Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report yesterday, and while the company reported more than $16 billion in revenue and $5 billion in income for a pretty healthy increase over last year, it wasn’t all good news. Basically the company is seeing growth in the business division, but Windows isn’t bringing in as much revenue as expected. Part of the reason?…

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Almost every netbook that ships with Windows 7 comes with the crippled Windows 7 Starter Edition. Users can’t use Aero Glass desktop effects or even change the desktop background. Windows 7 Starter doesn’t include Windows Media Center or support for multiple monitors. Wikipedia has a good breakdown of all the Windows 7 features you’re missing if you get a netbook…

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Most netbooks ship with Windows 7 Starter Edition, rather than the more expensive Windows 7 Home Premium. And while at the core, these two operating systems are very similar, Microsoft has disabled some features in order to differentiate Windows 7 Starter from higher priced versions of the OS — and to convince some netbook customers to spend the money to…

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Last week Chris Guthrie at netbook Reviews ran a battery test on two virtually identical netbooks: An Asus Eee PC 1008HA with Windows 7 and one with Windows XP. He found that the Windows 7 model ran for an hour longer than the Windows XP model, which made it look like the operating system actually helped improve battery life on…

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Gigabyte has announced plans to launch Windows 7 versions of two of the company’s latest netbooks in Japan. The Gigabyte T1028X convertibel touchscreen netbook will be available with Windows 7 Starter Edition and a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU. 10.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel touchscreen display, 1GB of RAM, 250GB HDD, and a 6 cell, 7650mAh battery. It’ll run…

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Toshiba announced an update to its netbook line this week. The new Toshiba NB205-N330 looks a lot like the Toshiba NB205-N310 we’ve come to grow and love over the last few months. It has the same excellent keyboard, wide touchpad, and high capacity battery. But there are a few things that make the new model different. First and foremost, it…

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It looks like the question of whether netbook makers will ship machines with the crippled (but cheap) Windows 7 Starter Edition has been resolved. They will. We’ve already learned that the Samsung N130 and N140 netbooks will be available at launch with the stripped down version of Windows 7 instead of the pricier Windows 7 Home Premium. And now PC…

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When Windows 7 is released in October, Microsoft will make the “starter edition” version of the software available in developed countries for the first time. The reason? Because the company wants to give PC makers selling low-cost netbooks a low cost Windows licensing option. Of course, we already knew that. Here’s what we didn’t know: Not only will Windows XP…

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Microsoft is giving netbook makers a choice of pre-loading Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Starter Edition on low price netbooks. My guess is that most computer makers will stick with Windows 7 Starter, which will be much cheaper, unless there’s huge demand for a more powerful operating system. But where does that leave netbook owners who don’t want…

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Microsoft extended the life of Windows XP in order to give netbook makers a low cost operating system that wasn’t too heavy on resources to run on netbooks. But the company has set some restrictions on the systems that qualify for a cheap Windows XP license, because it wants to keep selling Windows Vista licenses for more powerful machines (and…

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Windows 7 Starter Edition will be the first “Starter” version of Windows to be available int he US. The reason? Netbooks. Microsoft is feeling pressure from the people making and selling low cost mini-laptops to offer a low cost version of Windows 7, even though the operating system was designed so that even the most advanced versions will run on…

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When it became clear last year that netbooks were becoming major players in the PC industry, and they weren’t generally powerful enough to handle Windows Vista, Microsoft decided to extend the product life of Windows XP. But just for netbooks. In other words, computer makers could preinstall Windows XP on mini-laptops, but not on full sized PCs. And since netbooks…

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