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View Full Version : Is Microsoft secretly working on Windows 7 for ARM?



gnomeuser
April 11th, 2009, 09:26 AM
This stems from a recent debate with my father, we were talking about the future of computing in both directions of +16 cores an the memory bandwidth problem but also in the direction of the netbooks which we both believe will be increasingly powered by ARM processors simply because they will be the only currently available offering to fulfill the promise of this platform.

My position was that this was a great entry point for Linux since Windows doesn't run on ARM and Windows 7' development cycle very likely would not be capable of encompassing an ARM port. This leaves Microsoft having to convince ARM vendors to ship Windows Mobile which is not an appealing platform for them. Meaning we have a window on these machines where we are the only ones with an offering to power them.

His retort was that he believed Microsoft was secretly porting Windows 7 to ARM like Apple ported Mac OS X for years to the x86/x86_64 platform. Now I think if this was the case something would have leaked out by now aside that it would make little sense to keep it secret anymore. If they announced tomorrow that ARM based netbooks will be able to run Windows 7 it would give them a huge advantage and it would let them retain a huge marketshare on these new machines.

So what are peoples feelings, would Microsoft be able to predict this and push development in advance to meet this new market then keep it a secret. Also why would they keep it secret now if they did, it would settle a lot of questions about the validity of the ARM platform as a desktop alternative and surely only benefit Microsoft.

My feelings are clear, I think Microsoft were taken by surprise here. They are stuck without an offering for this market till a post release of Windows 7 can be made available like they did with Windows XP 64.

sekinto
April 11th, 2009, 09:33 AM
I think they might port it (I definitely have my doubts); but if they did it won't happen tomorrow, next week or even next month. But Microsoft was willing to cut the price of Windows to compete in the netbook market, I believe it is still a possibility that they could do this as well.

samjh
April 11th, 2009, 10:44 AM
I think if MS did have an ARM port of Windows 7, they would publicise it. But there isn't any strict reason why they should. They might have already ported it, and made approaches to various vendors to adopt it under a short-term non-disclosure agreement. Having said that, I think it's more likely they would have announced it already if they have made an ARM port.

Linux could have really hit it off big in the netbook market, but the blow wasn't hard enough. Too little marketing and too little compatibility (multimedia and office applications).

darrenn
April 11th, 2009, 10:59 AM
I don't think microsoft is willing to price windows cheap enough to port to arm. When cheap arm netbooks arrive (under 200 us) microsoft won't be willing to sell windows for five or ten bucks because they wouldn't make a profit on it.

Paqman
April 11th, 2009, 11:10 AM
microsoft won't be willing to sell windows for five or ten bucks

Wanna bet?

Microsoft have always been willing to cut prices to squeeze competition out of the market. They've got absolutely stupid amounts of cash reserves, and are in no danger losing money overall.

darrenn
April 11th, 2009, 11:21 AM
Wanna bet?

Wait a second! They ported winxp for OLPC. So I guess they probably will make a release for arm if it does become popular.

Arkenzor
April 11th, 2009, 11:29 AM
microsoft won't be willing to sell windows for five or ten bucks because they wouldn't make a profit on it.

It's not like distributing a copy of Windows costs them anything except the price of the CD. What's more, every new installed copy of Windows, whether bought for 200$ or 5$ or even pirated on the net represents a gain for them, because it increases the hegemony of their incompatible software and makes it harder for competition to be accepted.


Switching topics, what would the ARM CPUs expected to be included in these cheaper netbooks be capable of? Would they still be powerful enough for the machines they're installed on to be called complete computers, or would they make them powered-up PDAs?

bfc
April 11th, 2009, 11:30 AM
Wait a second! They ported winxp for OLPC. So I guess they probably will make a release for arm if it does become popular.

It's marketing theory 101. Your the dominant player in the market, and you have a competitor trying to enter in to a market segment. You try to freeze out that competitor by dropping your product price for that market segment, or if necessary build/modify a product to prevent or inhibit entry for the competitor.

Warpnow
April 11th, 2009, 11:33 AM
Umm...

Most arm processors could not run windows XP without severe lag and you think a windows 7 port is gonna happen?

I don't think windows 7 will be capable of running on an Arm chip even if a port was made.

sertse
April 11th, 2009, 11:36 AM
I'm probably confused, but isn't Microsoft's greatest advantage that there is a lot of software for it?

An ARM Windows doesn't change that, anything else is still made for i386 etc...

It'll face the same issue as linux does against mass adoption of "my favourite app X doesn't run on it".

edit: I forgot that 64bit window exists; why is it linux has arch incompatibilities and windows doesn't?

chrisjsmith
April 11th, 2009, 11:39 AM
Microsoft did play with an ARM port recently on one of the research projects (don't forget NT4 used to support Alpha/PPC architectures as well as x86).

