OS – Windows 7

Asus Shows Off Windows 7 on Eee PC T91, 1003HA, Announces 1000HG

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At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Asustek is showing off Microsoft’s Windows 7 on the highly-anticipated 8.9″ touchscreen Eee PC T91. The Eee PC T91 Touch is a convertible – it converts between a Tablet PC and a conventional laptop/notebook form factor. They … Read more

NVIDIA Ion – Certified for Vista, Runs Windows 7

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NVIDIA
There was a joint press conference held today in Taipei, Taiwan between Microsoft and NVIDIA, showcasing the new NVIDIA Ion platform for netbooks/nettops and other ultraportable or low-power devices. It was hosted by NVIDIA’s general managers for their MCP and notebook business units, and involved Microsoft’s Senior Director for OEMs and Senior Manager for the Windows client business group. It was announced that the Ion platform (NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M graphics chipset and Intel’s Atom CPU) has been officially certified by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows Vista Premium.

NVIDIA also showed off the Ion running Microsoft Windows 7. Existing chipsets (namely the Intel 945G) do not fully support DirectX 10 and other graphics features, while the Ion platform/chipset is able to handle them very well. In fact, the demonstration involved running a full 1080p move in the background while NVIDIA was giving the Powerpoint demonstration. They also described being able to encode/transcode video in the background while watching HD video. They also demonstrated “Left 4 Dead” running in 720p video (the game is very graphics-intensive).

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HP to Offer Three Windows 7 Versions on Future Mini Line

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In an interview given to Computerworld last week, Kyle Thornton a manager for HP’s business notebooks mentioned that future models of the HP Mini series will have up to three different versions of Windows 7 available. The versions available will be: Windows 7 Starter (only … Read more

More on Windows 7 Editions/SKUs (Win SuperSite)

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As a follow-up to earlier news of Microsoft formally announcing the various Windows 7 product editions, Paul Thurrott has taken a good look at the information and broken it down, product edition by product edition. The good news is, you should be able to pick … Read more

Windows 7 Editions Announced, Talks About Netbooks

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Windows 7 Microsoft has announced the various editions of Microsoft Windows 7 today. They believe most customers will gravitate towards one of two editions – either Windows 7 Home Premium for consumers, or Windows 7 Professional for business users.

There are some major changes coming, and while some were clearly needed, others will be met with derision. The biggest/worst decision as far as future netbook owners should be concerned, is that the OEMs producing netbooks will probably be selling them with Windows 7 Starter. That’s what Microsoft wants to happen.

Windows 7 Starter only allows you to run three applications at a time. Forget about the fact that many of us are using the Windows 7 public beta (which has the “Ultimate” feature set) and that it runs just fine on netbooks. Hopefully most of the netbook makers will offer something other than Windows 7 Starter, for not much more. It’s a software limitation that doesn’t match the fact that by the time Windows 7 is available for retailers, the netbook hardware will be quite a bit faster and better than the first generation from this time a year ago.

From the Microsoft press release:

The first change in Windows 7 was to make sure that editions of Windows 7 are a superset of one another. That is to say, as customers upgrade from one version to the next, they keep all features and functionality from the previous edition. As an example, some business customers using Windows Vista Business wanted the Media Center functionality that is in Windows Vista Home Premium but didn’t receive it in Business edition. Customers won’t have to face that trade-off with Windows 7. With Windows 7 there is a more natural progression from one edition to the next.

The second change is that we have designed Windows 7 so different editions of Windows 7 can run on a very broad set of hardware, from small-notebook PCs (sometimes referred to as netbooks) to full gaming desktops. This way, customers can enable the scenarios they want across the broad hardware choices they have.

Microsoft also felt the need to talk about Windows 7 on netbooks, through Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing.

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