Like the episode of The Office where Michael shows up uninvited to Jim’s barbeque, Microsoft has shown up at the netbook party, thrown its coat to the Temp, and grabbed the Karaoke microphone.
A recent press release says the following.
“Customers and partners have made it clear to us that they want Windows on their netbooks and nettops,” said Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of the Original Equipment Manufacturer Division at Microsoft. “We are committed to providing Windows solutions for these devices, helping to ensure a high-quality experience for both our partners and customers.”
Microsoft does have a point, despite my overwhelming urge to want to draw parallels to that Office episode. What’s one of the first things that inquisitive, tech-savvy people do when they purchase a low-cost, sorta underpowered device like the Eee? Try to see who can get it to run Windows. Looks like Microsoft is going to make that a lot easier for everyone in the coming months.
Microsoft is working with more than 20 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) including Acer Inc., ASUSTek Computer Inc., BenQ Corp., Dell Inc., First International Computer Inc., Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd., HP, Inventec Corp., Lenovo, Medion AG, Micro-Star International Co., Positivo Informatica, Pegatron Corp., Quanta Computer Inc. and Wistron Corp. to deliver Windows-based offerings for consumers.
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It’ll be interesting to see the price point of this netbook-focused operating system and how different it is from current offerings. The general feeling has been that it’ll be little more than a stripped down version of XP, which would be fine with me.