It's definitely feasable. FYI ARM9 CPUs are actually super-quick!

3rdalbum
April 11th, 2009, 11:55 AM
edit: I forgot that 64bit window exists; why is it linux has arch incompatibilities and windows doesn't?

lol, if you think Linux has architecture incompatibility, you need to talk to some Windows users!

I'd quite like for Microsoft to release a port of Windows 7 for ARM. People would buy ARM netbooks with Windows 7 expecting to be able to run their existing programs, find that they can't, and then exchange it for a Linux model that can at least run Firefox, Openoffice, Gimp, VLC etc.

gnomeuser
April 11th, 2009, 12:07 PM
Switching topics, what would the ARM CPUs expected to be included in these cheaper netbooks be capable of? Would they still be powerful enough for the machines they're installed on to be called complete computers, or would they make them powered-up PDAs?

They can do pretty much any task, the power is comparable to that of a machine produced maybe 4 years ago. The netbook models based on A8 will be able to playback 720p HD content while retaining battery life ranging in 8 hours for normal browsing activity.

It is a very serious competitor, it's small, cheap and runs plenty fast for mom and pop to use word processing and web browsing.

There is though one problem, adobe has not yet ported Flash to ARM so you would have to rely on something like swfdec or gnash to do that. Adobe have stated that they are working towards extending their architecture support so there is hope here. Another problem is that the proprietary codecs they would be able to ship legally from Fluendo to enhance the media experience are not yet ported to ARM either meaning they will have to rely on shipping without that support for legal reasons.

It is my belief that the first models will ship without such support installed but ARM aren't stupid, they will likely partner (or have already and it has not been disclosed) with Fluendo to bring their codecs to this platform.

ARM are very serious about making this work, they already have partnered with Canonical and actively demo these machines with a jaunty install. If you notice the changelogs for Jaunty you will also notice that there are lots of changes going in to make sure ARM is well supported and it is being very actively tested.

BuffaloX
April 11th, 2009, 03:26 PM
Microsoft already doesn't like the Netbook market very much, and have officially stated that they want to "upscale" Netbooks when Windows 7 appear.

I think MS would prefer Arm based sub Netbooks to never appear, BUT if they succeed, they will probably want to get a piece of the action for two reasons. One is of course to make some money, but more importantly for strategic reasons, leaving a market niche open for Linux to rule, proved very dangerous with the Netbook, which was surprisingly successful despite lack of Windows support. This was dangerous for MS, because if people liked the Netbooks, they might consider Linux for laptops and desktops too. So they turned 540 degrees, and offered XP at the lowest price ever for a Windows license.

I suspect MS is already investigating how well they can make Windows 7 run on Arm CPUs, they are not stupid, and while they almost certainly won't actively support the emergence of a new even lower profit market, they would want to be ready for it if needed.

They may not even expect to make any money from it, but they can't afford to risk Linux suddenly taking off, because more people might learn to use it, and replace Windows on their other systems.

oedipuss
April 11th, 2009, 04:26 PM
I have a feeling that if those netbooks appear, microsoft might ignore them entirely.
Pretend they either don't exist, or they aren't 'real' computers.
With their marketshare, it might actually be in their best interests not to validate this market with a version of windows, but to leave it to the geek toy category, and skip all the hassle with porting everything and explaining why WinRegCleaner X2000 (r) doesn't work. It would be marketed as a flaw of the ARM architecture, not the other way around.

Think of how 'pc' has come to include windows in its definition. No windows on this device, ergo it isn't a pc. To those who know linux of course, its capabilities would be obvious, but to those who don't it would remain a large pda.

Anyway that's just my feeling

SKLP
April 11th, 2009, 05:11 PM
Feels a bit like having Windows without support for "normal" x86 .exe files would not be Windows at all. The reason people want Windows is (partly at least) to be able to run the huge library of Windows application that are only available for Windows on the x86 platform. Windows 7 for ARM would in this sense be similiar to Windows CE or Windows Mobile.
Ubuntu ARM, on the other hand, will have almost all the software that's available on the x86 version of Ubuntu, due to most software being open source ( one notable exception being Flash, but hopefully if Linux on arm becomes a popular platform this will help swfdec become a decent Flash player)

donovan1983
April 11th, 2009, 06:36 PM
I doubt Windows 7 would get ported to ARM. It's a huge architectural change that would require a significant investment of resources by Microsoft for no real gain since there'd be no software library to run on it. I think a scaled up Windows CE system is more likely since it already runs on ARM. I doubt it would do terribly well though.

