Microsoft looking for Moore's Law to save Windows 7

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 10:48

Opinion and Analysis

The jury is in about the performance of Windows 7 RC on netbook computers - it's as slow as a wet week. For Microsoft the "great white hope" is now Moore's Law. Will new entry level netbooks be powerful enough to prevent Redmond's second white elephant in a row?

What is becoming increasingly clear is that Windows 7 is merely an attempt at damage control after Microsoft's monumental misreading of the market with resources hungry Vista.

In itself, Vista is not a bad desktop operating system if you're running a power hungry machine with plenty of grunt. With a little tweaking, Microsoft could eliminate the stuff that annoys people like the incessant UAC queries.

However, it just so happens we're living in an age where everyone is downsizing to notebooks and netbooks, which is the growth area of the PC market - an area where Vista can't play.

Windows 7 was meant to address the failings of Vista - its huge footprint, its massive memory demands, its overall requirement for power hogging processors.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 does not look like it is going to even come close to delivering on that promise. In fact the minimum specs for Win 7 look similar to those of Vista.

The Windows 7 footprint is still close to 10 GB, an order of magnitude greater than that of Windows XP, thus requiring plenty of storage. Win 7 still requires at least 1 GB RAM (probably 2 GB for acceptable performance), it needs a fast processor and graphics card.

There's no way Windows 7 is made for those little netbooks that created a sensation when they burst on the scene 18 months ago.

So what's going on here?

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