Before I begin, I feel I should make a small disclosure. I've long been a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) cheerleader. I have proof of this. As a precocious seven-year-old, I drew a full page picture of the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) logo with a bite taken out of it. A worm poked out the other side with the letters MS-DOS emblazoned across it in crude penmanship. If only the marketing gurus in Redmond had hired me then, it might be Microsoft winning the now-pervasive media war with Apple.
Needless to say, the debacle that was Windows Vista shook my confidence to the core. I took drastic measures, like using a Linux notebook. Recently, we've all read the numerous critiques and reviews of Windows 7. The newest iteration of the Windows operating system officially launched today, and already there appears to be critical consensus: It's good. Having personally used the beta and release candidate versions of the operating system for the past eight months, I think it may be the best Microsoft operating system to date.
That being said, I won't bore you by heaping more praise on an already hyped product. Instead, I wanted to alert fellow Fools to two less-talked-about points in relation to the Windows 7 release.
First, Microsoft has successfully focused in on a key computing section: netbooks, which are growing faster in terms of sales than any other kind of notebook and can actually run Windows 7 (or at the minimum, a watered-down version). Moreover, they run it well. To test this, I installed Windows 7 on a small netbook (the Samsung NC10) and found it to be very snappy and usable.
U.S. computer makers Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL ) are focusing more on netbooks (even while dismissing them in the media) in an effort to keep up with low-cost Asian producers, such as Acer, that have aggressively targeted the market. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC ) and NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA ) have both designed and heavily promoted products specially suited to the small netbook form factor. And Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) is creating an operating system that looks to focus on low-end computers.
In short, Windows 7 looks poised to dominate not only a growing new industry segment that industry players are piling into, but also one that needs defending from competition.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, Windows 7 is releasing at an opportune time. CEO Steve Ballmer was probably sweating bullets six months ago, when all were mired in the Great Recession. What business was contemplating upgrading its computing infrastructure?
Now, though, there may just be large pent-up need for upgrading across the economic spectrum, as managers skipped the normal upgrade cycle in order to cut costs. Noting that the S&P 500 is up 60% from March and that the economy is undergoing at least an apparent recovery, those same managers may now be viewing the critically acclaimed Windows 7 as an upgrade to normal operations. That prospect is enough to make even this diehard Microsoft fan excited.
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