When showing the pre-beta version of Windows 7 at Microsoft's PDC in Los Angeles, Steve Sinofsky showed a debranded netbook running Windows 7. Ars Technica got him to confirm that Windows 7 was targeted at netbooks ("Of course!"). The site has put up the rambling conversation verbatim, but it contains a couple of interesting points. The core exchange is as follows:
AT: Because that's been sort of the embarassing situation with XP's being extended, extended, extended and one of the drivers is the netbooks that Vista just won't fit on.
SS: Well here's my view of it. So first, I'm not going to get into defining a netbook, let's just say many of these new, low-end PCs are selling with Vista on them. The model I got, that I was running today is available with Vista on it. The one I got all my friends as gifts, because you know, they're like gifts now. I put Vista Ultimate on all of them, I just upgraded Vista to Vista Ultimate.
The key thing that really drove the XP installation where the very first ones of these netbooks tried to have only flash drives. The reality is that, for better or worse, Vista's disk footprint wasn't going to fit on 8GB of flash. And the reason for that is not anything to do with performance, or bloat or anything. We do a lot of really customer focused things, like we have a gigabyte and a half of printer drivers. So you might not want them, but boy they're really useful when you need them.
Ars should have pushed a bit, because really there is only one version of Vista, and that's Vista Ultimate. If you have a cheaper version, Microsoft will be happy to sell you an "in place upgrade" over the phone.
Presumably, Microsoft will also come up with a "Netbook Win 7" at a suitably low price, because netbook manufacturers are paying less than half as much for XP under Microsoft's ULCPC deal as they would pay for Vista -- or, indeed, they used to pay for XP.
But if they do, that's likely to make Windows 7 less profitable than Vista, and it will be interesting to see how Microsoft tackles that problem. Possible answers include: by adding a subscription element; and by using Windows to display advertising.
