"Microsoft made headlines recently when The Wall Street
Journal reported that the company planned to equip netbooks with
the Starter edition of Windows 7, a semi-crippled version that only
lets users run up to three applications at a time.
"This is puzzling, considering that Microsoft really needs
Windows 7 to be on the netbook. Netbooks are the one segment of the
PC market that's actually growing, even in the current economy. For
now, Microsoft is offering Windows XP on netbooks because Vista
simply won't run on a netbook's limited hardware, but it's going to
need to move them to Windows 7 once that operating system hits the
market.
"(It's worth noting that while Microsoft claims any version of
Windows 7 will run on current netbooks, Intel is not making such
claims. In fact, Anand Chandrasekher, Intel's head of Ultra
Mobility, recently said that Intel will be releasing new Atom
processors in the second half of 2009 that will support Windows 7
Starter and Basic editions.)
