ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley notes that Microsoft is hiring developers to work on the successor to Windows 7, which she guesses might ship in 2010. As Mary-Jo says, some folks have talked about the possibility of Windows 7 being the last Windows that’s a piece of software rather than a service. I have no doubt that Microsoft will be shipping new versions of Windows for years to come–even if the world moves sharply to the Web and old-fashioned operating systems look…well, really old fashioned. But I see at least five routes that Microsoft could take with Windows 8, or whatever it’ll end up being called:

1) Evolutionary improvement on Windows 7 (much as Windows 7 promises to be an evolutionary improvement on Vista);

2) A major upgrade with big interface changes that’s still recognizably a traditional OS (think Windows 3.0 or Windows 95);

3) A major upgrade that blurs the line between traditional OS and Web service in a way that Windows 7 doesn’t;

4) A back-to-basics OS that’s focused lwon providing robust plumbing for applications that are largely Web-based (I think of this as the Return of DOS);

5) Some combination of the above scenarios.

Which would make the most sense? Well, route #1 might be the most immediately useful, and route #3 could do the most to make Windows relevant five, ten, and fifteen years from now. And I persist in thinking that we’ll see all operating systems–including OS X and Linux, too–focus more on the unglamorous stuff of route #4 and less on flashy signature features and bundled applications. There are hints of this approach in Windows 7, and Apple’s Snow Leopard looks like it’ll follow it as well.

Anyhow, we know nearly everything there is to know about Windows 7 at this point except for final bullet points like its ship date and price. Windows 8, however, is a blank piece of canvas. What do you think it’ll be like? More important, what do you want it to be like?

Netbooks aren’t just changing the world’s perceptions of how powerful a computer must be to be useful–they’re also having a major impact on Microsoft’s business model. They’re one reason why Windows XP refuses to die–even though the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft makes less than $15 per copy of XP installed on a netbook, versus $50 to $60 for a copy of Windows Vista.

Things will only get more complicated when Windows 7 arrives. It’s designed to do what Windows Vista can’t: perform reasonably well on a modestly-equipped netbook. Microsoft surely hopes that its arrival will help nudge XP into overdue, well-earned retirement. But netbook manufacturers can’t make economic sense of putting a $50 copy of Windows 7 onto a $300 netbook. And Microsoft, understandably, has no desire to sell them a $15 copy of full-blown Windows 7, thereby destroying its ability to sell a $50 one for use on fancier, pricier computers.

Enter Windows 7 Starter Edition, the version that Microsoft plans to pitch for use on low-cost netbooks. It’s got one limitation, but it’s a doozy: It only runs three applications at a time. Which sounds like it would make it useful only for clueless newbies and other folks whose needs are really, really undemanding.

Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott has a revealing post up based on having spent three weeks using Starter Edition, an experience that left him relatively positive about the product. He points out that there are multiple exceptions to the three-app limit: Windows Explorer windows, Gadgets, anti-virus apps that run as separate services, Control Panel utilities, and other items don’t count. Neither do multiple windows and multiple tabs opened up from a single application, such as your Web browser. The bottom line: Depending on what the items in question are, you may be able to have a lot more than three of them open without running into a message telling you that you must save your work and close an app before you can launch another one.

“In short, when I used this system as a netbook, it worked just fine,” Ed writes. “On a netbook, most of the tasks you’re likely to tackle are going to take place in a browser window anyway…If I tried to use this system as a conventional notebook, running multiple Microsoft Office or OpenOffice aps, playing music in iTunes or Windows Media Player, and using third-party IM programs, I would probably be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of Starter Edition.”

Which brings up an interesting question: Are netbooks really netbooks? By which I mean, are they designed primarily to let you use Web-based apps, and are they a distinct class of computer from traditional notebooks?

As of this very moment, you can make the case that the answer to both questions is yes. I’m thinking that the distinctions are going to vanish rapidly, though. A netbook is just a notebook that happens to be small and cheap–and the definitions of both “small” and “cheap” are blurring. Dell, for instance, sells a Mini netbook with a not-tiny 12-inch screen. And the existence of cheap netbooks is driving down the cost of notebooks, period: Best Buy, for instance, already sells multiple traditional notebooks in the netbook-like neighborhood of $400 or so. I don’t think every notebook will look like today’s netbooks, but I think the trend will be towards smaller, lighter models (especially as features like optical drives go away) that cost less than a thousand bucks.

