Double U Blog

Microsoft unveiled Windows 7 at PDC (Professional Developer’s Conference) 2008 and it’s been good news ever since. Impressions of the new OS have been pretty positive from all around (except for a couple of exceptions, of course) and from what I’ve seen so far (which isn’t that much, honestly as I haven’t been able to use it myself) everyone is right in saying “Windows 7 is Vista done right.”

Say whatever you like about Vista, it’s evident that Microsoft has learned from the fiasco. With the Apple ads distorting everyone’s perceptions of Microsoft, the increasing popularity of low-power netbooks that can’t handle resource-heavy operating systems, it’s been a deathblow to Vista.

The Apple matter is a whole other issue, but the thing about netbooks must be very worrying to the bigwigs at Microsoft. Hardware manufacturers have been hinting for some time they want an OS that can run on low system resources — it goes without saying that this is what consumers have wanted since day one, but the fact remains that almost the whole of the netbook market is using either Windows XP still or has switched to Linux. Maybe this is the final turning point for Linux to enter the mainstream, but then what about Windows, which counts for about 90% of all computers around the World.

Steve Sinofsky (senior VP at Microsoft) showed off an ASUS Eee PC running Windows 7 (1GHz processor, 1GB RAM) at PDC 2008; there have been reports of people running it on just 512MB RAM too, but take that with a grain of salt. Seven uses much less hard disk space too, which is another scarce resource on netbooks. Microsoft has reportedly gone over and optimized the whole OS with this aim in mind, which is a great thing — it makes Windows an option for netbooks again. Some analyts are predicting an explosion in the netbook market, so this makes Seven’s low resource usage a very big plus point for Windows.

Today, Microsoft also announced its plans for their security software suite, which is currently called OneCare — they’ll start offering it for free, and they’re specifically marketing the new version (due in Summer 2009) as a small-footprint program aimed at computers low on hardware muscle (read: netbooks). One major complaints users have about security software is that they use too much system memory; if Microsoft can pull this one off even relatively successfully, not only will this make Windows computers a lot more secure (yaay!), it’ll be another positive point under their belt.

I like the way things are playing out so far, and I think this is the right thing for Microsoft to do. They’re building up the right sort of hype for Windows 7 (we just hope we’re not burned by this again), and they’re taking the right steps as a business. I’m in no position to judge business decisions of this magnitude (in fact I’m not worthy of passing such opinion), but as a user, I think this is what Windows needs to reinvigorate itself in the tech world. Windows already has a huge market share — all they need is to get over the Vista slump, and the steps they’re taking with Seven might do just that.

Paul Thurrott has a great roundup of all his Windows 7 coverage on his site; he also does a Windows Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte (TWiT) which you should check out if you’re interested — episode 81 is the one recorded right after PDC.