Microsoft touted its new Windows 7 as having more choice than its rival Apple's offerings at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles yesterday.
"A key part of Windows 7 is to enable a full spectrum of choices," senior vice president Steven Sinofsky (pictured) said in a speech.
This means that while the new Windows will enable high-end machines with multitouch, it will also work on low-end machines. While Vista has largely been absent in the fast-growing netbook category, Windows 7 is aimed to work well on such low-end PCs -- a number of which are on display at WinHEC.
Among the machines Microsoft showed at the conference was an Eee PC with a 1GB hard drive and a 16GB solid-state drive, which the software-maker said could run Windows 7 with "room to spare".
The company said Windows 7 will support a number of additional audio and video formats out of the box, including Divx, H.264 and unprotected AAC.
Windows 7 also has integrated support for inputs such as light sensors, accelerometers or GPS. It will also be able to handle even more exotic inputs -- for example, Microsoft showed a ThinkPad with a spectrophotometer to help handle colour calibration.
Sinofsky also noted that even though the company is focusing on touch, it is not abandoning its Tablet PC work. Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, told TechFlash last week that touch could be mainstream but Tablet PC was "truly niche".
Microsoft didn't offer new details about when Microsoft 7 would hit the market, beyond saying a feature-complete beta will be available in early 2009. Sinofsky also mentioned a "release candidate to RTM phase", suggesting that Microsoft is only planning a single beta.
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips 
