Netbooks with Windows XP only around until New Year?
November 13, 2009 at 10:16 am
Microsoft has publicly committed to offer Windows XP for a year after the Windows 7 launch. However, the reality for Windows XP netbooks could be quite different. You may even start to see them disappear from shelves shortly after the New Year according to The Register.
Don Paterson, director of netbook PCs in Microsoft’s Windows client group, said that: “We will continue to make Windows XP available for those devices [netbooks], but it doesn’t make sense to put marketing effort behind those devices. As much as we make Windows XP available for a year, we won’t see it last in the market that long. We will get through the holidays. My gut [feeling] is we will walk away from the holidays and see that it’s not worth keeping it in market.”
You would expect Microsoft to be marketing Windows 7 Starter quite heavily, but that won’t the case according to Paterson. Instead they will be driving marketing spend on Windows 7 Home Premium and hoping that people who “do their homework and understand the value proposition [of Windows 7 Home Premium] will migrate”. He goes on to say that the only consumers seeking netbooks installed with Windows XP are stubborn or want the cheapest device.
Microsoft is starting to take the Linux competition more seriously though, especially if distros can get over familiarity & hardware compatibility issues. He views Android and Chrome OS as the ones to watch out for.
“Can they catch up? Sure,” Paterson said. “There’s no technical reason to prevent [Linux variants] getting there. They’ve struggled until now and there are some inherent problems with the community organization, but with the right persons driving that through, we don’t rule it out down the road.”
November 13th, 2009 12:50 PM
1) Mr. Don Paterson admits that Win7 Starter Edition isn’t whats best for a netbook and rightfully so, it’s the Home Premium that’ll get the disco rocking, so will we see a $80 price hike on Win7 netbooks soon (with more apt W7HP pre-installed instead of W7SE/XP .. am going as per the WAU/market price list)?
AND
2) More importantly from XP users point of view, there seems to be a tacit recognition on your part w.r.t XP’s super virtues, albeit at the cost of calling users ‘stubborn’ and ’em inglorious basterds wanting ‘cheapest devices’. Well .. trying to hold onto a worthy OS like XP is a wise, not stubborn decision & you know this for sure since its possibly hampering Win7 Starter Editions’s roll off … and lets not forget that netbooks are expected to be cheaply priced. Lets also remember that the battery life gets adversely affected with the use of W7 vis-a-vis use of XP – the Achilles Heel for W7 👿
Therefore good luck with getting rid of XP for now and the only solution is to stop it OR sacrifice W7 starter edition & preload new netbooks with W7HP itself @ a reasonable n aggressive price.
As far as Google’s OS’ are concerned, I think there’s still time to know what all can be had from that. Windows will rule , XP for now , 7 soon enough !!
November 15th, 2009 4:20 AM
Ah .. Case in point to rival XP vide aggressive pricing: Acer Aspire 1410 (Dual Core) comes preloaded with W7HP, has good performance and @ US$ 399. This is the best way to curb enthusiasm for [b]XP[/b] .