Windows 7 leaves netbook market open for Linux

By Stan Beer
Friday, 01 May 2009 14:48

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft's newest operating system Windows 7 will leave much of the burgeoning netbook market open for Linux because of its relatively large footprint. This was confirmed to iTWire by a local Microsoft executive today, although she did not spell it out in those words.

The latest guidance of the minimum system requirements for Windows 7, announced with the RC version of the operating system, indicate that the new operating system will only work on high-end netbooks with specs approaching that of notebooks.

The requirements of a 1GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB of disk and DirectX 9 graphics device all easily exceed the specs of many entry level netbooks.

In fact, they exceed the specs of the Eee PC 1000HD with a Celeron 900MHz processor - yet this writer is running an early Windows 7 Beta build with reasonable performance. Either Microsoft has got the minimum specs wrong or Windows RC needs more power than the Beta version.

A chat with local Microsoft management provided only vague answers to this question.

According to Sarah Vaughan, Windows Business Group Lead at Microsoft Australia, Windows 7 is indeed designed to work with netbooks.

"Windows 7 has been designed to run really well on netbooks. There's no limitation on which edition someone can use. So whether they want the Starter Edition, Premium Home Professional or Ultimate, these editions will run on a netbook that has those specifications," said Ms Vaughan.

"There hasn't been any scaled down OS thinking about the hardware that's available in the marketplace from a netbook point of view.

"Looking at when the netbooks first hit the market there wasn't lot of options or choices. There was the Asus. In the last 18 months, the number and capability has just shot through the roof."

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