Do people use netbooks mostly for Web-based apps? I may try to find out via a survey, but for the moment I can speak only for myself: I do a lot of Web stuff on my Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but I also use old-fashioned software–Web browsers, Skype, Paint.NET, Adobe Acrobat, and more. I suspect I’d run afoul of Windows 7 Starter Edition’s limitations…well, not constantly, but frequently. Then again, I’d be willing to pay for an upgrade to a version of Windows 7 without the three-app limit–and I’m already curious about how much such an upgrade might cost.

All of which leaves me thinking that Microsoft is still in a tough spot that will only get tougher over time: As notebooks get dirt cheap, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for it to maintain the profit margins that Windows has enjoyed for the past couple of decades. And if it doesn’t come up with a low-cost version of Windows that a reasonable person won’t find to be unreasonably crippled, it gives Linux a great big opportunity to grab the market share that so far has eluded it.

Of course, anything anyone says right now about Windows 7 Starter Edition the future of netbooks is speculation. When Windows 7 ships in a few months–on netbooks that will deliver more power at a given price point than today’s models–we’ll get to see what real people think about all this.

It’s sweltering in San Francisco…

Windows 7 Starter Edition’s okay.

iPhone to get voice control?

More on Microsoft’s Europe case.

Sharp’s touchpad has an LCD.

Twitter’s limit on daily following.

Are pirates big music buyers?

A real-time ray-tracing card.

Belkin iPod charger: almost invisible.

Wow, Oracle will own Java…

Larry Ellison is buying Sun.

Adobe puts Flash on TVs.

The post-Windows era begins.

TiVo to sell user data.

YouTube’s new comment filtering system.

Toshiba’s netbook starts at $600.

iPhone refurbs: a good deal.

Apple leads in customer experience.

A review of iPhone Quickoffice.

Microsoft gets $15 per netbook.

Back on Friday, I wondered if we’d ever see Apple’s “Get a Mac” guys again, and speculated that they’d either come back with a direct response to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters spots or stay away for good. Which just goes to show that even the most innocuous speculating about Apple is likely to be wrong. The company’s released four new “Get a Mac” spots, and none of them take on “Laptop Hunters” directly.

Here they be:

The only one that feels like it tiptoes into “Laptop Hunters” territory is the third one, “Stacks,” since it points out a feature of iLife 09 which PC says sounds expensive, then explains that iLife comes with all Macs. Maybe that’s a subtle response to the Microsoft ads’ painting of the cost of Macs as including a large premium for meaningless cool factor. Or maybe not–a pretty high percentage of all “Get a Mac” commercials have touted iLife as a principal reason to buy an Apple computer.

I’m not sure if the second ad, “Legal Copy,” is referring to something specific with its conceit that an ad claiming that Windows PCs are more simple and intuitive than Macs must carry a lot of fine print. As I’ve written, one of the striking things about the “Laptop Hunters” series is that it makes no claims about Windows. The message is all about the specs and features you can get at a particular price point, and anything relating to software seems to beside the point.

(Side note: I’m not a fan of fine print, but it’s better than not using it when an advertising claim badly needs clarification–as I wrote in this post about Apple’s iPhone 3G advertising.)

Then again, maybe ignoring “Laptop Hunters” is Apple’s way of responding to it. While Microsoft keeps doing its price comparisons and saying that Macs provide no added value for the price you pay, Apple is returning to the basic mantra that “Get a Mac” has repeated all along–that Macs deliver fewer hassles and more powerful included software than Windows PCs.  The implied message is that you should be including those factors when you do the math on a computer purchase. It’s a far more reasonable point than the one that Microsoft has busily hammered away.

And maybe the fact that Mac and PC are back at all is an oblique acknowledgment that Microsoft’s ads are attracting attention, and Apple needs to reinforce the pro-Mac, anti-PC case it had already been making.

One other thought about the new commercials: Poor PC seems to have drunk the Mac Kool-Aid himself somewhere along the way–in “Time Traveler” he actively argues that PCs don’t work the way they should and are inferior to Macs. The early ads in which he touted his own virtues and disparaged the Mac were at least as effective, and a lot funnier…

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek has weighed in on Microsoft’s “Lauren” commercial, the first of its Laptop Hunters ads. All of them involve shoppers rejecting Macs in favor of Windows PCs, and the implication in each case is that Macs offer overpriced glitz rather than substance. Like other observers, Hesseldahl points out that Lauren’s HP laptop has a lower-resolution screen than Apple’s MacBook Pro, much poorer battery life, and more bulk. He also notes that she’ll have to pay for anti-virus software, won’t get Apple’s iLife (which is bundled with all Macs), and won’t qualify for free troubleshooting at Apple’s Genius Bar. Good points all.

