The smart money says that win7 sales will be high running up to Xmas and into the january sales. Lots of people have held off buying until 7 came out, and you'd be an idiot to buy any computer running vista now.

I'm a bit worried about the netbook market though: there are too many netbooks being sold with win7 - ones with specs I would have reservations about using windows XP on. IMHO, if a netbook has

[weird, the rest of my post is missing... continued]

IMHO if a netbook has

...less than 2Gb memory and an atom N270 then you should be running linux or XP (if you need office). Win 7 is being sold on 1Gb netbooks, but even though it will be better than vista on such machines, I wouldn't like to try it...

Sorry about the triple post, something weird going on with the comments.

You know, Windows 7 is better than Vista, but it's not THAT much better!
I think a lot of users will be content with the improvements, but will be disappointed for the premium in price they had to pay, while seeing no improvements worth of that premium price they had to pay.

Don't forget with the newer Atom with integrated Graphics and memory controller, you'll see a modest improvement in response over the older Atoms, much like the older Atoms have a modest improvement over similar low clocked single core P4 processors.

The memory latency is the greatest gain (we expect to see) on the newer Atom, together with the slightly improved graphics, and faster RAM (DDR2/3 @ 667 Mhz).
As far as computing power the Atom still will boast out it's modest performance, but installing an SSD in a netbook causes a huge improvement in System response,and program boot/loading times; much greater than switching from an Atom to a Core2Duo with the same 4200-5200rpm HD.

So in system response time, and booting time of OS and programs in Windows 7 an Atom processor with 1GB of RAM is more than enough, provided if the OS was installed on an SSD.

But even on a 4200rpm harddrive, your experience will be no worse than running XP on an Athlon XP 2600+ single core, with 512MB of RAM, and it wasn't that long ago when most of us where running systems like that (I remember I ran mine from 2002 to 2007).

@DroDigit80

I agree that SSD would help, but with RAM so cheap right now, if find it shocking that they're trying to cram win7 onto 1 gig. It would suck for having more than a couple of tasks running. I think ther would be real benefits to having 2 Gb on a netbook, they're not going to need much more any time soon.

Like you say, the newer atoms would be fine, I'm just annoyed at retailers trying to sell win7 on N270s with 4200 HDDs and 1Gb of RAM. With that spec you're really not going to benefit from win7 over XP.
Sadly these netbooks are probably going to spark some "OMFG Win7 is such a sloooooow memory hog!111!!!11!" FUD when users wonder why everything runs so much slower on those systems.

Ram isn't cheap anymore though. Haven't you noticed the recent huge increase in DDR2 ram prices for example?

Yeahm, retail prices of RAM are up, but a 2Gb stick still only costs £30. It will be different for an OEM making netbooks with low-powered mobile ram, but if I were to pay £300+ for a netbook then I would expect at least 2Gb nowadays - especially if it comes with win7.

Well, I have vista and win 7 didn't offer me that much more than vista did in the RC although I can get a legit free copy so I might reinstall it on my spare drive if for some reason it was worth it.

I think the 1GB was a limitation set by Intel (if I'm right). At home it just requires you to remove the RAM,and upgrade it.

Just as mentioned already, considering pricing , hardware compatibility and performance it takes the lead, leaving Vista behind especially when it comes to smaller platforms such as Netbooks,Laptops,PC and Win7 based workstations. But we might as well take in consideration that Microsoft was more into bringing an OS to the market that without any Service Pack would be able to work at peak efficiency compared with other developed OS up to date. It invested more in advertising, user opinions, tests, ( feedback for short).So no wonder people are more into buying and/or upgrading to Win 7 which is able to run on older hardware as well such as P4 630/631 3 GHz with slightly less than 1 GB of RAM. Rumours have it that even on P3 machines if done right.
In conclusion, it might be the best OS developed by Ms up to date.

XP runs fine on 500Mhz+ cpu's, and 512MB+ RAM,
7 runs on a 700Mhz CPU, 700MB RAM,and 32MB Vram as recommended min specs.
The 700MB RAM is enough to give you about 300MB of RAM in a program.
But your internet browser uses more ram than 300MB, so you might want to have more..

I guess everybody wants to get rid of Vista.it caused enough troubles.
it was just a 'preety face'