The following is a prediction of things to come in the next year.

I get the feeling that Microsoft is trying to kill the netbook market with Windows 7. In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft announced a new edition of Windows 7: Starter Edition. The Starter Edition is only capable of running 3 applications at once. Their purpose for this “Starter Edition” is two-fold. First, it is meant to be a sufficiently crippled version of Windows 7 so that they can sell it dirt cheap for use in netbooks. Many people will not buy it because it can only run 3 programs at a time. (Update: MS changed their minds on this after significant blacklash from the community, but Starter continues to have other strict limitations) They’ll pay a significant premium to buy a netbook containing a “normal” version of Windows 7 (Basic or Home) because it will be Microsoft’s flagship operating system. That’s different from today’s market. Microsoft can afford to give away Windows XP for dirt cheap on current iterations of netbooks because it’s already really old, and they’re busy trying to sell Vista. Buying a netbook with Windows 7 Basic or Home will increase the total cost so much that the devices will no longer be “worth it” to people unless they really want that small form-factor ultra-ultra-portable.

Second, most of the people silly enough to purchase the Starter Edition will find it so incredibly annoying to use that they will either have to pay to upgrade to a non-crippled version of Windows (again significantly increasing overall cost of the device) or they will discount their netbook as “a toy” of little value. This attempt by Microsoft to upsell the netbook market is probably going to kill it. Any way you slice it, Microsoft-based consumer interest in the market will wane.

Then, of course, we have Linux-based netbooks. By October, Ubuntu 9.10 will be available. It will likely boot on your netbook in 15 seconds or less if it has an SSD. It will come fully featured with an office suite, IM client, email client, web browser, media player, image editor, and much, much more. Oh, and you’ll be able to run every single application at once if you want to. Graphics will be performing fantastically, and the user interface will be strikingly refreshing. And of course you’ll get all of this for the low, low price of $0. Let’s just hope that Canonical can get it installed on a number of prominent netbooks whose manufacturers won’t hide it behind a curtain so that consumers will realize that they’re no longer subject to Microsoft’s crippleware. They can have an extraordinarily functional, free system on any machine they want. Ubuntu needs to capitalize on Microsoft’s idiotic move here, and I think they will.