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Windows 7 Sets Direction of Low-Power CPU Market
Vigile writes "News is circulating about Microsoft setting hardware limits for the Windows 7 Starter Edition rather than sticking to a 3-application limit. With just a few simple specifications, Microsoft has set the tech world spinning — not only is Microsoft deciding that a netbook is now defined as having a 10.2-in. or smaller screen, but by setting a 15-watt limit to CPU thermal dissipation they may have inadvertently set the direction of CPU technology for years to come. If Microsoft sticks to that licensing spec, then AMD, Intel, VIA, and maybe even NVIDIA (who might be building an x86 CPU) will no doubt put a new focus on power efficiency in order to cash in on the lucrative netbook market."
I don't quite get the big deal here since they are just setting the bar as high as needed to make sure Windows kinda runs on the hardware. Microsoft must be the one to set the bar because if it was anyone else, that bar would probably be too low to have any fun or use running Windows.
15 watts for the CPU is huge compared to what some of the ARM chips are doing while also doing HD video.
If anything, these specs for Windows netbooks is just another way to segment the winbook market to make sure a much higher price can be obtained for notebooks. After all, Microsoft can not have the netbook market grow up and start eating into its profits and people getting the idea that the OS is way too much of the cost of the device.
So, it's really all about marketing and little else. yawn.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Not to mention if you RTFA(I know, but i got bored) it says on top of this BS that Win7 Start will STILL have the 3 app limit. To me that is gonna be the deal breaker. The only worry here is that they are going to offer Win7 Starter for sooo cheap that we will end up with pretty much every PC, be it Netbook or low cost desktop, that would have come with XP Home or Vista Home Basic end up with Win7 Starter.
If that happens and they don't make it VERY clear before purchase, with a sticker on the machine or some other obvious and hard to miss label then i can see this ending up a good case for a class action lawsuit. And by what metrics do MSFT decide what constitutes a "program"? Will IE not count but FF or Opera will? What about WMP Vs Media Monkey or iTunes? Windows Firewall VS Comodo or Zonealarm? Sounds to me if like in TFA they stick with the 3 app limit they are just begging for a whole mess of lawsuits. Because unless they make everything built into Windows like IE and WMP and Windows Firewall count against the limit they are gonna get nailed in court. Real Shame, as Win7 looked like it might actually be a decent OS. Trust Ballmer and his marketing dollars to totally bone a winner with marketing BS.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If netbooks are mostly for email, web, etc., who needs a particular OS?
You may need a particular operating system if "mostly" does not equal "entirely", or if the tasks that you intend to run on a low-cost subnotebook are highly "etc." You may need a particular operating system if your "web" site uses a particular plug-in that has no complete Free implementation, such as Silverlight or Flash.
> Here is a hint to all of the companies in the OS market: give your best distribution
> away and use it as a client for services that google can't profitably provide for free.
And use it to lock the customers in.
> That's the future.
Grim, isn't it?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Flash has been on Linux for ages now.
On ARM, or only on x86?
Silverlight has Moonlight which is sorta comparable
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1, which by now is only good for showing "Please upgrade to Silverlight 2" messages, just as the Flash Player 7 on Wii Internet Channel is only good for showing "Please upgrade to Flash Player 9" messages. And a lot of sites use Silverlight with non-free video formats whose freely available decoders aren't ported to ARM even if they are ported to Linux.
Linux runs on just about anything, these days, and if it doesn't, NetBSD does.
Get an ipod that can run IPodLinux, plug in one of these, and a pair of these, and you'll be ready to dodge bullets. ;-)
With the above, they can sell as many of their crippled, gimped notebooks as they want; you can use that stuff and the hacked ipod to create your own system. If you don't mind the weight, there's still this old trick, too.
Microsoft can do whatever they want. All we need to do is route around them.
Stop being afraid of them; they have no power. We can do whatever we like, and there is nothing they can do about it...for the simple reason that there are so many more of us. Microsoft are only one company.
From what admittedly little I've read, so-called netbooks have razor-thin profit margins and the only reason they're selling is because the full-size laptop market is getting closer to being saturated. For people who want an underpowered, smallish laptop for web browsing and email, what's wrong with a 12" PowerBook G4 from eBay? Full-size keyboard, 1024x768 screen, 1 to 1.5 GHz. $250-$300.
I can see this getting messy. For instance Rainlendar and Winamp both have TWO listings in Task Manager's application list, yet in my current configuration both just have an icon in the system tray, nothing on the taskbar itself. Are these going to count as one, two or zero applications each?
As per TFA, this is nothing new - they had specs for XP and Vista, too. It would be nice to see some genuine competition for MS in this emerging market - i.e. Apple.
Spekkio Master of War
At Microsoft, Tremblay joined the Strategic Software/Silicon Architectures team, nicknamed "SiArch".
