Posted on Friday, September 05 2008 @ 3:45 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
reports Microsoft has eased the restrictions on the usage of Windows XP on netbooks. Under the new policy, netbook makers can ship Windows XP netbooks with a hard drive capacity of 160GB, which is double as much as before.
In line with the new policy, Micro-Star International (MSI) launched a 160GB version of its Wind Notebook U100 with a price set around NT$17,900-18,900 (US$562-594), while Asustek Computer will launch its 160GB Eee PC 1000H on September 3 with a price of NT$18,988.
The sources believe the increase of hard drive capacity will boost demand for netbooks, and they noted that it could impact the sale of the netbooks adopting solid state drive (SSD) and 80GB hard drives, as pricing will not be much different for the 160GB devices. However, the sources added that changing hard drive densities will not be a major driver of demand, in contrast to a major boost in processing power.