He also managed to get a quote from Apple about the Laptop Hunters campaign–the first ackowledgment of it by the company I’ve seen:

Usually silent on such things, Apple did give me a comment on the Microsoft ads. “A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans says. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.” Microsoft declined to comment.

That’s pretty straightforward and dignified, making for an interesting contrast with the snarky tone of Microsoft’s recent anti-Apple salvos. It’s an interesting role reversal, given that in the past it was usually Apple who snarked at Microsoft, and Microsoft who replied either calmly or not at all.

But I wonder if we’ll ever get a response to Laptop Hunters from these guys:

Actually, I wonder if we’ll ever see PC and Mac again at all. Except for a couple of animated holiday spots, I don’t believe they’ve shown up on TV since last October, before Microsoft  had really ramped up its Apple-bashing. Back then, they were trashing Vista, and I said that it felt like inside baseball. My guess: Either they will respond to Laptop Hunters…or they’re gone for good.

Microsoft’s Windows Home Server platform has only one major booster among PC manufacturers, but it’s a doozy: HP, whose MediaSmart Servers pack sizable quantities of redundant storage, Microsoft’s software for backing up, restoring, and sharing data, and HP’s own tweaks and additions, such as support for Macs. And today HP announced a software update for its EX 485 and EX 487 models with two significant new features: automatic conversion of videos for streaming and viewing on computers and mobile devices, and a new app called iStream that gives iPhones and iPods Touch remote access to the videos, music, and video you have stored on the server.

The software update, which HP plans to release late this month, can automatically generate high-resolution and low-resolution MPEG4 H.264 video files from multiple formats (including unprotected DVDs–but not, of course, copy-protected ones). I’ve spent enough time tending to computers that were slowly crunching away at video files to find the idea of a sever silently doing it in background mighty appealing.

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Hey, it’s Monday the thirteenth!

Meet Twitter-annoying teen Mikeyy.

Prince’s $2100 purple iPod Touch.

Amazon: hiding gay-themed books?

Skype should sell to founders.

Vizio may face import ban.

iPod Shuffle is 72% profit.

Palm readying inductive-charging accessories?

Two potential Pre shipping dates.

Windows 7: securest operating system?

Microsoft kills on-campus bar.

Last week, Microsoft sponsored a white paper that expanded upon the mantra in the company’s “Laptop Hunters” ads that Macs are overpriced computers that impose a price penalty based on an ethereal, needless “cool factor.” Said white paper featured charts involving Mac configurations that no longer exist, and calculations of the long-term cost of being a Mac user that seemed questionable at best and nonsensical at worst. I detailed some (but not all) of the issues in this post.

The white paper’s author, Endpoint Technologies’ Roger Kay, blamed some of the data problems on production gaffes by Microsoft. Microsoft has posted an updated version of the paper with updated specs and at least one clarification (it now makes clear that the $149 copy of MobileMe it’s talking about is the Family Pack version). Strangely, Microsoft hasn’t updated the inaccurate chart in the blog post that links to the white paper.

I said in my original post that I didn’t think Kay’s conclusions would be different if the white paper had gotten the specs correct, and I was right: They haven’t changed. And even though the tables now seem to have their specs right, there are multiple places where the math behind his calculation of the “Apple Tax” remains more partisan attack than honest attempt at analysis. Can anyone explain to me, for instance, why he he adds a hefty $750 to the Mac setup for five years’ worth of MobileMe for two computers when MobileMe, which is available for both OS X and Windows, is simply no more mandatory on the Mac than it is on Windows?

Oh, and the paper still has one relatively minor cost attached to the Mac setup–a $99 charge for the iLife Family Pack–which I think is simply indefensible no matter how partisan you might be. Kay doesn’t factor the cost of creativity software into the Windows PC setup in the first place–the theory is that the imaginary family in his scenario has already paid for it for an older computer–but he also doesn’t tack the cost of an upgrade on. Apparently the fact that he has his Mac-owning family upgrading their software after two years but not their Windows counterpart doing so constitutes part of the “Apple Tax.”