Today's news that Microsoft will set a wattage limit on netbooks running the starter edition of Windows 7 clearly shows why Microsoft has an SiArch team and why Microsoft hires "processor" guys and gals. Only a team packed with "processor" experts can do the kinds of studies that are needed to determine what is a reasonable wattage to impose on netbooks.
Why must Microsoft spend several million dollars on a SiArch team to pick a simple wattage? Microsoft is facing severe competition from Linux at the low end.
If Microsoft picked a wattage that is too low, then the netbook manufacturers could not build such a system and would rebel -- right back into the arms of Linux. Microsoft absolutely needed to pick a realistic number.
Until April of 2008, Linux owned the majority of the netbook market. Then, Microsoft submitted its Windows XP to that market and quickly seized 90% of it. Microsoft wants to keep that market share. So, if Microsoft wants to impose hardware restrictions on netbooks, Microsoft will ensure that those hardware restrictions are reasonable.
... a new focus on power efficiency in order to cash in on the lucrative netbook market.
I don't think that word means what the writer thinks it means. In what way is the netbook a "lucrative market"? The profit margins must be almost non-existent. It's a race to the bottom, and I think many companies will regret chasing this market.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Meh, I'd be careful about pirate-ware if I were you. Some of that stuff comes with nasty trojans and rootkits that are nigh impossible to uninstall. I'd rather shell out 100-200$ for a clean OS than risk that stuff running around on my system. Then again, I'd rather run linux than shell out 100-200$ for cripple-ware : ).
Exactly. MS can dictate the hardware product line : Do as we say or you will not get a MS sticker. You will be in the bargain bin with the junk from Taiwan, Korea (South owned, made in the north ;) ) and a brand from China looking to emerge. :)
Or you can help MS trash Linux with low hardware numbers and get a sticker. Another plus is real shelf space too.
MS can fool most people with its OS, its just for netbooks, dont expect so much. Most will just be happy for the low price.
The real win for MS is Linux is crippled too. Every OS likes more RAM, a faster cpu and a plug in power setting.
The low end was breaking out, Linux was winning.
After this, its just a toy market, with MS on top.
MS cannot make a good OS, so they kill the hardware base for the rest. The MS can say its the hardware, all OS are lame on it
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes that IS a nice theory.
Sadly it's failing badly in practice as evidenced by the continuing inability of MS to actually produce secure, bug free code.
I can easily control the quality of MY code, I have no control (or usually knowledge) whatsoever of the bugs in the MS supplied libs/dlls.
IMHO, the .net framework is not worth the time it took to learn it, directX is better but (of course) still has the MS method bias.
I personally think that they are much more about MS controlling your ability to easily support other platforms than being as good as they should (or could) be.
1. if it were truly a sale, I could then remove the restrictions myself legally.
2. I don't understand why people such as yourself insist on pretending that IP = real property, usually with a host of logical fallacies to justify the position.
The CPU specs look to me like a problem for Intel. Because the Atom's core has pretty low performance, the limit of one core under 2GHz means that it'd be easy to pass in performance. It might still win in power, but 15W is high enough for faster solutions than the Atom.
Great. So now MS gets to control what OEM's will sell in a market that they aren't even well suited to thrive in. It sucks cause I bet it will work. OEM's are going to want the cheap windows licenses for netbooks, so they will of course make netbooks that fit MS's definition of what a netbook is. Otherwise, no windows starter edition. That means that even if there could be amazing-new-cpu x that happens to have great-new-capability y is absolutely perfect for a new-generation netbook-like product, but it would have to run at 17watts and 1.3ghz, it will never receive any notice from netbook makers. OEM's will want NOTHING to do with it just because they can't offer windows on it, since regular non-starter edition windows 7 will run terrible on it. That means that another potential advance in technology won't occur. Why can't MS instead let OEM's choose which of their OS's they want to install on which hardware, and not have to worry about future developments in tech as much. Just dumb if you ask me. Even from a windows user point of view, this isn't an ideal situation, but for other OS's it's more grim still. The fact that these specs are out means a couple things. Mainly that MS has probably known it was going to design for these specs in the first place, and tuned OS features and performance SPECIFICALLY for this hardware definition, since they could bet this would become an industry standard once they did release the spec. For other OS's, this means that any os-feature-or-program x that they planned to include in the future once netbooks got a bit more powerful/better or would require slightly higher or even just different specs to run well won't be used on this platform. It essentially gives other OSes a late start, since now they have to rethink what they should develop/how they should develop it for this market in the first place to fit a particular definition of what the platform even is, since they know it will now get no better than that spec anytime soon. Yeah, some OEM could adopt a netbook that isn't windows7 starter compliant, but honestly, even with an amazing amount of effort integrating really impressive features by some other OS community, how successful could you bet on that netbook will being? Probably not very. OEM's know that, and they wouldn't gamble unless a large portion of their customer base told them they wanted something like it. The whole situation sickens me.