Is the Intel Atom the ticket to Windows XP for OEMs?
There are no shortage of mini-notebooks being introduced in an almost endless parade. There are often one or two new ones announced each day and it’s gotten so humorous that we joke about it. There is no doubt that mini-notebooks are things of great interest to a lot of folks however, and with good reason. Small, light and highly portable, these mini-notebooks pack a lot of punch for a low price. One of the reasons they are so cheap to make and sell is because many of them pack the Intel Atom processor which is one of the cheapest around. We’re hearing mostly good things about how these notebooks are performing with the Intel Atom so it’s a double benefit that they are so cheap. A lot of these mini-notebooks are offered with Windows XP so obviously Microsoft is allowing OEMs to classify low cost notebooks with Intel Atom chips as Ultra Low Cost PCs (ULCPCs) which qualifies them to be sold with Windows XP.
You may remember the goofy announcement that Microsoft made a while back when they were trying to save Vista face yet cater to OEMs who insisted that Vista didn’t run well on lower performance systems. The folks in Redmond basically said that certified low cost PCs could be classified as ULCPCs and thus offered with Windows XP even though the old operating system had been "phased out". It makes me wonder, how many OEMs are using Atoms onboard these mini-notebooks simply because they can offer them with Windows XP? Stranger things have happened.
James.
XP is still available to OEMs through the system builder options so it doesnt matter what the processor is. Building a netbook helps to get the cheap license I guess but other classes of device are still eligable.
JKK had a news item on it recently.
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/06/future-of-windows-xp.html
Steve
It seems to me that in the longer term, Microsoft needs to cater for these devices in a proper way, rather than by ad hoc extensions to XP’s life. That means having a dedicated operating system for this market. Microsoft’s problem will be to prevent people using such a lightweight operating system on ‘ordinary’ computers, because it will probably do everything that most users want from an operating system. Apple, were they to venture into this market, would surely be in the same position.
Linux turns out to be well placed, because the existence of a lightweight Linux operating system does not jeopardize the rest of the Linux project. However, Linux has its own problems, it seems to me. I’m not convinced that it’s ready for a mass market. (By ‘mass market’ I mean the sort of market that buys Windows, not the sort of market that buys eeePCs, big though that is.)
Allan