I can’t imagine that many people who actually reads the white paper (even in its new, more accurate form) who might consider buying a Mac instead of a Windows PC are going to take the case it makes very seriously. And those people who wouldn’t consider buying a Mac don’t need convincing in the first place.

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt has theorized that Microsoft’s Mac attack constitutes a trap, and “the Apple press” (of which I don’t wanna be counted as a member) is taking the bait by responding and carping about it. Given that Microsoft is pouring so much money and resources into arguing that you can buy Windows PCs for a lot less than Macs–a point which is obvious to anyone who steps foot inside a computer store, and which helps to explain why Windows’ market share remains huge and the Mac’s continues to be quite small–I wonder whether it’s Microsoft that’s fallen into a trap. I mean, responding to the anti-Windows taunts in Apple ads in kind probably feels really good, but I’m still not sure just who Microsoft’s current round of Apple-bashing is meant to address.

The secret outtake Microsoft doesn’t want you to see from its new commercial…

(April Fools’ Day lasts for a month, right?)

After I finished writing about the oddities and errors in the white paper Microsoft released today about the so-called “Apple Tax,” I read a post on the same topic by Joe Wilcox over at eWeek. He said the charts in the paper, which is credited to Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies, looked vaguely familiar. They did to me, too. So I dug through my e-mail to find the stuff Microsoft had sent me in the past about Windows PC and Mac pricing,

Here’s a chart that a Microsoft representative sent me back on October 24th, comparing the MacBooks against Windows laptops (sorry it’s so small):

And here’s the laptop comparison chart in the new white paper:

This is a chart on Mac and Windows desktops that Microsoft sent me on January 5th, when it and the world thought Apple might announce one or more cheap new Macs at Macworld Expo (it didn’t):

And here’s the desktop chart in the white paper:

Both charts have gotten updates–for instance, the new laptop one has the $999 MacBook with a DVD burner (which is right, even though it’s not the $999 MacBook configuration you’ll buy today) and some of the PCs are different.

I’m not saying there’s anything fishy going on here–maybe Microsoft hired Endpoint to create the charts and analysis it sent out earlier, but didn’t credit it that time.  But it’s worth noting that the new charts aren’t really new–they’re updates (albeit insufficiently updated ones) to ones that Microsoft was distributing under its own name several months ago. And Kay’s argument that the cost of Apple-brand networking equipment and a Sony Blu-Ray player is a penalty Mac owners must pay is also repeated from another round of materials that a Microsoft representative sent me on October 13th.

Bottom line: The white paper is a rehash, not a revelation…

Microsoft has posted another commercial in its “Laptop Hunters” campaign, this one starring Lisa (mom) and Jackson (kid):

Same template as the earlier two ones: Show that Windows laptops come in all shapes and sizes, emphasize basic specs (and one cool feature in this case–Blu-Ray), pause to make the point that Macs lack substance, then show the happy shopper(s) with free laptop (a Sony this time–sorry, HP). And don’t even acknowledge the existence of Windows on the computers.

I’m tired of analyzing commercials, so I’ll just point towards my posts on the earlier ads: Lauren and Giampaolo. Most of my thoughts apply to this one too–but if you’re less tuckered than me, I’d love to hear yours.

As I said in my post last Sunday on Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” ads, it’s unrealistic to expect TV commercials to contribute to a thoughtful discussion of anything. An exercise in comparison shopping between Windows and PCs that takes place in a sixty-second Microsoft commercial just isn’t going to be fair and balanced, any more than an Apple commercial is going to explain that it’s possible to get respectable Windows laptops for a whole lot less than the cheapest Macs.

But Microsoft’s latest salvo in the Windows-vs.-Mac war isn’t a commercial–it’s a ten-page white paper by veteran analyst Roger Kay (a friendly acquaintance of mine, and, like me, a former IDG employee). Roger is independent and knows the personal computer market as well as anyone on the planet, but his paper was sponsored by Microsoft, which means that even if it’s a third-party take on things, it’s going to be one that the company is comfortable with. But the whole point of vendor-sponsored white papers is bring an independent expert’s analysis and data into a discussion in hopes that it’ll be taken more seriously than mere marketing materials.

