Microsoft: All Windows 7 Editions to Run on Netbooks
Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a plan to release six editions of Windows 7 and said all of them will run on a range of hardware, including netbooks.
Windows 7 Enterprise is Microsoft's SKU for its enterprise customers, while PC enthusiasts that "want it all," according to Microsoft, should purchase Windows 7 Ultimate.
Like Vista, Windows 7 also will have Home Basic edition that will only be sold in emerging PC markets "for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC," according to Microsoft.
Making all editions of Windows 7 available on small form-factor PCs, widely known as netbooks, is an especially strategic move for Microsoft, as the same was not true for Vista.
Netbooks, also called mini-notebooks because they are smaller than typical PCs, have become an important segment of the PC market, the overall growth of which has been stunted by the current global economic crisis. In fact, Microsoft blamed sales of netbooks partially for missing its financial guidance for its fiscal second-quarter earnings last month, saying the sale of these devices cut into the PC market.
Because of its hardware footprint, it is difficult to run Vista on netbooks, which mainly run XP or Linux. Having Windows 7 running on these devices will give users an upgrade path from XP and should put Microsoft on surer footing in that market.
Vista also had six SKUs, and features, functionality and hardware requirements differed among them.
This is also true of Windows 7 editions, with the premium versions having more features and functionality than the basic versions. However, Microsoft said it plans to remove some disparities between the different SKUs of Windows 7 by making them all a "superset of one another," so if people decide they want to upgrade from, for example, Home Premium to Professional, they won't lose any functionality from their previous version in that transition, it said.
"With Windows 7 there is a more natural progression from one edition to the next," Microsoft said.
Microsoft has targeted late this year or early next year for the release of Windows 7. The OS is currently in its first public beta, but Microsoft said last week there would be no beta 2, as there typically is with its software products. Instead, the next release of Windows 7 will be a nearly completed release candidate.
