Microsoft Hates Netbooks

Usually around these parts, I try to keep my Microsoft hate to a quiet simmer.  They put out great products, as easy as it is to hate on them – the Zune, the 360, and yes, Windows 7 are all mature beautiful implementations in their respective spaces.  But two stories I just read on portablemonkey just plain ‘ole made my blood boil: 

Microsoft has banned netbook manufacturers from making netbooks that come with hybrid storage systems: Both a SSD and HDD. Apparently because then the netbook exceeds the 1GB of RAM limit enforced by Microsoft on netbooks with Windows OSes.

Source: Netbookchoice

From: Portable Monkey

The second story is equally mind-numbing:

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 Home Premium and higher will not be “validated” for the next generation Atom processor, Pineview.

Microsoft says that the lower end Starter and Home Basic editions will give you the right experience for what a netbook is capable of. They seem to suggest if you want to install another edition of Windows 7, like Home Premium, then you’re on your own, they will not take responsibility for bugs and what not.

Source: APCMag.

From: Portable Monkey

So in the first instance, Microsoft is enforcing an arbitrary requirement that netbooks with XP ship with no more than 1GB of memory (on the two netbooks I’ve owned, I’ve upgraded the RAM to 2GB before even turning them on).  I guess the theory for forbidding the (very awesome) idea of putting the OS on a solid state drive and offering a HD for backup and storage is that the SSD counts against that RAM requirement. 

In the second story, MS is gimping the netbook market by not allowing or supporting Home Premium or above of their new OS to be installed on the diminuitive machines.  As a point of interest, Windows 7 ultimate RC runs marvelously on my EEE PC 1000HA.  The fact that Windows 7, fully decked out, can run on such light hardware is one of the things I’ve been raving about.  There is no technological reason to not support Home Premium and Ultimate on Netbooks. 

Netbooks, and increasingly mobile and ubiquitous computing are the future.  I use my netbook for everything, only getting slightly irritated at the lack of a higher resolution screen and iffy HD video playback.  My now “monstrous” Dell XPS m1330 (with its oafish 13” screen) now sits on my office desk for the rare occasions I actually want to “compute” in my home office.  If I want to stream HD video I have a NAS and a 360.  I just don’t need more than a netbook for my daily computing, and many people, even tech savvy ones, are in the same boat. 

If Microsoft doesn’t “get” this market, and approach it as a leader rather than trying to stunt its growth with arbitrary licensing limitations and requirements, I’m sure Moblin, Ubuntu, Jolicloud and others will be more than happy to support manufacturers looking to satisfy the high demand for these useful little machines.