Roger’s paper includes a bunch of tables that compare Windows PCs and Macs–sort of like what I’ve been doing, although in less excruciating detail–and an analysis of the cost of ownership of the two platforms that concludes that a family than buys two Macs instead of two Windows machines will pay a cumulative Apple tax of $3,367 over five years.

In his laptop section, Roger compares the white MacBook, new MacBook, and 15-inch MacBook Pro against various notebooks from Dell, HP, and Sony, and finds, unsurprisingly, that the Macs cost more. He shows, for instance, that the $999 MacBook comes with a skimpy 1GB of RAM, a bare-bones 120GB of hard disk space, and Intel’s uninspiring x3100 integrated graphics. For hundreds of dollars less, the chart proves, you can buy a Windows laptop with double the RAM, more than twice the disk space, and better graphics.

Pretty compelling. Except that the $999 MacBook doesn’t come with 1GB of RAM. (It has 2GB.) It doesn’t have a 120GB hard disk. (It’s 160GB.) And it doesn’t have X3100 graphics. (It has the considerably more potent NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.) Here, look for yourself. The analysis is based on the old MacBook configuration that Apple refreshed more than two months ago, but the white paper talks about it in the present tense.

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I’ve been bingeing on free tools for the last week. Here are a bunch of the best I found.

Greased Lightning Finds

I want you to download and try the Everything search tool. It installs in a minute, and indexes your drive in another minute — and the speed of its finds will blow you away. No, really, this is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen.

My friend Darryl said, “Everything’s search engine only searches file names and folders — it doesn’t index file contents like Windows Desktop Search does. Instead, it indexes the entire hard drive by using the hard disk’s existing USN Change Journal. The result is a tiny program that uses very little resources, is deadly simple to use, and is astonishingly fast. You can find any file virtually instantly.” The question is why Microsoft didn’t use the USN functionality in the Search function built into XP and Vista. (Don’t you love these rhetorical questions for Microsoft?)

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Lotsa news tidbits this Wednesday:

Windows 7 users: happy campers.

More BlackBerry Storm 2 rumors.

Nintendo DS: pocket video player.

Apple sued over touch screens.

200 million people use Facebook.

Almost all e-mail is spam.

More and more Twitterers.

Acer unleashes tons of notebooks.

Better broadband? FCC’s getting going.

Word’s father returns to earth.

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Last week, I tried to conduct an objective price comparison of 17-inch Apple’s MacBook Pro and similarly-equipped Windows laptops. After I did, my friend Steve Wildstrom of BusinessWeek pointed out one basic problem with such comparisons: They’re impossible. By which he meant that there’s no way to do one that’ll strike everybody as sensible and fair. No matter how hard you try, you can’t configure a Windows PC to precisely match a Mac’s hardware. No two people will ever agree on the relative worth of the multitude of features you examine. Hardware comparisons like the ones I do intentionally ignore the enormously important question of the relative quality of Windows and OS X. Some folks will even contend that any analysis of PCs-vs.-Macs is incomplete without discussion of resale value.

In last week’s story, I came to the conclusion that the MacBook Pro’s pricing wasn’t out of whack with its Windows-based rivals–if there was a “Mac Tax,” it was matched by some of the other machines I looked at. Judging from the almost 200 comments on my story to date, a lot of Windows users thought I was unfair to Windows, and a lot of Mac types thought I gave the Mac short shrift. I choose to take discontent from both camps as a sign that I did a decent job overall. But I wanted to come back and address one gripe that came up repeatedly–that I compared the MacBook Pro against high-end, workstation-class laptops.

I don’t think I made a mistake by doing that. The MacBook Pro is Apple’s highest-end notebook, with specs that were similar in most respects to the Windows systems I compared it to. (And when the Windows machines outclassed it–as some did with graphics, for instance–I noted so.) Several commenters contend that the MacBook Pro is a consumer notebook, but that’s not really right: It’s Apple’s only 17-inch notebook. If you’re a business customer and want a 17-inch Mac notebook, it’s the one you’ll buy.

But the fact remains that most other computer companies divide their product lines into business and consumer lines in a way that Apple doesn’t, and that the consumer systems tend to be cheaper than the top-of-the-line corporate models. So here I am comparing the 17-inch MacBook Pro again–this time against consumer-class models. This isn’t a replacement for my earlier comparison, but a complementary piece. I’m guessing I’ll fail to make everyone happy this time, too, but Lord knows I’m trying…

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