Love Windows 7

The 3-app limit was probably the aspect of the Windows 7 operating system that Microsoft received the most criticism for. While it in effect was not as bad as it sounded it was something that received lots of negative press, many times from users who never tried to work on a Windows 7 Starter edition before starting to criticize it. You can take a look at Ed Bott’s analysis of the feature to see for yourself.

Paul Thurrott posted the exclusive on his Windows website and while it has not been officially confirmed by Microsoft yet it does make sense from a public relations point of view. Getting rid of one of the key points of criticism is something that should be in Microsoft’s interest even if that feature is not as bad as it sounds.

Mary-Jo Foley has another interesting article up that is talking about maximum specs for netbooks. What this means is that Microsoft is defining maximum specs for netbooks running Windows 7 Starter or Windows 7 Home Basic. Companies that want to install either one of the editions on their netbooks need to make sure that the netbooks do not exceed these specs (Mary-Jo quited from a Tech ARP article)

Screen size: With XP and Vista , maximum allowable screen size was 12.1 inches; with Windows 7, it will be 10.2 inches

Storage: Maximum limits for XP and Vista: 160 GB HDD or 32 GB SDD; with Windows 7, it will be 250 GB HDD or 64 GB SDD

Graphics: With XP and Vista, netbooks/small notebooks was “less than or equal to DX9; with Windows 7, there will be no limitation

CPUs: With XP and Vista, netbooks/small notebooks had to have “single core processors that do not exceed 1 GHz frequency, or Intel Atom (N270, N280, 230, Z500, Z510, Z515, Z520, Z530, Z540, Z550); Intel Celeron 220; AMD (MV-40, 1050P, TF-20, Geode LX, Athlon 2650e, Sempron 210U); VIA (C7-M ULV, Nano U1700, U2250, U2300, U2400 or U2500). With Windows 7, the maximum will be “single core processors that do not exceed 2 GHz frequency, and have a CPU thermal design power that is less than or equal to 15 W, not including the graphics and chipset.”