Two amazing things happened at almost the same time: Sony was forced to reopen its PS2 fabrication plant due to continuing sales over their technically superior PS3; Microsoft were forced again and again to extend XP licensing over their high falluting Vista OS.

Us tech-heads will continue to lust over the bigger/faster/stronger advances on the bleeding edge, but for the new majority of non-technical computer and web users, they have more than enough horsepower to do 98% of what they do already, thank-you-very-much Wintel et al!

This was really driven home to me recently when I had to reinstall the OS on a PC of a family friend on their 2 year old Viao. I asked them if they had any files to backup, and they said ‘no’! Everything they used was online! Now, you don’t need the world’s fastest PC to run Firefox, as Netbooks have shown, or indeed even pay your ‘Microsoft tax’ at all. As far as they were concerned, their 2 year old computer was more than up to the job, and could well be in another 2 years.

The game’s changing: people want their computers to just work, people want convenience and mobility, people want their OS to get out of the way of them using their computer.

6 months ago, after Windows failed to properly hibernate before a journey and my hdd physically crashed as a result, I installed a new SSD with Kubuntu Linux as the OS… and I haven’t looked back. Roll on 2009!

Microsoft’s timing for extending XP was more of a necessity than anything else, since Intel is scheduled to release Pineview in Q209. A slew of new netbooks coming in 2009, including the 2133 refresh from HP, should bring better performing netbooks more suitable for Win7 when it is released.

As far as I’m concerned, netbooks will continue to be offered with the XP version of Windows until Win7 is ready. By that time Pineview should be well established, much the same way Win7 should be mature by the time Medfield arrives.

In any case, Microsoft’s track record to date seems to be that it takes them three tries to get something right. Given they’ve already released Vista service packs, Windows 7 ought to be at least adequate. (All the people praising XP are praising XP SP2, their third try at XP. I don’t remember XP getting such praise when it was first released.)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/under_the_hood_windows_7_is_vistas_twin.html