I do hope ARM netbooks succeed. The ARM architecture is amazingly efficient yet powerful. There's already a lot of software for it, too. I know the Nokia internet tablets have an implementation of Flash that is quite functional although I don't know if it's official Adobe software. But Flash on ARM has been around for a couple years. Linux of course has been on ARM for many years and runs quite well on it.

This really is an opportunity for Linux to make some headway if the manufacturers do it right. If they install a crippled toy OS like they have been on most Intel-powered Linux netbooks then it's doomed. But if they install a real, fully-functional OS like Ubuntu then consumers will see that the machines are real computers. I'd like to see models with generous amounts of RAM and hard disk drives too. ARM-powered netbooks succeeding, and even becoming some people's primary computers, would be a great thing and further help reverse the constant push towards ever more inefficient and overpowered computers among a good number of consumers.

SunnyRabbiera
April 11th, 2009, 06:43 PM
I think if MS did have an ARM port of Windows 7, they would publicise it. But there isn't any strict reason why they should. They might have already ported it, and made approaches to various vendors to adopt it under a short-term non-disclosure agreement. Having said that, I think it's more likely they would have announced it already if they have made an ARM port.

Linux could have really hit it off big in the netbook market, but the blow wasn't hard enough. Too little marketing and too little compatibility (multimedia and office applications).

No the battle isnt over yet for netbooks, when win 7 comes out they already committed to severely limiting win7 on netbooks...
open more then 2 windows and pay up, this will kill windows on the netbook market.

Paqman
April 11th, 2009, 06:46 PM
this will kill windows on the netbook market.

You could say the same about the godawful versions of Linux that most netbooks ship with.

Icehuck
April 11th, 2009, 06:48 PM
No the battle isnt over yet for netbooks, when win 7 comes out they already committed to severely limiting win7 on netbooks...
open more then 2 windows and pay up, this will kill windows on the netbook market.

FUD.

Windows XP/Vista/7 starter edition is for emerging markets only. Unless you live in a country who is mostly technologically lacking, you won't run into this version of Windows.

Methuselah
April 11th, 2009, 06:51 PM
I agree with you gnomeuser. I don't think they have already ported windows 7. I think that given the recent marketing push, they would have said or leaked something. Also, recent developments have shown microsoft to be reactive not proactive. They released and OS that was wrong for the times (Vista), and were caught flat-footed by the popularity of netbooks and the rise of firefox.

But I also feel that a windows 7 port to a new architecture would not be as compelling to the kind of portable market microsoft targets; the market that wants a tiny home desktop on the go.
The nice thing about the open source stack, is that just about everything can be ported by somebody. Microsoft does have a few of the most popular applications on windows which they could port along with the OS but ultimately the open source ecosystem would probably have more variety.

Binary compatibility with x86 executables would have to be emulated which would be little improved over the linux ARM port running x86 windows in a qemu VM to get the same support.

Paqman
April 11th, 2009, 06:58 PM
Windows XP/Vista/7 starter edition is for emerging markets only. Unless you live in a country who is mostly technologically lacking, you won't run into this version of Windows.

Actually it's Home Basic (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2340438,00.asp) that's for emerging markets. Starter (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2340433,00.asp) seems to be the one they're angling for netbooks. You won't be able to buy Starter shrink-wrapped, but you will be able to buy a netbook with it installed by the OEM.

Icehuck
April 11th, 2009, 07:02 PM
Actually it's Home Basic (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2340438,00.asp) that's for emerging markets. Starter (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2340433,00.asp) seems to be the one they're angling for netbooks. You won't be able to buy Starter shrink-wrapped, but you will be able to buy a netbook with it installed by the OEM.

According to Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/starter.aspx), Vista starter edition is for emerging markets. So they just reversed the rolls of starter and home basic. Either way your not getting a crippled version of Windows.

BuffaloX
April 11th, 2009, 07:06 PM
FUD.

Windows XP/Vista/7 starter edition is for emerging markets only. Unless you live in a country who is mostly technologically lacking, you won't run into this version of Windows.

I'm not so sure about that, OEMs want Windows as cheap as possible for Netbooks, Microsoft has boasted about how clever they are offering easy instant upgrade to Home Basic at a price comparable to a family going out for pizza.

This will for sure be very interesting to watch.

SunnyRabbiera
April 11th, 2009, 07:07 PM
FUD.

Windows XP/Vista/7 starter edition is for emerging markets only. Unless you live in a country who is mostly technologically lacking, you won't run into this version of Windows.

And its thse nations that will pay off for linux usuage overall.