Windows 7 to reach down to Netbooks

Ina Fried | Oct 28, 2008

Microsoft has been growing its share of the Netbook segment in recent months, but it's largely on the back of the company's older Windows XP product, rather than Windows Vista.

The trend toward the small, cheap notebooks has not been lost on the software maker, however. When the topic turns to Windows 7 at the ongoing Professional Developers Conference, we would expect the software maker to talk about an operating system that can run well on all manner of laptops, including the ultra-low-end.

It's just one of many topics at the conference, which takes place in downtown Los Angeles, US, and end October 30.

Most of the Windows talk at the show have already been announced on day two of the event, while the first day's keynote speech expectedly focused on Windows Azure, which the company has decided to call its cloud-based operating system.

As for the Netbooks, it's a critical segment for Microsoft to be competitive in, growing far faster than the market as a whole. It's also the first slice of the desktop market where Microsoft has seen a significant level of competition from Linux.

After many of the initial models were Linux only, Microsoft has hustled back with versions of XP that can run on flash-based memory. As some of the Netbooks have started to come with traditional hard drives, some Vista models, such as HP's 2133, have also cropped up.

Microsoft has said that it will outline Windows 7 in detail and give attendees a pre-beta version of the operating system.

Via CNET Crave

Filed under: Notebooks
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