...where the software vendor had gone out of business, the software was bespoke, or the customer had "not purchased the most recent version" of the software.
Microsoft expects that 90 percent or more of applications and hardware that function on Vista will work on Windows 7, Painell said.
The cheapest version of Windows 7 will be the Starter Edition, which Painell said was "an entry-level edition for netbooks only". He added, however, that "any version of Windows 7 will work on a netbook with good experiences".
The Starter Edition limits the number of concurrently running applications to just three. Painell said this would "get the most out of the hardware provided" and would allow manufacturers to "differentiate their offerings".
He pointed out that an antivirus application, which tends to run constantly, would not count as one of the three running applications. In addition, multiple instances of the same application will count as one.
Final release candidate
Microsoft expects RC1 to be the only release candidate for Windows 7, Painell said. He gave no details on the final release date other than confirming the company's current estimate that it will be generally available no later than January 2010.
Gartner research director Annette Jump told ZDNet UK on Thursday that she expected the final version of Windows 7 to arrive in the third quarter of this year, possibly shipping to manufacturers even earlier. Microsoft's decision to allow users to try out the release candidate until June next year would encourage them to move to Windows 7, she said.
"In the past, very few users for Windows would upgrade on their PC," Jump said. "For Mac OS, it's a different picture — a much higher percentage of users upgrade on their machines. Microsoft is possibly trying to encourage people to do that and, with the new user interface, for many consumers it will be quite appealing."
Jump praised the XP mode in Windows 7, saying it showed Microsoft was obviously learning from the mistakes it made with Vista, where there were "major application-compatibility issues".
"I think that feature will be very helpful for business buyers, in terms of trying to encourage them to move to Windows 7 faster," she said.
The analyst said the delay in a final release for the updated MED-V would be unlikely to affect most enterprise customers, as businesses would probably not deploy Windows 7 until 12 to 18 months after it had been released.
Jump predicted, however, that the three-applications restriction in the Starter Edition would dramatically limit the usage of that version. "Personally, I only see the Starter Edition on mini-notebooks being used for education and in very selected emerging markets," she said.
On the subject of Windows 7's lack of a guest-account feature, Jump said this feature was becoming decreasingly popular because more people are carrying around notebook computers, meaning they are less likely to need to use someone else's PC.
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