TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web-site, with friends in Redmond Washington, is reporting that Microsoft will provide free, or discounted anyway, Windows 7 upgrades to users who buy Vista or Windows XP PCs between June 2009 and January 2010.

This sounds like a good deal. But, then so did Vista-Capable PCs. You know, the ones, which Microsoft assured users that PCs bought before Windows Vista shipped would be able to run the operating system. The ones which turned out to be only capable of running the retarded little brother of the Vista family: Vista Basic. The ones, which are now the center of the Vista Capable lawsuit.

Now Windows 7 isn’t as much of a resource hog as Windows Vista. I’ve been using Windows 7 both on VirtualBox and on native hardware for several months now, and it’s nothing like as obnoxious as Vista. So, I’m not anticipating real trouble for Windows 7 on most PCs. netbooks are another matter. I’ll go into detail why I think that’s the case in an upcoming review of Windows 7 on netbooks, but suffice it to say for now that I don’t see Windows 7 as a Linux netbook killer.

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