Wow – it’s hard to believe a year ago at CES we were launching the beta for Windows 7. And it’s been over 2 months since the launch of Windows 7 – the result of all the great feedback and testing we received by you from both the beta and RC releases. Now that Windows 7 has been out for a few months, people have been asking us how things are going. We thought this year’s CES would be the perfect place to share updates about Windows 7 momentum.
First off – Windows 7 is being well received all around. We saw strong demand for Windows 7 through the holidays – Year-over-Year PC unit sales increased over 50% for each of the 4 weeks of December according to NPD’s Weekly Tracking Service. This is on the heels of a strong start to the holiday season, where NPD reported that PC sales increased 63% Year-over-Year on Black Friday 2009. Netbooks were one of the hot items where Windows 7 has been strong. According IDC’s recent survey and its resulting paper “Mininotebooks: the New PC Phenomena” (which was sponsored by Microsoft), more than 99% of the netbooks sold today in the US (95% worldwide) now run Windows. And just 2 months after launch, more than half of those netbooks are running Windows 7. Of course it’s only natural to also want to know how Windows 7 did in comparison to its predecessor. In early November, I had blogged that Windows 7 out-sold Windows Vista by 234%.
It’s great to see so many people excited for Windows 7! Tech website Technologizer ran a survey and with results showing a 94% satisfaction rate among early adopters.
Our Partners are also excited for Windows 7, demonstrating fantastic ecosystem support. As of today, there are than 800,000 unique apps and 238,000 unique devices that work great with Windows 7. That’s more than a million reasons to choose Windows 7.
When it comes to PCs and devices, it’s all about choice and flexibility. There are fantastic looking, stylish, and sleek PCs for people to choose from – including 1,400 Windows 7 logo’d PCs. These PCs span a range of prices, starting at around $300 to $3,000. And more PCs are being showcased this week at CES! PCs, devices, and apps continue to get better and better thanks to our partners building great products for Windows.
During Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote tonight, several great examples of cool PCs, devices, and apps were showcased that were designed to work great with Windows 7. There are more great PCs on display at the Microsoft booth. I thought I would do a little re-cap of what was showcased onstage or will be at our booth and add a little more context.
All-in-One PCs: check out these very cool All-in-One PCs:
- Sony VAIO L Series – has a 24” screen great for TV, movies and more and an available built-in TV tuner so watch live TV through Windows Media Center. It also includes a HDMI input so that you can connect your Xbox 360 and play your favorite Xbox games.
- Lenovo IdeaCentre A300 – only 18.5mm deep with a 21.5” Full HD 16:9 widescreen display that uses the latest LED panel technology for super clear and clean images.
- Medion The Touch X9613 – has a voice-controlled UI with a multi-touch display that can act like a PC, TV, audio system, and Blu-ray and DVD player all in one system.
A digital comic book reader called Graphic.ly was demoed – a perfect app for an All-in-One PC. With Windows Touch, you can use your finger to swipe through the digital “pages” of comic books!
Because many people use All-in-One PCs as “Kitchen PCs” – you should also check out Kitchen Assistant by Betty Crocker. This app lets you use Windows Touch to browse a variety of Betty Crocker recipes.
You can download Kitchen Assistant here if you already have an All-in-One PC!
Gaming PCs: there are a number of PCs perfect for mid-to-high range gamers.
- Toshiba Qosmio X505 – offers fantastic Dolby Home Theater sound booming though Harman/Kardon speakers. Also multicore processing!
- ASUS G51-J 3D - features 3D gaming with NVIDIA 3D Vision and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX260M graphics with an Intel i7-720QM processor. You can watch movies in 3D on this PC too!
- HP Envy 15 with DirectX 11 – HP will be updating the Envy 15 to support DirectX 11. The perfect laptop to play some DiRT 2 on!
The demo showcased the Games for Windows – LIVE title Batman: Arkham Asylum in 3D on the ASUS G51. Check out NVIDIA’s website for more on 3D Vision.
Ultra-Thin PCs: Ultra-Thin PCs are designed to reflect people’s desire for small, lightweight but powerful PCs – especially for people on-the-go.
- Dell Adamo XPS - super thin laptop at 9.99mm thick (thinnest laptop on the market) with a 13.4-inch widescreen LED HD display, a solid state drive, full-size keyboard that fold seamlessly into the display, and weighs 3.2 lbs. Wow.
- ASUS NX90 - Was designed by David Lewis with speakers certified by Bang & Olufsen, dual touchpads that lets you act like a DJ.
- MSI X340 – has a size of 0.24” at its thinnest point, 0.79”at its thickest, and weighs a total of 2.7lbs with the battery!
These are some extremely thin, light PCs!
Netbook PCs: Everyone knows what netbooks are these days. They are just small notebook PCs. But they’ve changed over the past few years and have gotten more powerful and packed with more features.
- ASUS Eee PC “Seashell” 1008P - designed by Karim Rashid, features organic waves in the finish, to the exact hue, tint and saturation of the Hot Pink and Coffee Brown colors.
- Acer Aspire One 532 - features Intel’s new Atom processor, 10.1” LED-backlit display, and a comfortable keyboard.
- Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3T- is a 10.1” multitouch convertible tablet. Perfect for OneNote 2010!
As I’ve said before, netbooks are the perfect companion PCs!
TV: Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while knows that Windows Media Center controls my living room for my TV and Home Entertainment needs. They keynote showed off several PCs perfect for Windows Media Center, TV, and your living room.
- iiView Media Center TV- is the first true hybrid computer/ HDTV for the consumer market offering full HDTV on screens up to 52” with some great features such as Blu-ray, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI and DVBT. The TV signal can be run through the PC and used through Windows Media Center in Windows 7.
- Acer Aspire Revo AR3610 - a slim and compact PC for full-on HD entertainment can either stand alone or snap to the back of your monitor.
- Dell Zino HD – a power Windows Media Center PC in a perfectly small 8” by 8” square.
A slim and compact PC for full-on HD entertainment can either stand alone or snap to the back of your monitor.
My current HDTV is currently on the fritz. The iiView Media Center TV is looking mighty tempting! But at the same time, the inner-geek in me wants to put the new Ceton TV Tuner powered by CableCARD that allows you to record up to 4 HDTV shows at once!
More people today than ever before connect their PCs to the TV in order to view videos. Or they use their PC as their TV. This trend is expected to increase 20x in the next 5 years (according to Broadband-Enabled TV: Evolution of OTT Platforms – The Diffusion Group Q4 2009)! With Windows 7 today using Windows Media Center, it’s very easy to turn your PC today into your personal DVR.
Slate PCs: PCs come in all shapes and sizes (different form factors). Slate PCs are PCs which are simply displays – usually with no physical keyboard. The Archos 9 and Villiv S5 are a couple of examples. During tonight’s keynote, Steve Ballmer had the distinct honor of previewing a Slate PC from HP coming out later this year. Here is a teaser video of that PC:
You can grab a downloadable guide to many of the above PCs talked about here and showcased in Steve Ballmer’s keynote here on the brand new Microsoft News Center as an XPS document.
Quite a few of the PCs highlighted above feature multitouch capabilities. The Microsoft News Center also has an excellent article on Touch worth reading – check it out!
I encourage folks who are at CES to be sure and stop by our booth check out some cool PCs, great devices, and cool apps that all work great with Windows 7!
