Posted on Tuesday, November 11 2008 @ 3:25 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Microsoft
confirmed last week at WinHEC that it's working on a special cut-down version of Windows 7 for netbooks and nettops:
Microsoft Windows 7 for netbooks (and nettops) will be able to run on a system equipped with 1GB of random access memory (RAM) and 16GB solid-state drive (SSD), reports Cnet News.com web-site. Representatives for Microsoft also said that more advanced Windows 7-based netbooks will be equipped with up to 160GB hard disk drives and even dual-core Intel Atom microprocessors.
It is unknown whether Windows 7 will actually help netbooks to become more advanced and comfortable to use compared to existing solutions. Netbooks are usually criticized for generally low system performance as well as small screens, something that will not be resolved by a new OS.
Still, makers of netbooks are also interested in making their machines more sophisticated, which is why at least some of them will introduce small form-factor PCs with dual-core Intel Atom processor, such as Intel Atom 330 (1.60GHz, 512KB of cache per core). This will improve performance of netbooks substantially and will even allow them to compete against low-end notebooks, which are based on processors like AMD Sempron or Intel Celeron.
