Is your netbook small enough for Windows 7?

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 18 August 2009 14:28

IT Industry - Strategy

Microsoft, and not the manufacturer, will decide what is and is not a netbook with screen size being the main metric. So just how small will you have to go to run Windows 7 Starter Edition?

We've already seen Microsoft perform a u-turn concerning the the Windows 7 E edition, but most of the numerous editions we predicted earlier this year will still go ahead. Including Windows 7 Starter Edition.

Sure, some people have been getting excited about the notion of a special cut down edition of Windows 7 designed especially to fit on your netbook. But now the question now would seem to be, is your netbook small enough for Windows 7 Starter Edition?

We've known for some time that Windows 7 Starter Edition will only be made available to original equipment manufacturers, but the licensing detail covering what machines Microsoft will allow those OEMs to install the OS onto has been pretty scarce.

At a recent Wall Street analyst meeting, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would appear to have spilled the beans regarding Windows 7 Starter Edition licensing. Ballmer insisted that the license will determine exactly what is and is not a netbook: "it's got to have a super-small screen" he said, adding "it has to have a certain processor..."

Sure, that's still fairly vague I will admit. However, some industry watchers with a good track record of getting the inside scoop from OEMs and publishing them for everyone to see have been a little more specific.

While you cannot take it as a given, of course, TechARP has published leaked maximum hardware specs for Windows 7 Starter Edition machines which suggest that a netbook, as far as Microsoft is concerned, cannot exceed 10.2" when it comes to screen size.

On top of that, TechARP also reports that for the purposes of installing Windows 7 Starter Edition a netbook must have a single core processor that does not exceed 2GHz and "a CPU thermal design power that is less than or equal to 15 W" not including the graphics and chipset.

Want more restrictions? Want to know the reasoning behind all of this? Want to know what Ballmer thinks? Read page two...

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