and weight of the netbook. They don’t have very large screens so the resolution limitation of starter wouldn’t be a big issue, the restrictions on how many programs you run at one time wouldn’t be a big deal because most netbooks aren’t as powerful as the average modern desktop or regular laptop system. And as a plus for Microsoft they might actually be able to do something with all the starter licenses and OEM packages since there is hardly any demand for it in the countries it is currently being sold in.
Edited 2009-01-27 15:50 UTC
Assuming a Netbook can play any audio and/or video file that I throw at it, the only thing I’d want a Netbook to be able to do in Win7 is to join a Homegroup. Then I can access video stored on my “big” computer elsewhere in the house from bed or wherever.
I really think of a Netbook as an extension of my main machine. If I’m going somewhere, I’ll put the data I want on an SD card. But really, it’s a portable media/internet machine to me.