Engadget has posted some videos of a pre-Beta version of Microsoft Windows 7. The videos come from WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference). With Windows 7, Microsoft is promising faster startup and shutdown times, as well as less overall power consumption (leading to better battery life on laptops and netbooks).
Another big change with Windows 7 is how it manages wireless hardware – it can lower power consumption of wireless devices while still maintaining and managing a wireless connection. With all of that, they are talking about 11% better battery life, and this is just for the pre-Beta! With some of the other changes, such as moving some things in system memory over to the graphics subsystem, it will also free up more main memory (although by the time Windows 7 ships, 2GB will probably be the standard netbook memory.
Engadget also has mention of a dual-core Asus Eee PC S101. I would agree that it would probably be the Intel Atom 330 running at 1.6GHz, and it wouldn’t surprise me if MS had talked with Intel/Asustek to put together a dual-core version of the S101. Still, it raises some interesting questions (namely, when will we see these).